Interiors (1978)

How Jane Fonda for Coming Home won the Oscar over Geraldine Page for Interiors still beats the hell out of me.

Fonda beat Page, Jill Clayburgh in Unmarried Woman, Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year, and Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata.

It is a very Ingmar Bergman film, no?

No, R3.

It is a horribly ill-conceived presentation of a class and situation that Allen could analyze only from the outside, It is

I laughed so hard at the elementary-level "secrets"" and "angst" and "guilt" and "rage" that I had to recover in the lobby before the big Geraldine-Page-running-wild stink fest and ridiculous ending. Poor Stapleton having to play the "breath of life" was sad. A terrible, terrible film.

It is shallow, envious, dishonest and untrue to its themes. If Allen were an honest director in this case he would have made Stapleton a lovely, "real," vulgarian Jew.

Not Allen’s best and clueless on a WASP family. Pretentious and GP over acting as she often did.

Another one of those movies I loved in the movie theater, but can’t watch for ten minutes today.

Woody taking seriously the kind of thing he would parody.

"Watching this picture a question keeps recurring what would Woody Allen think of all this? Then you remember he wrote and directed it. The film is populated by characters reacting to situation Allen has satirized so brilliantly in other pictures."-VARIETY

I know nothing of film criticism, but I love this movie.

As I remember it, just an older guy tired of walking on eggshells around his depressed artsy-fartsy wife, financially supporting his adult kids who are still finding themselves, who eventually finds happiness with a lively widow of a certain age. I love the scene where the Geraldine Page character is trying to sell the Sam Waterston character a wildly expensive fugly vase (or was it a lamp?) and he is none too enthused.

And who can forget "She's a vulgarian!"

Loved it in the theater but I was only 18. Now I laugh at it, and myself for thinking so highly of it. But I would watch it tonight if it was airing on TCM.

I'd go out drinking with Pearl in a heartbeat.

Art Baloney. Woody just loves that Art Baloney.

I always confuse this with Windows (1980).

Elizabeth Ashley would have been captivating in either Geraldine Page or Maureen Stapleton's roles.

At the time, I thought it was crap and his paeon to Waspdom. He's deranged.

The drabbest, least glamorous looking cast ever.

The movie is visually dead.

There isn't a Woody Allen move that doesn't suck.

Ugh. Such an awful movie. Woody's best side of his face is comedy. Zelig, Bananas, etc. He is a tremendously gifted comic, but not a deep thinker.

Joey is a DL heroine. Every one of her lines is a howler!

This is an EXCELLENT film.

Highly recommend.

I love Pauline Kael's description of Mary Beth Hurt's hairstyle. "It says - hands off!"

So should I watch it?

If you want to self flagellate your senses.

R2 - Jill was robbed. And Page should have been in supporting.

The hilarious Mary-Beth hurt line "She's a VULGARIAN!" has been a Datalounge go-to over the years.

I like this line to her father -

We knew about your affairs when mother was in the hospital but your choices were just a little more DISCREET!

The only thing I like about the film other than its pretty cinematography and its campy screenplay is that Diane Keaton never looked more beautiful than she does in this film.

SHE'S A VULGARIAN!!

I sat next to Richard Jordan at a Broadway matinee performance of Bent starring Richard Gere in 1980.

Typical Allen film of that era of his, spotlighting white yuppies’ vapid problems, worries and angst—boo-hoo.

Maureen Stapleton stole the movie.

This film would’ve also benefited highly from Woody having had the sense to wait to film it until my album “Walls” was released, so its cuts could’ve rightly been used for its theme song and musical soundtrack!

Jane was fine, as usual, but Jill was magic in the role of a lifetime. Glenda Jackson was wonderful in "Stevie" that year too, but the movie was not widely released. "Interiors" was a box office success, and the Academy liked it.

I was not surprised Mary Beth Hurt did not have a better movie career, since she's so annoying in this (almost hilariously so), but I am surprised Kristen Griffith did not do better. After this she played the second female lead in the Merchant-Ivory film "The Europeans," and then she pretty much vanished from film for more than ten years until she appeared in Steven Soderbergh's "King of the Hill" in 1983.

The after-the-wedding scene where Maureen Stapleton is dancing is hilarious.

I've seen MaryBeth Hurt in many plays and movies and she was always annoyingly shrill and unappealing.

You should see Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) - she is delightful in that.

I saw this when I was in Australia and when the credit came up for Production Design - Mel Bourne - everyone howled with laughter.

Mary Beth Hurt was babysat by Jean Seberg as a child in Iowa. Hurt was married to the late William Hurt and then married Paul Schrader whom she is still married to, though he announced last year that she has Alzheimers.

I liked Mary Beth Hurt as the homely Regina Beaufort in The Age of Innocence. Regina is married to Julius (Stuart Wilson), a sexy womanizer who married for money. When he spends/loses it all, he marries a much older wealthy widow and they travel while Regina is forced to become a seamstress.

Anyone have a copy of this? Woody Allen's Trilogy of Terror: Interiors, September, and Another Woman.

Interiors, September and Another Woman are sterile, tedious and pretentious with literate dialog that sounds computer generated.

