The Pumpkin Eater

This is my absolute favorite film of all time, and Anne Bancroft's performance is her best. Made in 1964 and set in London, this film tells the story of a woman who is in the middle of her third marriage, to a screenwriter, played by Peter Finch. Her character, Jo Armitage, is a woman who truly seems to find her self-worth and happiness only when she is pregnant and raising children. Once her children become even only slightly older, she seems to lose her sense of purpose, and allows herself to become quite isolated in the world. Her current husband, the screenwriter, doesn't make matters any better for her either.

This is definitely Anne Bancroft's film all the way, and she is breathtakingly beautiful in it as well. Her portrayal of Jo Armitage paints a very lonely, depressed, lost, and in many ways pathetic character...but it is also strangely my favorite performance of Bancroft. Look also for wonderful supporting performances by James Mason and Maggie Smith. This film weaves a disturbing yet very realistic portrait of a bad marriage (some might just say "marriage"), and it should be studied for its acting and its writing. In addition, Georges Delerue's musical score is superb, and I am always searching for the film's soundtrack, but have had no luck. Thanks to beautiful art direction by Edward Marshall, their home interior is also gorgeous...'60's chic. I've seen this film at least 60 times, and never tire of it. It's a quiet little masterpiece.

"The Pumpkin Eater" is the story of a bad marriage and a character study of the wife, Jo Armitage (Anne Bancroft) and a partial study of the husband, Jake (Peter Finch). Directed by Jack Clayton and with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, the film has a good deal that is unspoken; it's obtuse at times and can leave the viewer with a lot of questions. It's not a film for everyone, as it moves slowly - I can't see audiences of today going for it - it's totally character driven.

Jo is a woman whose fulfillment comes from children and pregnancy. We first see her standing in her home with a stunned look on her face and reminiscing about different facets of her life. One facet is as a happy young woman living in a barn and being introduced to fledgling screenwriter Jake by her second husband. In the next flashback, she's with Jake and discussing the upcoming marriage with her father (Cedric Hardwicke). He's blunt - she has too many kids - so he offers to pay to send the two oldest boys to boarding school, and he also leases a house for them.

The film is not entirely in flashback. It switches back and forth and finally settles in the present. Quite early on, we return to Jo today standing in the house. She goes to Harrod's and has a nervous breakdown.

Jo is in love with a man who loves her as best he can, but it's not enough for her. They have a child together, and though he loves and is good to all of the children, they get in the way of his relationship with Jo. He invites her to a film set in Morocco; she doesn't go. She becomes pregnant again; he tells her that he thought at this point, with the money they have, that they would be free to travel. Now they're back where they started. We suspect when we meet a young woman, Philpot (Maggie Smith) who stays with the family for a time because she's been put out of her flat, that Jake cheats. Jo suspects it; he denies it. Then she gets some devastating news from an odd friend (James Mason).

One is really left with a bad feeling about marriage, and as someone on this board pointed out, it's easy to see both sides of the situation. The psychiatrist Jo sees asks her, can she only justify having sex if she becomes pregnant? When the psychiatrist tells her he's going away for two weeks and can't see her, he tries to make future appointments and she says she can't make it. She evidently feels rejection very easily. Jo needs to be needed and wanted, and she loves the honeymoon -the new man, the new baby - but she can't handle much of the aftermath.

The film doesn't take sides. It's a fascinating story of what two people can do to one another and what people attract into their lives.

Anne Bancroft is one of the greatest actresses of all time and one of the most ravishingly beautiful. You'll never see her name in a list of top beauties because even with her huge, luminous eyes, her classically sculpted face, her thick hair and her gorgeous smile and her husky voice, she was never about her looks. She was always about a great, committed performance. Bancroft does more with her eyes and facial expressions here than most actresses can do with a ton of dialogue. The camera doesn't love her, it adores her, and here closeups are used to great advantage. Her performance is quietly stunning, quietly shattering, just like her face. She devastates the viewer here in a different way from her more overt performance in "The Miracle Worker," but she still devastates. What a loss to film and the theater.

