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| Jessica Walter (Lucille Bluth on my favorite TV show, Arrested Development) looks "Joan Crawford fabulous" and almost walks away with the film as Libby, the least sympathetic but most dynamic member of The Group |
These films dramatized, in a highly glamorized fashion, the challenges women faced as they strove to balance love, friendship, and the pursuit of their dreams while navigating the patriarchally hostile waters of the American workforce. Always purporting to “blow the lid off” one taboo subject or another (in George Cukor’s The Chapman Report, it was the sex lives of suburban housewives), these films offered at most a cursory nod to female independence before reverting to type and getting back to the business of subtly endorsing traditional gender roles.
Valley of the Dolls, in its exquisite awfulness, has remained for me the gold standard by which every “sex and soap” women’s film is and should be compared. But one of my favorite forgotten examples of the genre that managed to fall through the cracks due to past unavailability is Sidney Lumet’s entertainingly "busy" (its stylistic motto seems to have been - keep it fast and keep it moving) screen adaptation of Mary McCarthy’s 1963 bestselling novel, The Group. It had a brief VHS release, was never released on Laserdisc, but is currently available on made-to-order DVD.
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| Eight is Enough The sparkling cast of up-and-comers that comprise The Group |
I don’t know who first coined the phrase “superior soap opera”
but the term categorically applies to this expensively mounted, surprisingly well-acted
tale of the interweaving lives of eight friends—graduates of Vassar College,
Class of ’33— who have their youthful ideals challenged as each sets out to make her mark on the world. The experiences of these economically and psychologically
diverse heroines reflect, in microcosm, the emergent state of (white) American womanhood
in the mid-20th century. Specifically, the Roosevelt Administration years
from The Great Depression through to the earliest days of the outbreak of World War II.
As each woman embarks on the journey of realizing the American Dream that their wealth, position, and privilege have practically guaranteed them, they discover that life outside the protective bubble of college and "The Group" poses considerably greater obstacles.
As each woman embarks on the journey of realizing the American Dream that their wealth, position, and privilege have practically guaranteed them, they discover that life outside the protective bubble of college and "The Group" poses considerably greater obstacles.
The challenge presented in having to promote a film with an
ensemble cast of relative unknowns is revealed in the giggle-inducing tone
adopted by the film’s ad campaign; the copy of which I’ll borrow to briefly
introduce the members of The Group:
Lakey: The Mona Lisa of the smoking-room…for women only!
Dottie: Thin women are more sensual. The nerve endings are
closer to the surface.
Priss: She fell in love and lived to be an “experiment.”
Polly: No money…no glamour…no defenses…poor Cinderella.
Kay: The “outsider” at an Ivy League Ball.
Pokey: Skin plumped full of oysters…money, money, money…yum,
yum, yum!
Libby: A big scar on her face called a mouth.
Helena: Many women do without sex, and thrive on it.
If I remember correctly, most, if not all, of these lines come directly from the novel (a terrific read, I might add), and several are even repeated in the film. How anyone could resist such sleazily salacious come-ons is beyond me, but The Group, though heavily promoted, didn’t fare too well at the box office at the time and slipped quietly into obscurity after that. My guess is that it’s because the film, at its core, wasn’t nearly as trashy as its hard sell. Well, more’s the pity, for The Group, thanks to its talented cast and director Sidney Lumet’s deft handling of the sweeping plot, is a step above the usual glossy soap opera.
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| Dottie (Joan Hackett) loses her virginity to emotionally remote artist Dick Brown (Richard Mulligan). In real life, Hackett & Mulligan were married from 1966 to 1973. They appeared together in a 1971 episode of Love, American Style |
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
As a fan of both Robert Altman’s trademark ensemble opuses and movies
with overdressed women dramatically suffering in opulent surroundings, there
isn’t really much I dislike about The
Group. Touching on everything from politics, birth-control, lesbianism, marriage,
mental illness, spousal abuse, adultery, childbirth, alcoholism, and date-rape
(all in the course of 2 ½ hours), The
Group has a lot of field to cover. Director Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, Network, Dog Day Afternoon)
keeps things moving at a rapid-fire pace that adds spark to the light comedy
(Jessica Walter is a hoot as a bitchily gabby gossip) and tension to the drama.
If the expeditious pacing of the story spares The
Group from ever being plodding or dull, it's fair to say this device also serves to undercut the film’s overall emotional
impact. This commitment to brevity results in Joan
Hackett’s character unforgivably disappearing from the film for a protracted period, and leaves virtually the entire storyline of Mary Robin Redd's Pokey (what a preposterous assortment of names!) missing in action.
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| An example of Sidney Lumet's masterful framing and use of space in The Group |
I generally like the propulsive feel of The Group's visual style. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a movie that handled the staging and filming of group scenes better or with greater effect; nor can I recall a cleverer use of cinematic devices to provide plot exposition. In rewatching the film, my attention is drawn to the many subtle character interactions and small details (like the financially struggling Kay always wearing the same hat to every wedding) that are easily overlooked on first viewing because of the film’s quick cutting and Lumet’s skillful use of the foregrounds and backgrounds to relay information.
When I think of what I like about The Group, the conclusion I always arrive at is, what’s not to like?