[quote]r33 = After this she played the second female lead in the Merchant-Ivory film "The Europeans," and then she pretty much vanished from film for more than ten years until she appeared in Steven Soderbergh's "King of the Hill" in 1983.

Huh?

“Another Woman” is amazing and both Gena Rowlands and Sandy Dennis should have been nominated for it.

[quote]R35 I've seen MaryBeth Hurt in many plays and movies and she was always annoyingly shrill and unappealing.

She starred in the first play Meryl did in NY, if you can believe that. I guess the world once believed in her.

I love the vibe of Interiors and Geraldine Page. But it really is wooden and melodramatic.

“Interiors” was realized the year I was born so, for me, it’s kind of a time capsule of what people looked like, how they dressed, and where lived then. It’s so beige and gray. Lots of wood.

I love that scene with Geraldine Page calmly walks into the waves to her death in heels and fully dressed. And the aforementioned Sam Waterston scene where she is trying to sell him on an overpriced lamp is iconic.

Remember when people would get excited to see the "new Woody Allen movie". He was a big deal. I never liked him. All those movies where neurotic, nerdy ugly man get to bed hot younger women seemed a stretch to me.

Try the NY Times R43

[Quote] 'Another Woman,' also shot entirely in and around Manhattan, seems stateless, partially because Mr. Allen's inward-turning characters discover so little that is either emotionally or dramatically urgent."

[Quote] "They are talking automatons. Feelings, for all of the importance the film gives them, are more frequently announced than experienced, and when they are announced, they are contained in sentences that no one except Mickey Sachs or Alvie Singer or any other Woody Allen character could get away with."

I'll try the NY Times

When the three sisters were looking out the window (the screenshot at OP) I thought they were going to say “Wheat. Fields of wheat. Cream of Wheat….”

Page’s character in INTERIORS is such an annoying drain it’s hard not to celebrate her death.

If Sam Waterston had strangled her the story would have been much more interesting.

[QUOTE] I'll try the NY Times

It’s nice that they told you what you wanted to hear.

or perhaps I saw the same problems with the film that others did R51

"The high culture background to the narrative seems pretentious and cold. It’s a sterile cerebral work that never reaches the heart or never gets past its setup of characters boiling over with inner turmoil, therefore it’s hard to really care about any of the characters" -Dennis Schwartz/Another Woman

ANOTHER WOMAN is somewhat better than INTERIORS and SEPTEMBER due to Gena Rowlands and that one strong scene in the restaurant with her, Sandy Dennis, and whoever was playing Dennis' husband.

I saw it at the a theater near my university when it came out. Mixed crowd on a Saturday night, not just a college crowd--but the type of crowd that would go to a Woody Allen movie, anyhow.

There was one scene, somehow I think it was placing the roses on the coffin, the audience just ROARED with laughter. And they laughed at Mary Beth Hurt, several times. I think stuff like this is good to know, for people that weren't around at the time. Just puts things in perspective.

The movie is incredibly [italic]sterile.

*released, not realized

[quote] When he spends/loses it all, he marries a much older wealthy widow and they travel [bold]while Regina is forced to become a seamstress.[/bold]

Are you sure that part is right? He does leave Regina for Fanny Ring (who is called Annie Ring in the film), but I don;t remember at all her being forced to become a seamstress and I've seen the movie and read the book many times.

R57, is that poster mixing Regina up with Lily Bart (who briefly becomes a milliner before her accidental overdose/probable suicide)?

I actually love the scene of Page taping up the windows so precisely for her suicide attempt.

I felt sorry for the actors, stuck with such stilted dialog. I think poor E.G. Marshall and Keaton got the worst of it.

In the last scenes, is the mother really there- or does the daughter just imagine she is? Making the ocean suicide just a figment if her imagination?

SHE’S a VULGARIAN!!!

"Diane Keaton never looked more beautiful than she does in this film"

Nah, Goodbar was her peak prettiness.

She looked very, very thin under her sweaters in "Interiors."

Geraldine Page is a genius. When she goes berserk in that church, knocks over candles, and storms out raging at her husband you feel every bit of her mental illness. I love Woody’s “serious” films. Whatever happened to Kristin Griffin?

Geraldine Page is a genius

F. Murray.

One of my favorite scenes. Eve pushes an expensive lamp on her son-in-law, Mike.

Shit, sorry. This is actually the scene at the rug store with Eve and Joey.

Oh I hate those Bloomingdale's people pictures..

Eve: Why are you so reluctant to help me?

Joey: Reluctant? I do nothing but cater to you.

Joey:

I feel a real need to express something but I don't know what it is I want to express or how to express it.

I have to wonder if Jesse Armstrong didn’t consciously or subconsciously create Succession with Interiors bouncing around his head. Both are about a wealthy family whose entitlement and narcissim is actually amusing.

Page would have won if she was in the Supporting category. I wouldn’t think it was category fraud, either. It’s an ensemble cast with no clear lead.

Maggie Smith deserved to win the Supporting Actress. She was brilliant in California Suite.

R67, I remember sitting in the Baronet (or was it the Coronet) cinema on Third Avenue when this first came out and that scene got a roar of laughter, all to do with Page’s character being such a relentless buttinsky, forcing herself and her fucking awful, overpriced tchotchkies down their throat.

