Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

With a great performance by Joanne Woodward as a middle aged New York woman named Rita Walden going through an emotional crisis, this movie is a true original. Directed by Gilbert Cates, it shows one woman's strained family relationships as the movie goes from one scene to another where she interacts with the other characters in a series of interesting vignettes.

Rita's mother is played by Sylvia Sidney, whose career dated back to 1929 and her husband Harry, an ophthalmologist, is Martin Balsam, one of the most versatile and recognizable of actors. We see imaginary encounters that go through her mind. The opening scene is a jaw dropper. Another of theses occurs in the New York subway station as she imagines her mother and grandparents looking at her from an escalator. I didn't find these flashbacks particularly relevant to the story and they seemed jarring in an otherwise irresistible movie.

We find Rita shopping in the streets of downtown New York near Washington Square with her energetic, 73 year old mother and then stopping off at a theatre to watch a Bergman movie. The scene shifts to a cemetery covered with brown leaves in the autumn mist as the family bickers over the estate before the deceased is even in the ground. Then on a trip to France with her husband she wanders through a muddy French village where her husband fought in the war. It is here that her husband shares stories that have haunted him for 30 years.

Silvia Sydney is superb in the first part of the movie as a mother with a youthful zest for life, a sharp contrast to her daughter. Martin Balsam is the steadying force in her life but relives his own dark shadows on returning to a former theatre of war in France. Of course, it is Joanne Woodward's role that is critical to the story and she is excellent.

Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams casts Joanne Woodward as a woman going through mid-life crisis in her forties, realizing that she's settled and not selected in her choice of husband and life.

Not that husband Martin Balsam is not a good man, he's a decent enough fellow, an optometrist and back in my parents generation such a guy would have had their mothers pushing their daughters toward him. But Joanne's true love was killed in World War II and Balsam was a guy she settled for.

What brings all her anxieties to a head is the sudden death of her mother Sylvia Sidney while both women were having an afternoon of lunch and a movie. Life seemed a lot more simple back growing up on Sylvia's Connecticut farm. With a second choice husband, a daughter Dori Brenner who's not on the best of terms, a son played by Ron Richards who is gay and living in Amsterdam with another man and only seen in dream sequences, it seems like life is closing in on her. Balsam's sees what's happening to his wife and maybe this optometrist's convention in London is a great excuse for a tax deductible European trip where maybe things can be rekindled.

This film is short on plot, but long and deep on characterization with some great women's roles for actresses who've past their ingénue days. Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams got Joanne Woodward an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and for movie veteran Sylvia Sidney for Best Supporting Actress. Joanne lost to Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class, both of those women were going for a second Oscar and Jackson lucked out.

What was a real shame was Sylvia Sidney not winning and losing to Tatum O'Neal for Paper Moon. Those supporting categories have become a really good place to honor veterans like her who have moved on to character parts. Don Ameche's award for Cocoon is a great example and I wish Sylvia had gotten this one, for her great performance here and the work of a lifetime.

Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams is a poignant film. The best scenes in it are dealing with Sidney's surviving family and how Joanne wants to hold on to the family homestead when all the rest want to sell. She can't articulate to her family why she feels she could cling to her childhood as embodied in that farm, but we the audience feels what she feels, especially those of who've had a similar experience. For me it was nothing like Woodward's in the film, but I had to face selling our family home in Brooklyn in 1997. The only survivors of my family were my brother and myself and I had my pangs as Joanne did. Three family members of mine died in that same home. What she was able to convey is the mark of a great actress.

Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams gives lie to the idea that they don't write some great parts for the female gender.

Rita, the "snow queen" is another of Joanne Woodward's aging spinster virgin frumps, that she seemed to specialise in the early 1970's. Depressed and discontent, her mental state is symbolised by the nightmare plane crash that director Gilbert Cates opens the film with. Writer Stewart Stern - who also wrote Rachel, Rachel - loads on the psycho-baggage. She has a demanding mother (Sylvia Sydney), a fat daughter (Doris Brenner), a gay son, and has married a man she did not love (Martin Balsam). All this would be unbearable with anyone but Woodward playing the role since she lightens it with her natural intelligence and sly sense of humour. It's amusing to see Balsam and Woodward argue in their middle-class educated way, though Rita's wearing a mink clues you that she isn't about to scream abuse. Balsam's subtlety, in particular makes you regret his few screen appearances. The only character that isn't redeemed by the acting is that of the gay son, since he is a cypher, and Cates presents his coming out in a homophobic black-and-white expressionistic sequence. Cates is fond of these kind of theatrical flourishes. There is a death at a screening of Wild Strawberries, a spirited chase at a former European battlefield, a family bickering at a graveyard, and Rita has a breakdown in a crowded London subway, which is probably the most believable of them all. Johnny Mandel provides a lovely theme, in his understated way, and then embarasses himself with trumpets in the battlefield sequence.

In wintry New York City, attractive middle-aged Joanne Woodward (as Rita) awakens from nightmare. After battling insomnia, Ms. Woodward arranges to meet nicotine-stained mother Sylvia Sidney for lunch. The bickering mother and daughter suggest complaining may be an inherited trait. Woodward fears she's going blind, but husband Martin Balsam (as Harry Walden), conveniently an eye doctor, discovers his wife needs reading glasses. Keeping herself busy, Woodward babysits a crying grandson and sees a revival of Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" with Ms. Sidney. During black-and-white movies, Woodward dreams in black-and-white. An unhappy event forces Woodward to reexamine her life. To help, Mr. Balsam takes his wife on a European trip...

"Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams" is a dreary story about an unlikable woman. Masterpieces may fit that description, but this isn't one of them...

The characters and story are rich, but undeveloped. The camera follows when it should lead and a few edits appear to favor scenery at the expense of characters. Most pointedly, Woodward's whimpering epiphany is inadequate. She never gets to let her hair down. Still, it's a good film. The acting is universally excellent. Woodward and Sidney won major acting awards. Balsam is just as good. Writer Stewart Stern does best with a secondary story involving Balsam's character, a World War II veteran. Self-identified "fat" daughter Dori Brenner (as Anna) and her aunt Tresa Hughes (as Betty) are brief, but memorable. Director Gilbert Cates artfully introduces Woodward's estranged son Ron Richards (as Bobby) in the opening nightmare, then, he is regulated to dreams.

****** Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (10/21/1973) Gilbert Cates ~ Joanne Woodward, Martin Balsam, Sylvia Sidney, Dori Brenner

By the early 1970's, films had become more personal and character studies were emerging on the screen. Such is the case with "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams." At first glance, the film seems to be about Rita (Joanne Woodward) coping with the sudden and awful death of her mother (the wonderful Sylvia Sidney). The film then shifts to the apparently empty marriage between Rita and her husband Harry (Martin Balsam). They travel to Europe, where emotions and past resentments come to the foreground. Rita has much guilt about her son, who apparently wants nothing to do with her or Harry - we find out he is gay, but never the exact reasons why he can't stand either of them! (The son is seen only in flashbacks). Harry has a very emotional reaction while visiting Bastogne, where he fought in WWII. Rita has a breakdown in a London subway tunnel, apparently imaging she has seen her dead mother. Harry and Rita's daughter seems to have no purpose in the film except to be sanctimonious and shrill. This is not a perfect film, and at times the script jumps around. There are a few things that don't quite jive. There seems to be a lot of Freudian type psycho babble in the film (which was popular at the time). But it is the fine performance of Joanne Woodward that shines here. Ms. Woodward is one of the best actresses ever to grace the American cinema. Martin Balsam is in fine form here too. A quiet little film worth watching.