|
|
 |
The Pumpkin Eater
(1964)
Anne's Niche: Actress
Character: Jo Armitage
Cast and Crew
My Too Cents: This is probably Anne's best performance on film to date. You can't go into
this movie expecting your conventionaly storyline. There is no real begining, middle, and end, because what
you see is a mere peice of a person's life. There is no resolution because you don't see alot neat clean
easily solved problems. What you see in the end is that life just goes on, for better or worse.
If you want to see Anne at her compelling best, you must see this movie. You won't regret it.
Warning: This movie is not for the shallow-minded and if your looking
for a movie that won't make you think don't see this one. But if you don't mind thinking a little to follow,
or endings that aren't conventionally "happy", you will enjoy this movie.
Synopsis:
___Bancroft, in an
Oscar-nominated performance, plays a twice-married mother of six. She divorces
her second husband (Johnson) and takes up with Finch, a highly successful
screenwriter. The two marry; it seems like a perfect marriage until Bancroft
realizes her philandering husband will never buckle down to her notions of
marital fidelity. She gives birth to her seventh child and suffers a nervous
breakdown. This, along with an encounter with an unbalanced woman at her
hairdresser's, sends Bancroft to a psychiatrist (Porter). He is not much help.
Bancroft's father dies, and she discovers that she is once more expecting a
baby. She refuses to accompany Finch to a film location in Morocco but agrees
to his arguments for sterilization. Later she runs into Mason, a man who once
made a pass at her. Mason reveals that Finch has been having an affair with his
wife (Gray), who is now expecting a child. In an ugly scene Bancroft confronts
Finch and returns to Johnson. After she spends the night with her former
husband, Johnson gets a phone call from old-friend Finch, whose father has just
died. Bancroft goes to the funeral, but Finch pretends not to notice her. As
she chases him, she slips and falls in the mud. Demoralized once more, she goes
to their unfinished country house and spends the night alone. In the morning
she wakes to the sound of her children as Finch leads them up a hill. Bancroft
resigns herself to life, for good or ill, with the man. This is a fine film,
encompassing the joys and tragedies of life: birth and death, marriage and
divorce, love and hate. The leads give their characters life. They seem to be
real people on the screen, not actors in a drama. Bancroft lends her role real
depth, switching moods with eerie and wonderful believability. Mason, in a small
supporting role, is nothing short of excellent. The script, by noted playwright
Pinter, is complex and painful but often exhibits a good sense of the comic as
well. The direction, slow and even-handd, allows the story to develop at its
own pace, gradually building in speed as the story's intensity grows. This is
a fine and sensitive work, a truthful portrait of human foibles and complexities.
The film was charismatic character-actor Hardwicke's final one; he died the year
of its release.
(TV Guide)
|