Yet Interiors was, by and large, a successful bid for respectability. Reviews were mostly good, and it earned Oscar nominations for Allen’s screenplay and direction, Geraldine Page and Maureen Stapleton’s performances, and the set decoration. (Note to future set decorators: There’s prestige in choosing and placing your symbolic vases wisely.) But the pans were more prominent and arguably stickier to the film’s legacy. Vincent Canby of the New York Times called Allen out for forfeiting his sensibility to that of another artist (a Zelig-like feat of assimilation, as it happens): “It’s almost as if Mr. Allen had set out to make someone else’s movie, say a film in the manner of Mr. Bergman, without having any grasp of the material, or first-hand, gut feelings about the characters. They seem like other people’s characters, known only through other people’s art.” And Pauline Kael’s incisive review in The New Yorker dismisses the whole bloodless exercise with devastating sentences like this one: “The movie, with its spotless beaches, is as clean and bare as Geraldine Page’s perfect house: you could eat off any image.”

I also remember the shot where Diane Keaton’s character places her hand on a window pane, presses it down on it and there’s a profile of her “anguished” face. It was such an embarrassing attempt at being Bergmanesque. And it got a laugh.

However close this was to copying (however ineffectually) some of Bergman's films, it is nothing compared to the direct plagiarism of "8 1/2" perpetrated in "Stardust Memories."

I renenber seeing this film at age 16, and thinking Page was trolling Cloris Leachman from Young Frankenstein. I do agree how great Keaton's perm looked.

SHE’S. A. VULGARIAN!!

What's that from, r79?

While we may all agree Mary Beth Hurt is dull as dishwater, let us also honor the fact that her childhood babysitter was none other than DL icon Jean Seberg.

#MomentOfSilence

While we finish reading r81, let us introduce him to r38.

Mary B also was the narrator of From the Journals of Jean Seberg.

In a way Stapleton (fabulous though she was) was miscast as Pearl. Her character was most likely Jewish but never identified as such because Woody knew that could be a hot potato in terms of anti-semitic reactions from Joey and Renata. Stapleton had a mighty fair Irish-American complexion for a character who claimed to be a sun worshipper. I can’t really think of somrone it could have been-a somewhat younger, less fat Shelley Winters, I guess. Renee Taylor or Elaine May would have been more on the money.

Speaking of things Jewish, how about how Woody has Eve smash candles in the Catholic church?

Also Renata refers to Eve's new Catholic faith as Jesus Christ nonsense.

I hated it when it first came out but I love it now. It's Bergman for the masses but it has some masterful performances - Stapleton, Page and E.G. Marshall.

The stuff with the elder generation is interesting (his may be the best role EG Marshall ever got), but the three sisters seem to be re-doing "Criws and Whispers."

*"Cries and Whispers"

R88 They are, they're also doing Persona and every other Bergman movie. It's called an hommage.

I like your take but mostly disagree, r84. Pearl was a trash lapsed Catholic. This movie was about wasps looking down on Catholics. It only felt like Episcoplalians trashing Jews because of Woody Allen's perspective as a Jew.

I think he was trying to isolate the WASPs as feeling superior to everyone, even other Chistians. Jews didn't have to be part of the equation. She was a vulgarian Catholic.

In some ways Catholic culture has more in common with Judaic culture than with other Christian sects.

[Quote] They are, they're also doing Persona and every other Bergman movie. It's called an hommage.(sic)

Homage: a euphemism for plagiarism

One of my favorite lines (paraphrase): "Well, what about that advertising job?"

J: "Oh that's all I need is to disappear into some anonymous lifestyle of writing copy and having babies!"

At least Geraldine Page is forced to underplay for most of it.

I love Page's "enthralling hammy" performance in The Pope of Greenwich Village which netted her her 7th Oscar nomination

The Geraldine Page character wasn’t becoming a rabid Catholic, though, she was seen watching one of those Baptist born again Bikly Graham late night type programs.

Whatever happened to Kristin Griffin?

When the really classy projects came along she got passed over.

As in Hannah and Her Sisters, Allen wanted the homage to Chekhov's 3 Sisters .He got 21/2 in Interiors. Other than sniffing some coke in the garage, Griffin she has nothing to do.

From IMDB: While watching the movie with a friend, of this film, Woody Allen once said words to the effect of: "It's always been my fear. I think I'm writing Long Day's Journey into Night, and it turns into Edge of Night

But wasn’t Woody Allen really parodying his own movie?

They can’t can’t

Flyn is Allen's cynical view of a Hollywood actress, perhaps what Annie Hall was to become. She is pretty but shallow. While she works away from New York she does return for her mother's birthday, her father's wedding to Pearl, and her mother's funeral. Allen gives Flyn the most humiliating scene. Not only does she snort coke but she is also nearly raped by her brother-in-law.

[QUOTE] Other than sniffing some coke in the garage, Griffin she has nothing to do.

Well, I mean, she does run away from getting raped by her brother-in-law.

she's totally dispensable and forgettable nonetheless R103

Flynn is also a way for Woody Allen to make his disdain for TV clear. He did the same thing in Manhattan and Crimes and Misdemeanors, basically dismissing the content on it as brain dead.

