This is a film about the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, released about the same time that Reagan appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court - Sandra Day O'Connor - with the female justice, Justice Ruth Loomis played by Jill Clayburgh, and Walter Matthau as her fellow justice and ideological nemesis, Justice Dan Snow. The chief justice is played by Barnard Hughes who seems to just want to keep the peace and keep a low profile, not really what you would expect from a chief justice. Weirdly nobody calls him by name, they just call him C.J.
This thing is really a time capsule, and that was surprising since I was 23 when it was released and thought of 1981 as modern times. At Loomis' confirmation hearings she is asked if being a woman will influence her decisions and why she doesn't have any children! Even the justices make sexist remarks like saying "the perfume will make the place smell better" and wondering if she will put up curtains! The really interesting thing for me was that I had a hard time telling whether Loomis and Matthau were just disagreeing on individual cases or if one was right and the other left or if one or the other was supposed to be a moderate! Not until the end does the film clearly tell you which is which with a funny line about cab fare and liberals never having money.
There are two cases the justices spar over - one is about a pornographic film that the maker says is actually an educational documentary, and the other is a large corporation's possible attempt to squash the development of an idea that would have competed with their established products.
Loomis naively talks about the virtues of big corporations and how they only want to build up America and their stockholders. Matthau does a monologue about defending everybody's right to free speech no matter how offensive. Today nobody believes big corporations are inherently good, and both libs and conservatives would like to squish the other side's free speech rights if they could.
The dialogue could have been better for the material, but there is a mini-mystery towards the end that gives the film an interesting twist. Matthau is basically just playing a more erudite version of Oscar the slob from The Odd Couple. Matthau's character's wife (Jan Sterling) leaves him in the middle of the movie because - I'm not sure - the reason she gave was that her husband did not know what kind of wallpaper they had, but she made sure to take that fur coat with her! Probably she left so that there could be a possibility of sexual tension between Matthau's and Clayburgh's characters. I'll let you watch and find out if that actually happens.
I loved it if for no other reason than to take a look back at how politics used to be. I'd give it an 8/10 but YMMV. Especially when you see the credits and find that Robert E. Lee co-wrote the play and the screenplay! It probably could not get screened today because of that! Oh how times have changed!
