The Group

Sidney Lumet is a masterful craftsman of socially aware drama that tackles important cultural questions, and even for its time, which was a time of radical social change that beginning to reflect on theater screens, The Group treated some divisive themes, for example the association of free love with progressive social revolution, and depicting it as a forerunner of a new anti-fascistic, anti-oppressive awareness and critique of marriage as a form of social bondage, not to mention contraception, abortion, lesbianism and mental illness. And owing to Lumet's subtle use of technical skills, The Group---possibly his biggest, least characteristic and least considered film---is a skillfully paced and giftedly acted adaptation of Mary McCarthy's novel charting the kismet of eight Vassar graduates, class of '33, up to the start of WWII. Sidney Buchman's script does some outstanding couture work on the material, clipping away all the adipose tissue and slashing the remaining into hundreds of pointed little scenes which are assembled as a charmingly droll montage of the decade, though Lumet's concerns are towards the thematic nature of McCarthy's story rather than the setting.

Joanna Pettet is quite convincing as the one who marries Larry Hagman's prototype self-destructive aspiring writer, there's an impressive debut by Kathleen Widdoes, and as does the great Hal Holbrook, and Candice Bergen as a Paris refugee who returns courted by a German countess. But the most memorable performance for me is by Jessica Walter, who is now exercising great comic ability on a wholly new generation of television such as Arrested Development and Archer. There is a real conflict between who she is on the inside and out that she portrays so authentically and epitomizes a familiar but difficult-to-depict personality. Also Joan Hackett, in a BAFTA-nominated debut performance of her own, provides an especially varied array of emotional conversion. And willowy, eye-catching ginger leading lady Elizabeth Hartman displays her versatility between her upper-class collegiate role here and the capricious, heartbreaking flirt she played in Francis Ford Coppola's debut film You're a Big Boy Now the same year.

Director of Long Day's Journey into Night, The Pawnbroker, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon and Network, Lumet is noted for drawing award-winning performances from his casts. Chiefly cunning in this, his tenth film, is the way in which the girls, each one elegantly and idiosyncratically characterized, are seen to develop individually. For example viewing the Hackett of the closing scenes, bigheaded wife of an Arizona oil-man, subtly changing physically as well, and almost certainly a mainstay of the local ladies' league, and recalling her first, desperately bold affair with a Greenwich Village painter, one thinks with amazement that's just how she might become.

With Boris Kaufman's superbly striking cinematography to appreciate, the Kurosawa-style multi-plane tableaux of various characters in single painterly shots, demonstrating a poetic and caring property in his capturing of these layered images, a quality that marked his extraordinarily noble career, The Group is a vividly experiential chronicle of the girl-to-woman sexual and social transitions as the characters try on sex, religion and politics. It's the thinking viewer's Sex and the City.

One of Sidney Lumet's first directing attempts is a brilliant, powerful and undeniably courageous motion picture - not at all a sprawling frenzy of feelings strung by hammy performances and corny dialogues, this film is a rather organized , neat telling of eight graduates from Vassar-like college and their respective lives and times, that in it's own quiet way, became a masterpiece of great beauty, displaying strong, formidable performances by Pettet - as Kay Strong, a lovely young lady whose promissing future is teared to shreds as her cruel Play Writing husband ruins her life and slowly corrompts her mental sanity -, Hackett - as Dottie Renfrew, whose heart is broken by young, hip bohemian, that steels her virginity and commits herself to a futile, selfish fate - and Hartman(One Of The Most Wonderful Actresses That Ever Lived, And Whose Life Was Brought To A Horrid Ending, As She Comitted Suicide, Jumping Off Her Apartment Window) - as a pure , fragile young girl that has agonizing experiments with pregnancy and breast-feeding, as well as other cast members, like Bergen, Widdoes, fascinating Knight and Walter. This is adapted from Mary MacCarthy's brilliant novel, launched at the same time as 'Valley Of The Dolls', Jacqueline Sussan's hideous all-american best-seller - although' they both treat of feminine sagas, they are surely not to be confused.

Widescreen, Technicolor and the best round up of girls since "The Women". What more could you ask? All the girls are great, but Jessica Walter is outstanding as she changes from self-assured sexy-romantic to a gossiping sexually repressed Bitch! No one else at that time could have played that part so beautifully. The movie addresses some women's issues that were not commonly discussed back in the 60's. Abuse, mental illness, pregnancy, drugs. Candice Bergen, Shirley Knight, Elizabeth Hartman, these are all stage trained actresses, and the lovely Joan Hackett who died much too soon but while she was here always gave a top notch performance. Script/dialogue, camera work, all first class.

Just watched for the second time in my life this Sidney Lumet adaptation of Mary McCarthy's novel "The Group", this time on Netflix streaming. It's about eight women who graduated from Vassar in 1933 and their trials and tribulations during that time and subsequent years through the beginning of the second World War. Among those women, the standout for me was Shirley Knight as Polly who goes from an affair with a publisher boss (Hal Holbrook) of one of her friends to falling for a doctor (James Broderick) she works for. She also willingly suffers a father (Robert Emhardt) who's eventually diagnosed as manic depressive. Emhardt's performance is perhaps the most enjoyable to me since he talks up a storm and says such inappropriately funny lines! It was also fascinating to see Larry Hagman play a role here not too different from his later iconic evil character of J.R. Ewing on both versions of "Dallas" only here, he's not such a fun person to watch. I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that the Richard Mulligan and Joan Hackett characters were awkward to each other but the actors would eventually marry in real life not long after. Oh, and Candice Bergen, for all her reputation of not being much of an actress during her early career, acquits herself nicely among her more trained co-stars in the few scenes she has here. In summary, The Group perhaps comes on a bit fast at the beginning to really get an understanding of what's going on and who these people are but eventually it slows down enough that you do get to know and mostly like these people as the film progresses. In the words of many of the characters of this film, "Who'd a thunk it?"

Glossy soap opera about 8 Vassar graduates of 1933. It follows their lives after college and deals with alcoholism, mental breakdowns, frigidity, beatings, adultery, child rearing, lesbianism and death.

I tried reading the book this was based on but I couldn't understand it. They kept throwing in 1930s slang and politics and lost me. This movie keeps out the slang, tones down the politics (but it is there) and came up with a good movie. Yes, it is a soap opera but well made with some great actresses and it deals with it's subjects seriously. Some of the story lines involve: Polly (Shirley Knight) falling in love with a married doctor (Hal Holbrook); Kay (Joanna Pettet) dealing with an alcoholic husband (Larry Hagman); Dottie (Joan Heckett) falling in love with a womanizer (Richard Mulligan) and Priss (Elizabeth Hartman) dealing with raising a child.

It's fascinating to see these actors so young and full of life. All the acting is good but Hartman and Knight stand out. Also Candace Bergman shows up at the beginning and the end as a lesbian--quite daring for 1966. The surprise is that she's dealt with in a very sensitive manner and not made evil.

This movie is long (150 minutes) and its cast is very big (it took me at least an hour to figure out who was who) but I ended up enjoying this and recommend it. I give it an 8.