[quote]I hated it when it first came out but I love it now. It's Bergman for the masses but it has some masterful performances - Stapleton, Page and E.G. Marshall.

I had the exact series of reactions, r87. Hated it at first viewing and now I see how good it is and how good the actors are.

[quote] Whatever happened to Kristin Griffin?

Looks like Kristin Griffith took the "New York Actor" route and focused on stage work and the occasional tv/film roles. I saw her in a very interesting play about John Ruskin's divorce at the Lamb's theater years ago. She had a small but pivotal role but was excellent in it. Saw her after the performance talking with Lois Smith and Ann Jackson in the lobby, she was absolutlely gorgeous in person. I didn't speak to her but wanted to.

Griffith made an appearance on HBO's The Deuce a few years ago. She played the mother of the out-gay character who had received an AIDS diagnosis. She gave a fine performance, but was unrecognizable as the same actress in Interiors.

She looked like your typical, plain 70s hausfrau.

No special or guest star billing. Just one in the list of names in the episode's end credits.

Kristin Griffith also played Tom Wambsgan (Matthew Macfadyen)’s mother on Succession.

Kristin Griffith hit me in the head with a fondue pot.

I saw KG play Rose Mary Woods in a play called Stretch (a fantasia). Off-Off Broadway.

I just checked to make sure: Mary Beth Hurt's character Regina Beautfort does not become a seamstress in either the novel or the Scorsese adaptation of "The Age of Innocence." In the novel, she even stays married to Julius Beaufort until her death; he only marries Fanny Ring after she dies.

I just realized that the movie "Happiness" is either a parody or homage to "Interiors" (or both).

Most reviews of Interiors don't discuss Griffth or her performance. As in Vincent Canby's review she was merely parenthetic information.

Miss Page, looking a bit like a youthful Louise Nevelson with mink-lashed eyes, is marvelous — erratically kind, impossibly demanding, pathetic in her loneliness and desperate in her anger. Miss Stapleton beautifully projects the tone and feelings of a sweet, robust, coarse woman who is never, never ridiculous. Mr. Marshall is also fine as the husband whose desperation matches his wife's, though it is disciplined by purpose. The other roles are more difficult to judge because the material is so nebulous.Miss Hurt is very appealing as the youngest daughter who hates her mother and, thus, goes out of her way to convince herself she doesn't. Her feelings of creative impotence are also understandable, but I don't know what we are meant to feel for her when she writes in her diary, "Today I couldn't help experiencing a few nostalgic memories." She suddenly sounds like one of those humorless college types — a young woman who aspires to talk beyond her degree — that appear so frequently in Mr. Allen's written literature.Mr. Waterston's role doesn't make any outrageous demands on him, but Mr. Jordan's unsuccessful novelist — as written — is very much the bearded, hard-drinking, tough-talking novelist that's been a Hollywood cliché since movies began to talk. He just writes for higher-toned periodicals (The New York Review of Books).The most difficult role is Miss Keaton's. It's probably impossible to write or act convincingly a character who's supposed to be a successful poet. Just what constitutes success for a poet?

R111 I guess people are getting her confused with someone else. What other period piece does someone become a seamstress?

[quote]What other period piece does someone become a seamstress?

The Other Side of Midnight

Didn't the mom in Titanic become a seamstress too?

Where at any point in the film does Page’s character seem “kind”? She’s a monster with a very sick mind. That’s all.

Eve is the classic, "I'm nothing without you" wife.

Sick and demented

It's an essentially false film and the people in it speak high-toned gibberish that would be hilarious in any other context. The acting is mostly dreadful. I can't decide if Page is the worst of the lot or in fact amazing, because her character is so absolutely horrible that I just want someone to shove her bodily out of the room any time she opens her yap. That scene with her trying to sell her own daughter and son-in-law that fucking vase - passive-aggression taken to the absolutely furthest possible degree.

Hannah and Her Sisters is more of the same but somehow redeemed by some canny comedy, Allen's feelings for the cast and a warmer color palette.

[quote]—But the interior design is fabulous

Both the design and the composition usually are in his films.

R117 the review says 'erratically kind' Saw the movie once decades ago so I'm not sure. I don't remember her being a villain just a drain.

She's one of those people who sees themselves as kind, and don't see the passive-aggressiveness that people around them experience.

This movie was FRIGID 🥶

I've seen Kristin Griffith in a few Law & Order episodes. She's done 7 of them in the various franchises.

There is one line that sounds more like Neil Simon than Woody -

I can't take Mexico. I always think I'll get shot just walking down the street.

Dear GOD I don't know what you people want from us!

Follow me.

bump for VULGARIANS!

True, R126, however, that line is ALSO something Allen would probably say in real life.

Same can be said for Roberts & Burstyn, R1.

Lily Bart in The House of Mirth becomes a seamstress in a hat shop.

I have to laugh when Geraldine Page tries to play a sophisticated woman. She always comes across to me as Mid-Western frump.

I used to know the lady who played the younger version of Geraldine Page’s character, she appears in a few shots but doesn’t speak. Her name was Penny and she was a total cunt but fun to be around sometimes. She was also Page’s stand-in on the film. She died around ten years ago.

Was this the film where Allen quipped that it failed as a Bergman homage because "something almost happened"?

