The Four Seasons

Ever since I watched her as a kid on The Electric Company and The Rockford Files, I have always loved Rita Moreno. She is one of the best actresses EVER! and most people don't even realize this. She is the only entertainer in history to have won the highest award in all four mediums of entertainment. She has won an Oscar for her movie work, an Emmy for her tv work, a Tony for her stage work and a Grammy for her singing. She is in the Guiness Book of World Records as a matter of fact. People do not realize that Alan Alda wrote many of the episodes of MASH (as they also don't realize Michael Landon wrote many episodes of Little House). He is both a great comic and a great comic writer who is wonderful and witty with words. He also directed this film and did an outstanding job. It is a beautiful film to look at with the lovely scenery and the change of seasons, symbolic of the conflicts the three couples are going through. Alda created six wonderful characters that you really care about and feel bad for and perhaps you see a little bit of yourself in them. Alda's character thinks that he is so in control, Jack Weston's character is a hammy, blustering hypochondriac (Alda says at one point that he is "the Muhammad Ali of mental illness"). Bess Armstrong was just getting her start in films at the time and she is really wonderful as Len Carou's ditzy girlfriend. Sandy Dennis's career had gotten off to an amazing start when she was in "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" but it never really took off the way it should have and she died so young of cancer. She gives a wonderful performance in this film. It is rather low key, but you feel this woman's pain as her husband leaves her for this bimbo. You really feel angry for her. Carol Burnett is a wonderful comic, but a fine actress as well (she was great in Annie), she gives a really sensitive performance especially in the scene where she tells Alda to s*&t or get off the pot! How touching Carol! Seriously Rita Moreno is my favorite in this film. I love Claudia, she is kind and sweet and affectionate and so very very ITALIAN! Rita Moreno should have gotten an Oscar for her performance. She even has a brief nude scene in the film. I don't mean to sound sexist but she looked fantastic! God bless you Rita!

Alan Alda the actor has come up with a few worthwhile projects over the years as a writer and director. This movie, his feature directorial debut, is quite enjoyable.

Three upper-middle class couples are seen during the four vacations they take annually. They enjoy each others' company, but a fissure in the friendships begins to grows when one man tires of life with his wife and introduces his new, younger girlfriend into the group, and things go from there. Alda manages very successfully the balance between comedy and drama, aided by the excellent cast of veterans. All the principals here (the first seven listed in the credits) do fine work.

Another reviewer mentioned how this movie has changed for them since they first saw it - and not in a good way.

For me, "The Four Seasons" has only become more relevant.

I'm watching this on Encore as I write this. When I first saw this back in 1981, I was 16 and getting ready to entire my senior year in HS. I absolutely fell in love with this film but my perspective as a teenager had me seeing these people as my parents generation and wondering if when I reached their age I would have this kind of relationship with my adult friends. I also wondered if such people really existed. I laughed at the situations and the lines but without any real world experience.

Now 30 years later, I have a very different perspective on things. I not only see myself (or aspects of myself) in each of the various characters, I find that the dialogue and relationships as presented in the film ring very true. When you are friends with other people for a long time, you do know each other well enough to be able to criticize, annoy, care about, and cherish one another the way these people do.

I have also run into and had to deal with people that are essentially carbon copies of the people portrayed in the movie. I know Jack and Kate, Danny and Claudia, Nick, Ginny, and especially Anne. These people are real - not just characters written into a screenplay. They live in my town. Their fears, dreams, and neuroses are all familiar.

Alan Alda was able to capture authentic portrayals of people by an outstanding cast. And while all movies are a distillation of sorts of character types, the individuals in this film seem particularly authentic to me.

30 years later, I find this still to be a terrific movie. It is timeless in its message, and the emotions (humor, sympathy, anger) I experience come from a genuine understanding of and kinship with these people and their situations.

I was watching the Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Rita Moreno, which included some short moments of her film work. I kept wondering if they'd show anything of The Four Seasons, which, while not something she's hugely remembered for, offered her a meaty role late in her film career, and is one of the first times I had ever seen her, as I hadn't ever watched West Side Story or most of her TV work. There was no mention, and indeed, I rarely hear of the film at all these days. I did see a sneering review of the film on a blog that, among other things, seemed astonished that the movie had ever been made as it was so poor, and seemed to believe that Bess Armstrong only appears in the first third. It was that review which compelled me to write this one.

The Four Seasons is one of those films I never watch too often, as the characters and dialogue start to get on your nerves with how self- analytical and overly quippy they are, but this actually shows how ahead of its time the film was - if you add in some dramatic walking, or supernatural special effects, you have your average Aaron Sorkin or Joss Whedon script.

What works for the film is the chemistry of the cast. You genuinely believe the characters have been close for a long time, and you can understand why the women resent Ginny, Anne's "replacement" in the group, and in Nick's life. Yet because the movie is also honest about the flaws of the characters, you're also invited to see the women's resentment, and the patronizing attitude of the men, as unfair.

As time passes things start to feel a little too much (too much hectoring from Carol Burnett's Kate, a bit too much clowning from Jack Weston's Danny, a few too many measuring contests between Nick and Alan Alda's Jack), but it still ends on a satisfactory note, an ode to friendship along with a reminder of just how casually discarded friendship can be.

Even though I haven't seen this in years, many parts still stick in my mind - the classical music for the soundtrack, the gorgeous cinematography (the overhead shots of the sailboat in the summer sequence in particular), the cramped car ride and sharp turns, Nick's depressed daughter talking about how the women at her college urinate off the balconies, Carol Burnett's speech at the end about friendship and losing touch.

My favorite part of the film is Sandy Dennis' brief turn as Anne, Nick's first wife, the one discarded from his life, and then from people she saw as her friends. It's a touching performance, one that nicks at you long after she leaves the screen. Her final scene, running into her old friends, reminding them of their abandonment of her, and then moving on, is in many ways the natural conclusion of the film, and ends with such a classic line - "Maybe I'll get a goddam boa constrictor." You can't argue with that.

I'm always surprised to read negative comments on this film. I guess I have a strange sense of humor because there are parts of this movie--quite a few parts as a matter of fact--that I find simply hysterical. There are also parts that are maddening--I do not care for Sandy Dennis' (ex)-husband at all. When you have seen the movie as many times as I have, you also begin to find flaws in the dialogue & situations--things that don't make sense to you. But never enough to make me dislike this film which has so many more truths about human nature & couples. Every one of the cast is good in their roles. Carol Burnett & Alan Alda are perfect together & have one scene in the "Fall" section that cracks me up every time. Rita Moreno was truly funny. When her husband, played by Jack Weston, leans out the window on the hotel & shouts, "She's Italian!" "There, now everyone in the state of CT knows that you're Italian." Though I've often thought that she had every right to say what led up to this scene, it is still very very funny.

I just wish it would come out on DVD. I would definitely get it.