Peter Finch is excellent as Jake - very handsome and sexy, warm with the children - you could really see why he was so adored by women, and I for one didn't understand why Jo wasn't on every film set with him all day, every day. He's two men, really - he's a husband who does love his wife, but he's emotionally childish as well and takes his frustrations and anger out by sleeping with other women.

"The Pumpkin Eater" is one of those films that you might not even care for while watching it. You might not even totally get what's going on all the time, but it will stay with you. You'll go over it in your head, and you won't forget it. In this way, it reminds me of two brilliant movies, "Damage" and "In the Bedroom" - like those films, "The Pumpkin Eater" is a harrowing experience.

If "The Pumpkin Eater" has a fault it is that it's so glacial, so cocooned in its world of upper-middle class ennui it may leave you feeling a little drained. Otherwise, this is quite close to perfection. Adapted, superbly and to the extent that he makes it his own, from Penelope Mortimer's novel, by Harold Pinter it tells the story of Jo, (Anne Bancroft), a thrice married mother of several children, (by all three husbands), whose life has started to spectacularly unravel. Jo seems to be the kind of woman who can't stop having children but who doesn't seem cut out for motherhood. Inflicting her existing brood on Jake, (Peter Finch), husband No. 3, does little for their marriage. Jake is an incorrigible philanderer or maybe he just can't stand being at home with a pack of screaming, spoiled brats. Then again he's 'a screen-writer' so his profession offers both glamour and the opportunity for multiple infidelities. Things come to a head when Jo has a mental breakdown 'in Harrods of all places' to quote Jake.

Being Pinter, the film is both elliptical and chilly. It's magnificently made, (the director is Jack Clayton), but you struggle to feel anything for Jo or Jake. It's a world that Pinter and company know well but the rest of us may well feel we are being kept at a distance. But don't let that put you off; if you want your mind engaged at the expense of your emotions you will have a high old time. This is classy, intelligent stuff.

It is superbly cast and played. Some performances don't amount to more than cameos, (Cedric Hardwicke and Alan Webb as Jo and Jake's fathers, Maggie Smith smilingly stealing Jo's husband right from under her nose and best of all, Yootha Joyce as the vindictive and unstable woman in the hairdressers). At the centre there is Bancroft and Finch as the couple struggling through their marriage and they are both marvelous. Finch, in particular, gives Jake an air of likability that may be absent from the script and Bancroft gets Jo's vulnerability spot on. As the husband of Jake's most recent conquest, James Mason is magnificently venomous and his scenes with Bancroft at the zoo and his final scene with Finch, ('You made me wet'), are master-classes in the art of acting.

The movie came out in 1964 and quickly disappeared. Watching it recently with a friend he described it as 'a miserable film' and while I think it a superb film, a near-masterpiece, I know exactly what he means. It is a film distinctly lacking in 'nice' characters and it generates very little warmth. Audiences who, back in the sixties might have admired the film, were unlikely to feel anything towards it and consequently it is seldom revived. A pity because, cold as it is, it is also one of the finest films of its decade.

I've never seen a film with so many great talents giving technically good performances with a script that offers virtually no insight into the characters or their motivations.

Jo Armitage (Anne Bancroft) seems to be losing it while her husband Jake (Peter Finch) is unable or unwilling to help. In flashbacks, Jake is shown to be her third husband after having several children. She continues to have children with Jake. Jake sends Jo to a psychiatrist. He suggests that Jo wants to sanctifies sex by reproducing. While Jake is a good provider, she suspects him of improprieties. After getting pregnant, the psychiatrist and Jake suggest getting an abortion and sterilization. After the operation, things are going great and then Bob Conway (James Mason) brings evidence that Jake is cheating with his wife.

The title refers to the nursery rhyme Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater. Jo is a perplexing character. She is struggling but she is not crazy. It is an interesting character but I am of two minds about it. It allows Bancroft to do some good acting but it is also hard to fully invest in her. There is an attempt at surrealism with the cigarette smoke going backwards. Maybe more of that surrealism would allow the audience to feel her troubled mind.