R135 sounds more like September which is Allen's version of Bergman's Autumn Sonata. September is drier and duller than Interiors.

Richard Jordan with the beard was so hot. I wanted him to fuck ME in the garage. Otherwise, pretentious twaddle.

I agree

R137 Add Richard Benjamin in your thrust too

That play that the father, Pearl, Joey and hubby were discussing sounded like a monumental bore. And I bet it was at the Public. The sort of third world twaddle Joe Papp loved to produce down there.

To me, the conflict over the giving of the information between the French doctor and the Algerian was the best part of the play. The writer argued both sides so brilliantly you didn't know who was right.

My fucking god, Joey was so pretentious, R141. It was proof of why she was never any good at anything. Everything was a fucking conflict to her.

The problem with this film for me is that Page's character has no sense of authority. When she's talking about the vase, for example, she's unable to say what about it makes it special (it looks as if it may have been celadon, which might well have cost $400 back then). All of her dictums are based on whims and moods rather than some code of proportion or aesthetics. So there's no sense of emotional tyranny to her outbursts - she's simply a whiny drip.

I love it when Richard Jordan’s character describes Pearl as a “hot number.” Dude was so horny I bet he would have fucked her, given the chance.

R28, here.

At the Intermission, a throng of suburban type fraus descended on the poor guy for autographs.

What they were doing at a performance of Bent, I found odd.

R145. They were probably there to see Richard Gere and had no idea what the play was about. Gere was a hot property back then as well as being a hot piece of ass.

[Quote] Gere was a hot property back then as well as being a hot piece of ass.

I'll say!

[QUOTE] Fonda beat Page, Jill Clayburgh in Unmarried Woman, Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year, and Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata

I had forgotten that Page was up against an actual Ingmar Bergman performance (of Ingred Bergman herself).

No one really talks about this Jane Fonda win. It’s perfectly good, but there were better options this year. I would rate Jane fourth in that lineup just in front of Burstyn (who is great too). It was a strong year for this category.

*Ingrid

"... she's unable to say what about it makes it special"

There's a certain shallow frau who just wants everything color coordinated. My mother would buy 'puctures' that matched the couch and drapes- didn't matter the subject or who painted it. Or even if it was a real painting (paper on cardboard).

For a movie you are all calling boring and pretentious, there sure are a lot of comments

DL loves to deride R151 WELCOME!

We need a prequel that shows us young Eve's origin story.

R146, And his character did have an orgasm onstage.

[quote]The problem with this film for me is that Page's character has no sense of authority

My take on it is Eve is a woman who manipulates others through weakness. The threat of her falling apart or of an inappropriate or embarrassing outburst is a club she uses to get her way and prevent people from abandoning her. My impression, she is one of those high strung women who possessed beauty and intelligence when young and those potentials were compromised in age by mental illness. I knew some women like her in the gallery world. Because the weren't entirely dismissible , people walked on eggshells around them, they were indulged and placated but not respected or admired. The tragic part was they craved recognition more than anything. I think Page gives a brilliant performance in this. Also found it interesting that Flynn, the actress, is the only sister who isn't self important. She dismisses her career, calling her tv movies silly and frivolous. Page and EG Marshall and Maureen Stapleton give some of their best performances in this.

In the original script, Joey was the lead character and Keaton was going to play her. I can't recall how it got to it's final draft and film.

I bet that Page and Stapleton were each second place in their respective categories.

EG Marshall is really excellent.. I remember when I first saw it I thought the father was being selfish and even cruel in how he dumped Eve. I do still think it was cruel of him to announce their marriage being over at the dinner table with his family sitting there, though. My older self can see that Eve was a total nightmare and I can’t blame him for wanting rid of her and to find love with elsewhere, specifically someone who has a zest for life like Pearl does.

I'm gonna be very direct. I think the occasion calls for it. I've done a lot of thinking about this matter and a great deal of soul-searching. Now that the girls are all on their own, I feel that for my own self I must come to this decision, though I don't take it lightly. I feel I've been a dedicated husband and a responsible father, and I haven't regretted anything I've been called upon to do. Now I feel I want some new pussy and consequently, I've decided to move out of the house.

" I like the guy that didn't squeal. Am I missing something"

classic

[quote]R153 We need a prequel that shows us young Eve's origin story.

I’d rather see a present day update on bitter Joey, who’s been through three husbands and is now in a lesbian relationship with her therapist.

(also, has grown twin boys who hate her)

Interiors is utterly fantastic. I adore it. Particularly the two senior actresses. The movie is wonder.

R49 "Great. I'm dead and they're talking about wheat."

The girls in the family are so thrilled to be away from their cold, manipulative, judgemental mother. They can only stand to be around her for a couple of hours at a time.

Yet, they're so shocked when their father seeks the same kind of freedom for the 10 to 15 years he has left. The girls can't see the forrest for the trees.

The mother did them all a favor. Her final act is unselfish, and redeems her. There is a hint that Pearl may well undo some of the damage the GP character has visited upon this wreck of a family.

I fucking LOVE this picture. I really do.

When the father licked the cream (or whatever it was) off of Pearl’s finger I was as repulsed by it as Joey. So uncouth and inconsiderate of him.