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| German poster for The Group |
PERFORMANCES
If you’ve ever harbored the notion that a film like, say, Valley of the Dolls would have been “better”
with stronger actors in the roles (sorry, Patty Duke), watching The Group should pretty much lay that fantasy to rest. The cast assembled
for The Group couldn’t be more
accomplished or better suited to their roles, but even they can’t surmount a
screenplay and story structure so "event"-driven. No one gives a bad performance, in my opinion, but their characters aren't given much time to be fully dimensional, either. The sheer volume and
frequency of crises and conflict in films like these reduce even exemplary
performances (Hackett, Knight, Pettet, and Hartman) to “best of” moments.
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| The cast of The Group by caricature artist Cristiano |
A standout, both appearance and character-wise, is Jessica
Walter, who either annoys or enchants in a showy role that is essentially Rosalind Russell in The Women. Also very good is the highly appealing Shirley
Knight. My personal favorite, however, is Joan Hackett (making her film debut
along with Bergen and Pettet), whom I never tire of watching and who never seems to hit a false note.
In the 1960s ---and well beyond, I'm afraid, lesbians in movies were always portrayed as severe, vaguely predatory types who stood around exchanging knowing looks under arched eyebrows. In this clip from The Group, Candice Bergen (who, in this, her film debut, felt outclassed by much of her theater-trained castmates) introduces her sorority sisters to her "friend," the Baroness (Lidia Prochnicka).
Before I move on, special mention must be made of the men in The Group. True to the genre, the men are a pretty odious bunch, character-wise. Almost to a man, they are depicted as weak, bigoted, caddish, manipulative, oppressive, brutalizing, or womanizing. Some, all at the same time. This is, of course, to be expected and goes with the soap opera territory. What surprises me most is that there isn’t a single looker in the bunch, and each man is so lacking in any kind of sex appeal that it practically feels like an affront to the female cast. These were the guys these women were supposed to be getting all hot and bothered over?
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| No, this isn't an image of Polly (Shirley Knight) and her father. This is Gus (Hal Holbrook), the eunuch-like, patently implausible object of desire of two gorgeous women and one unseen wife in The Group |
I know it’s a matter of taste, and I'm taking into account that perhaps in 1966 these guys passed for handsome (so what was Paul Newman?); but to a most distracting degree, the men at the center of The Group are dull beyond belief. Hal Holbrook? Larry Hagman? Richard Mulligan? James Broderick? The film features such a parade of sexless, daddy-fixation types that, after a while, it feels like an in-joke or something. Valley of the Dolls suffered from the same malady.
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| The Group opened in Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 16, 1966, at the Fine Arts Theater |
THE STUFF OF DREAMS
My older sister (whom I credit with exposing me to a lot of these obscurities) got me to watch The Group on late-night TV with her when I was a kid. She, like all my sisters—I have four—gravitated toward and seized every opportunity when a female-centric movie came along. Even while lamenting the fact that a great majority of these films tended to be vaguely masochistic soaps and cheesy exploitation films.
My older sister (whom I credit with exposing me to a lot of these obscurities) got me to watch The Group on late-night TV with her when I was a kid. She, like all my sisters—I have four—gravitated toward and seized every opportunity when a female-centric movie came along. Even while lamenting the fact that a great majority of these films tended to be vaguely masochistic soaps and cheesy exploitation films.
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| The Group was Elizabeth Hartman's follow-up to her Oscar-nominated film debut in A Patch of Blue. As Priss, she's cast again as a victim of an oppressive relative, this time a husband. Sloan (her physician husband, following a miscarriage): "We'll, we can't have this again, Priss. Worst possible advertisement for a pediatrician!" |
Watching The Group with my sister was very much like what goes on in a typical episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000; we talked to the screen, poked fun at the dialogue, and cracked jokes at the expense of the fancy clothes, elaborate hairstyles, and, frankly, the unsympathetic
milieu of the privileged classes. It was largely looked upon as melodramatic camp.
But the film remained a lasting favorite of mine, and in later years, after repeated viewings, I came to better appreciate what The Group may have been trying to say about women's sense of independence in the pre-War years and the challenges real life poses to youthful ideals.
The idealized vision of the world (and ourselves) we can harbor while sheltered within the walls of youth and academia can take quite a beating when confronted by the disappointments and compromises of the real world. And while The Group is too mired in the sensationalist genre constraints of melodrama to deal with any of the issues it dramatizes with anything but the most superficial attentions, it clearly has its heart in the right place, and thanks to the vivid performances of its cast, leaves you with a few things to ponder and mull over.
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| In a role rendered considerably smaller in the film than in the book, Carrie Nye has at least one memorable scene as Norine, a low-income Vassar classmate and outsider excluded from The Group. And nobody seems to know what the hell she's eating out of that jar. |
Now, I’m not going to make out like The Group is some kind of profound, unacknowledged classic, but in light of what films with women in central roles have become today--they proudly embrace the (to me) dismissive and limiting decriptor "chick flick" and validate the idea that shopping and borderline addictive consumerism are culturally valid expressions of female empowerment), well...let's just say that there's something to be said for a 46-year-old guilty-pleasure movie that comes across as more progressive and perceptive about gende roles in 2012 than it did in the year of its original release.
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| Halcyon Days Helena's scandalous painting of The Group (that's Helena as the satyress) |
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| This decidedly '60s-looking promotional artwork for The Group is clearly designed to make the public forget the film is set in the years 1933 to 1940. |
Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2012
