Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

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.

This is a great movie showing Joanne Woodward and her husband in the film, Martin Balsam, dealing with their feelings and memories of the past and the events that have shaped them. I found this movie moving. Joanne Woodward's memories of she and her mother are memorable! I wish I had seen this movie when my mother was still living. Balsam's memories of his war experiences are insightful and moving. We are all shaped by our experiences!

Joanne Woodward earned every bit of that Oscar nomination she received for this movie. Her performance is believable and moving. This is acting at its best (another performance I find amazing is Joanne Woodward as a victem of Multiple Personality Disorder in "The Three Faces Of Eve"- be sure to see that). Woodward never lets you down. I really liked this film because it was so real. You could really believe this was happening. But the title, "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams" really has nothing to do with it, atleast nothing that I noticed. This is a must-see movie if you're looking for some good acting!

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.

Uptight, possibly frigid, panic-stricken middle-aged New York housewife has to learn to let go of the past, a refuge which doesn't necessarily bring her happiness but does provide her life with some kind of stability. Joanne Woodward gives a good performance here; not at all vain, and unafraid to let herself be pinchy, selfish, or even annoyingly helpless, Woodward overcomes this rather dreary "woman's picture" material with thoughtful touches and nuances. It's a heavy load however, and she doesn't have much help until the final reel when her needling, provoking matron takes a European trip with her husband (Martin Balsam, also doing fine work) and she comes to see her humanity as something she can work with as opposed to frittering it away. Screenwriter Stewart Stern's dialogue is heavy with a writer's pretensions, and often the chit-chat is pedantic, forced and unreal. Near the beginning, Woodward gets a phone call from her mother and asks, "Who is this?" A few scenes later, Woodward becomes exasperated with her husband and asks, "How many years have we been married?" These moldy exchanges are lazy outs for a writer wanting to introduce us to the characters; instead of letting us discover these people and their hang-ups for ourselves, everything is spelled out (and poorly so). We are to understand that Joanne's estranged son is gay after she has a dream in which a male dancer is caught in the boy's bedroom--in ballet tights! The 'colorless' color cinematography is a mix of putrid browns and greens, and director Gilbert Cates begins each new sequence with a big wind-up, as if the movie were starting all over again. The rhythm is off, and with lines like "You approach every new relationship like you would a toll-booth, Mrs. Santa Claus!", one doesn't know how to respond to the characters. It's possible that some of Woodward's jaunts to her past, both real and imaginary, will strike some viewers as very personal, but the film isn't especially moving, at least not until the final third. **1/2 from ****