Some might even call it VULGAR.

How about Pearl talking with her mouth full? Haha.

This is the sort of carefully constructed movie in which as soon as you see one woman caress a vase and hover over its perfection you know that a second woman will have to break a vase.

P Kael

As soon as that vase breaks, you know Geraldine Page is not leaving the film alive.

Eve and Pearl appear to be two sides of the mythic dominating Jewish matriarch - one dedicated to spiritual perfection, the other to sensual appetites, security, getting along in the world, cracking a few jokes. But no one would want either of them for a mother. They're both bigger than life. Eve is a nightmare of asexual austerity, and Pearl an embarrassment of yielding flesh and middle-class worldliness. If the two are warring for control of Woody Allen, Eve clearly has him in the stronger grip.

PK.

I preferred the Pearl side of Allen which resulted in Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo. Sleeper, Take the Money and Run . . .as opposed to September, Another Woman, Shadows and Fog, Blue Jasmine . . .

R171, Blue Jasmine is incredible, dear. One of his best films.

Both Flynn and Pearl should have had tans as contrast to the pasty white Eve, Joey, Renata, etc. Especially since Joey just got off a plane from LA and Pearl had just gittej back from a cruise.

It's no Duel in the Sun.

R174 = Jennifer Jones

When was Joey in L.A. in the film? I don’t remember that at all.

The actress who played Flynn looked so much like the older sister of my best friend across the street growing up. Same exact look, hair, face, affect, etc.

Sorry, I meant it was Flynn just getting off a plane from LA, not Joey.

Both Flynn and Pearl talk about how much they love lying out in the sun. I just think both cheracters should have been somewhat tanned.

I’d love to see the initial list of suggestions that casting director Juliet Taylor drew up for Woody Allen’s consideration. I should think she put down Meryl Streep for Flynn. Streep did end up doing Manhattan with Allen a year later but she was reportedly very unhappy with her experience on it and vowed never to work with him again.

I saw it in 78..it bored the crap out of me

I want a cure

A mental, geographical cure

A physical -chemical cure…

I heard so much about Pearl's vulgarity that I assumed she did the ping-pong ball trick at some point on screen. Then I watched the film and was surprised at how subdued she came across.

It's a toss-up for me which character ns this thing deserves hardest to be bitch-smacked straight into next week.

For me it’s Renata (Diana Keaton). She was a fucking cunt to her sister Joey. It’s quite similar to how cunty Lady Mary was to poor downtrodden Edith on Downton Abbey.

[quote] She has all the anguish and anxiety of the artistic personality without any of the talent.

who was the lesbian?

Renata is right about Joey.

There is no lesbian in this movie, R184. Maybe you’re thinking of “Windows” (1980).

R185 Isn't Diane Keaton a lesbian?

No, she is not.

She just dressed like one.

[quote]R172 Blue Jasmine is incredible, dear. One of his best films.

Because it’s almost a line-for-line rip off of A Streetcar Named Desire.

R185, she might be right but it's a bitchy way to put it.

R172 Jasmine is a pointless reworking of Streetcar whose main character is based on Ruth Madoff. The characters are neither interesting nor sympathetic, and the supporting cast is dull. The narrative is choppy and the film is visually dull and poorly paced and utterly forgettable.

Blue Jasmine is so relentlessly clueless about the ways real human beings live, and so eager to make the same points about human nature that Allen has made dozens of times before, that it seems like a movie beamed from another planet.- By Stephanie Zacharek VILLAGE VOICE

I'll ask my question again: Is Joey hallucinating her conversation with her mother in the beach house near the end? And does Eve really walk into the ocean- or is Joey chasing a phantom?

The entire family is attending Eve’s funeral at the end so I think we’re meant to accept that her death really does happen in the reality of the film. Eve’s final conversation with Joey (which is disturbed by Pearl) is the final straw.l for Eve.

There's been perversity!

Harold arrives.

damn,. wrong thread.

One thing I'll give Woody: His movies, as far as I can remember, are always a reasonable length at around 90 minutes or so. No 3-hour dirges for him.

R197, “Sleeper” is only 89 minutes in length. I saw it in a theater when it was first released and audience members were like, “That’s it?”.

[Quote] One thing I'll give Woody: His movies, as far as I can remember, are always a reasonable length at around 90 minutes or so. No 3-hour dirges for him.

but September, Interiors, Shadows and Fog are dirges despite their short length. And at 83 minutes September feels like 3 hours

Joey needed a pal like Harold from "The Boys in the Band" to show her that life can be funny without necessarily being vulgar.

““September” was filmed twice. It originally starred Sam Shepard as Peter (after Christopher Walken shot a few scenes, but was determined not to be right for the role), Maureen O'Sullivan as Diane, and Charles Durning as Howard. After editing the film, he decided to rewrite it, recast it, and reshoot it.”

R200 and R201

Allen also shot multiple endings for INTERIORS. Be interesting to see that footage

Does the mother literally die in the ocean? Or is that a vision from Joey. I know the mother actualky dies, but the whole situation doesn't seem "real."

"Eve’s final conversation with Joey (which is disturbed by Pearl) is the final straw for Eve."

