|
EDUCATED BITCHES Sidney Lumet’s 1966 version of Mary McCarthy’s The Group is considered by many one of his least worthy and for years, having initially avoided seeing it after reading Kael’s self-congratulatory piece about its making in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I tended to lean toward the erroneous consensus. When TCM scheduled a full day tribute to the director upon his passing, the infrequent opportunity arrived to view it and in spite of quibbles about the economy-kick movie-making, convenient stereotyping and the color photography (Lumet wanted to film in b & w), I found it entertaining, engrossing and faithful to McCarthy. The story of these 30s Vassar chums is ambitious—moving rapidly through Roosevelt and the NRA, premarital sex, adultery, Communism, Spain’s Fascism, WW II, alcoholism, breast-feeding, psychoanalysis, manic depression, women besting their husbands or lovers in careers, lesbianism. If the best to be expected from the sprawl are episodic snippets, screenwriter Sidney Buchman holds to McCarthy’s primal messaging; the concision of scenes and consistent level of unusually intelligent chatter are the glue holding everything together. Yes, it should be a miniseries. In the pivotal role of Kay (McCarthy’s alter) Joanne Pettet is in way over her head but nevertheless compelling in her Mexican jumping bean badness; though no one merits a violent onslaught by husband or lover, she makes clear why she gets it and doesn’t elicit much sympathy. (Are there other viewers who also wanted to help push her out the window? In Movie Making, Lumet half-seriously wondered if her fate needed to be wrapped in a Robert Altman-like irony, surprisingly unaware, in his sloppy speed, he gave her one.) The rest of the women—Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett (sounding like Barbara Parkins), Elizabeth Hartman, Shirley Knight, Jessica Walter, Mary-Robin Redd (looking like Margaret Leighton) and Kathleen Widdoes—are equally memorable, whether they’ve been miscast or foreshortened by the script and/or editing. (Following the novel, in which her absence becomes conspicuous, Bergen’s icy dyke Lakey only seems to have been largely omitted.) Jessica Walter’s fear-of-sex virgin is right out of Roz Russell in The Women but the energy she expends on the proceedings and some of her outfits are gifts to foofs. Larry Hagman is very near first rate as a failing playwright.
Text COPYRIGHT © 2010 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved. |
