Mrs. Harris

For anyone who remembers the shooting of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor at the hands of the school mistress from Madeira, the fancy girl's school in Potomac, MD, this film is a soap opera scandal which should have been allowed to rest in yellowing newspaper clippings (though those are probably on line now in incorruptible digits). Annette Bening is Mrs. Harris, the abandoned and lovelorn teacher. Bening is a fine actress and while she succeeds in bringing her character to life, all that is accomplished is to demonstrate once again that Mrs. Harris was pathetic. Kingsley has much less to work with and all he is able to demonstrate is that Herman (Hy) Tarnower was an unmitigated son-of-a-bitch, which we already knew. Why did Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman allow themselves to be roped into this? One assumes for the money, certainly not the art. Could this have been a better picture? Given the facts of the case, which are reproduced more or less as they were presented at the time, I would guess not. Neither of the principals has much of a back story to be unpacked and, while the details of the murder made headlines for days at the time, at the end of the day it's merely a sad, sordid, essentially uninvolving tale.