So Eve somehow made her way out to the beach house where the family was gathering- and hid in the dark?

Eve was weak.

[QUOTE] So Eve somehow made her way out to the beach house where the family was gathering- and hid in the dark?

Yes. It’s her house so I’m sure she knew how to stay out of sight (until the end when Joey finds her).

It was at the Baronet. I saw it at the first show the first Saturday and it was packed. It did not get one laugh. I am as far as one can be socially and financially from these people and I found it a beautiful film. I saw it again later in the year in an empty theater in Dallas. I thought it was just as good. Haven't seen it since then. I thought September was beautiful as well and have seen it twice on video. I was in the same situation as Mia Farrow concerning the house on which my life and future depended. I though did not get it. My parents were pretty shitty people. I was promised it and then they stabbed me in the back. So when she finds out her parents are going to sell it even though they don't need the money and has a meltdown I went through the same thing. Hers though is a happy ending. My bequeathal from my parents was section 8. Sometimes it can really suck being gay.

I'm confused, does DL like or hate this film?

"Does the mother literally die in the ocean? Or is that a vision from Joey?"

I always thought she died after taping all the cracks in her apartment and turning on the gas...

Maybe she floated back to shore and they recovered the body?

R210, did you actually see the film? After her suicide attemot she’s placed in a sanitarium, is released and has that wonderful bit in the car (driven by Flynn) from Long Island to Manhattan where she lowers the car window in disdain at the noise and the fumes of industrial Queens,

DL "this film is boring and pretentious, there is no depth and it is overblown."

Also DL: "has over 200 replies on the film"

Maureen Stapleton writes in her memoir about how she strong-armed Woody to have a drink with her. The cast and crew had told her he was antisocial but she was happy to get one laugh out of him.

<- I guess his homelife was a handful. He was up there rapin' everyone!

R211 I remember a funeral.

Well, I saw it at the Baronet, too, R208, and some bits in it got big laughs. Like the scene where Joey and hubby walk in a room and there’s a shot of Renata puffing away and looking up at Joey with annoyance and disdain. And a lot of the stuff with Pearl got big laughs.

I haven't seen the film since it came out - is there a scene where Eve and Pearl are together?

There was the cut scene where Eve and Peark get into a catfight at Sard's and Pearl pulls the clip out of Eve's bun....

I just watched the trailer.

I think I’d be bored watching this movie.

[quote]I'm confused, does DL like or hate this film?

Yes.

Of course we do

I have to admit my friends did not like it. Another Allen film people hate but is one of my favorites is Stardust Memories.

“Sleeper” nearly put me to sleep.

Denholm Elliott was the best thing about September

I really like Stardust Memories, too R222.

R222 I think Stardust Memories is the last classic Allen comedy.

Was Maureen Stapleton messing with George Abbott at this time?

If nothing else, this thread is making me nostalgic for the Baronet and Coronet and its grand, splashy façade.

[quote]R219 I just watched the trailer. I think I’d be bored watching this movie.

Most are.

The critical quotes are as pretentious as the film itself

So DL loves this film despite its pretentiousness, or does DL love this film because its pretentious

R231 Mostly likely DL loves the laughs the films dialog and artfully framed misery provide

Joey: If you've read Schopenhauer, Socrates, Buddha even Ecclesiastes they all say it very convincingly

Pearl: They should know

What is one to make of this? Are we to laugh at Wasp pretentiousness -Socrates and Buddha after all wrote nothing- or are we to chuckle at Pearls Miami Beach ignorance? -JOHN SIMON

^^ film's ^ Pearl's

Never have so many talented people labored over such a wet fart of a film.

There's not a single dud performance and I'd rather chew my own leg off than be subjected to these cunts for fifteen more seconds.

I think Pauline Kael, who shredded the film, admitted that the psychological issues Allen showed were fascinating but that the treatment closed off all sympathy.

I'd say DL hates this film except for me. And didn't Kael dislike Bergman anyway. I think I read that somewhere. Maybe not. And boy do I miss that block on the upper east side. Weren't the Cinema 1(a gorgeous large modern house) and Cinema ll on that exact same block?

I remember she loved FANNY & ALEXANDER.

^^ Pauline Kael

R235 Pauline Kael was a useless cunt.

She went through a phase where she used the word “cheapjack” a lot. A word I’d never heard of before or since. She could be an ass.

Kael wrote rambling, tedious reviews. Her real influence was being a reviewer for a major outlet who didn't automatically praise prestige or foreign fims.

Allen said when the offer was made to Stapleton and she accepted, they celebrated with a bottle of merlot.

It was a case of casting Pearl before wine.

^This is hard to believe given that Stapleton writes in her memoir about how hard it was to get Woody to socialize.

Fanny and Alexander is masterpiece

Will you please not breathe so hard?!

I think it’s weird Joey keeps saying how “beautiful” Eve is when, in truth, Geraldine Page was a bit of a dog.

[Quote] Kael wrote rambling, tedious reviews. Her real influence was being a reviewer for a major outlet who didn't automatically praise prestige or foreign fims.

