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"Our emergent America" vu par eight Vassar grads, the Thirties vu par the Sixties. Cukor is the model for celerity, Sidney Lumet's pointillist approach visualizes Mary McCarthy's opus as a nervous feminine maelstrom and counterpart to 12 Angry Men. Flea-hopping perspectives, a shared amazement, "Who'd a thunk it?" The frazzled theater major (Joanna Pettet) ascends at the department store and agonizes under the playwright husband (Larry Hagman), high hopes and cruel plunge. "The old maid of the group" (Joan Hackett) might be Jean Arthur updated, her wry look into a shabby lavatory mirror after being deflowered by a smarmy painter (Richard Mulligan) is the film's best moment. Chemistry major (Shirley Knight), juggling neurotic lover (Hal Holbrook), earnest doctor (James Broderick) and fluctuating father (Robert Emhardt). The frail liberal (Elizabeth Hartman) turns into a breastfeeding experiment for a Republican spouse, the elegant lesbian (Candice Bergen) returns from Europe with a baleful baroness. "That dame must tote a pair of brass knuckles." The catty doyenne (Jessica Walter) and the privileged ditz (Mary-Robin Redd) and the valedictorian (Kathleen Widdoes) chronicling them all, newsletter typing streaking the screen. Class of '33, wedding to burial. Lumet keeps many plates spinning, psychotherapy, birth control, abuse, commitment and compromise, "permanent revolution" is recommended. The color cinematography is keyed to the breathless deluge of information, red hats and green chiffon and purple sheets gradually giving way to clinical whites and finally funeral blacks. In the middle of the rush, a cutting pause with the bohemian rival (Carrie Nye): "We eyed each other across the barricades. You were the aesthetes, and we were the politicals." Varda takes it from there with One Sings, the Other Doesn't. With James Congdon, Philippa Bevans, Bill Fletcher, Baruch Lumet, and George Gaynes.
--- Fernando F. Croce |