Nonetheless R241 there is a documentary film about Kael titled 'What She Said' as well as a biography of "the influential, powerful and controversial film critic" titled A Life in the Dark by Brian Kellow, and a number of volumes of her criticism are available on Amazon: Deeper into Movies, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, I Lost It at the Movies, When the Lights Go Down, Taking It All In, Going Steady . . .and Quentin Tarantino has discussed making a film 'The Movie Critic' which focuses on Kael.

The Pauline Kael Show

Interestingly she really could dish it out but what a thin skin!

Well why am I surprised? It's always the way.

John Simon though could take it. He knew he said the most outrageous mean things so he took somebody dumping a plate of spaghetti on his head most gracefully. And having met and talked with him once he was at least in those circumstances a type of old fashioned gentleman that no longer exists though the least of all gentlemen in print. But for God's sake he loved that steaming pile of shit TMM with Foster!

he loved that steaming pile of shit TMM with Foster!

What is that?

I think Simon died a few years before "The Music Man" with Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman was produced.

[quote]R250 he loved that steaming pile of shit TMM

“Too Many Mornings” from FOLLIES ? ?

If you read her dreadful writing, you realize that it was what she represented more than the actual words on the page. She gave permission for critics to be enthusiastic about the popular, the genre, ethe extremes, etc. I think that's what people like Roger Ebert who came after here admired about here. her actual writing was tortured, verbose and often incoherent. She wasn't Bosley Crowther predictably hating stuff and using twee language to do it.

There is only one TMM!

Is it Sutton Foster in Thoroughly Modern Millie?

Roy Blount Jr.:

Knowing a person she is reviewing has never inhibited Kael. Some years ago I gave her and another woman, who was meeting her for the first time, a ride from New York City to western Massachusetts, where Kael and I are neighbors. Kael remarked regretfully that her review of Stardust Memories had caused Woody Allen to end their friendship.

"What a shame," the woman said, "that he took it so personally."

"Oh, no," Kael said. "It was vicious."

You flattered me, and I liked it!

[quote]The cast and crew had told her he was antisocial

Unless, of course, there was a hot teen girl involved.

R258 - Mia. Again.

Simon was the biggest crybaby of all. He was routinely skewered on talk shows by people like Jackie Susann only to try to get revenge in his writings. He was a total climber as evidenced by his performance on SNL which remains one of the worst and most pathetic bits of acting on that series.

Imagine being skewered by that 'truck driver in drag.' After all Every Night Josephine, Valley of the Dolls, Once Is Not Enough and The Love Machine are literary classics!

It IS Interiors!

The Maureen Stapleton character is pure gold. She’s this earthy, unaffected woman in the midst of these depressed Nords.

And Richard Jordan was hot as fuck.

The movie isn’t a total success because it is bloodless, overall, and Woody Allen’s films are rarely bloodless.

R256 Pauline Kael on STARDUST MEMORIES

To say this picture isn't funny is putting it mildly; it isn't good either. Everything in it turns uncomfortable, morose, icky.

R261

Johnny Carson: What do you think of Truman?

Susann: He was a good President.

R259 is not me. See? Everyone know

I'm not just here to make sacrifices and foot the bills. It's time you thought of me!

R243, are you fucking retarded?

I think Truman's famous line about Susann is very good as is Susann's about Philip Roth.

Doesn't Stardust have a mocking caricature of a female film critic in it?

Allen had to have known she would have gotten around to him one day.

Robert Redford said he met Kael and she asked if he would like to get together for drinks. He thought that an odd thing for a critic to ask. He declined and said he never got a good review from her again.

The critic played by Helen Hanft is supposedly based on Judith Crist, who herself has a cameo in the movie.

R272, yes, the film critic in Stardust Memories is based on Judith Crist.

That's such a terrific film. I haven't seen it in decades. That's a great scene.

Pauline has a great line about the film, Woody and the character he plays.

If Woody Allen finds success very upsetting and wishes the public would go away, this picture should help him stop worrying.

Wasn’t it the same year as “Animal House” and everyone saw both as a double feature like barbenheimer?

Grease was the highest grossing movie of the year with $153 million domestic gross followed by Animal House with $141.6M`. Interiors grossed $10.4M narrowly beating out The Swarm which grossed $10M 🤡🤡🤡

Renata: What are you after? The superficial acclaim of some little book reviewer in some room somewhere? We've always talked about fine work that means something in the long run.

Frederick: I don't care about fine work! I don't wanna wait years. I wanna be able to knock somebody over now!

I don't know how anyone could listen to the exchange at R278 and not want to beat the absolute shit out of both of them.

Or at least hit Renata with the shit-bra.

At DataLounge, we’ve always talked about fine work that means something in the long run.

The deadly, legendary aim of Melissa Gilbert’s shit-bra, for example.

Mike: I was very moved when that Algerian boy said he killed in the name of freedom. It gave me chills.

Woody speaks.

R283, regardless of what Woody says, there is no chance in hell that the family bonds with Pearl.

The sisters and their husbands turn a wall against her.

Eve has them in her grip forever.

BUMP for Favorite Films of the 1970s thread.

I don't know r284. I read that Pearl's mouth to mouth reviving of Joey is supposed to signify a new chance at life for Joey with a new mother figure.

Yes and she becomes a writer at the end.

It's a harsh message- that the family is better off without the mother in their lives, but I guess sometimes in life that is the case.