Innenleben

Interiors (1978)

This is one of those dark, serious, realistic personal dramas that critics shook their heads at in 1978. It wasn't because it wasn't good--it's frankly a brilliant combination of the big three: acting, writing, photography. It was because it was directed (and written) by Woody Allen. And Woody Allen is funny, right? Critics at the time, however, to their credit, gave the film a fair reading, and for three brilliant excerpt of period reviews, I recommend the Wikipedia entry on the movie.

So watch this film thinking it's by someone else, if you have to. take it in on its own subtle terms as three sisters watch their own deficiencies bloom when their parents abruptly separate. There is some familiar territory here, actors Allen has turned to many times (including Diane Keaton, of course, who he was once, in 1970, involved with). The world is one that might actually be parallel to his own, not Jewish New York but rather a highly educated literary set with money and ambitions, but deeply steeped in the arts.

In short, "Interiors" was and is appreciated but always with a feeling that it isn't quite complete, that it isn't what it could have been. It's easy to see that it is unremittingly dour, almost to perversion. And you might say that it plays the Bergman card too hard without overt appropriation (which makes it merely derivative, that worst of echoes). It is fair, I suppose, to say that Allen really has succeeded, but not in the remarkable ways he had succeeded so clearly in his earlier films, including his previous nugget, "Annie Hall," which is in my view his first true drama, but which has the benefit of also being funny.

Or you can just sit back and take it in for what it does do so well, letting the interior lives of these people seem as shattered and pathetic as they really seem. The photography by Gordon Willis is admirable for being beautiful and inventive without being distracting. Allen and Willis make clear this intention with opening shots, a series of fixed camera views of rooms, and then views out windows, all framed with classic proportions, but sequenced to pull you in. But look how often the camera follows two people as they walk and talk, either up close in front of them, or along the beach through an irregular snow fence. Its pace and "tastefulness" of the photography almost seems designed by one of the main characters, the troubled interior decorator mother played with uncanny effectiveness by Geraldine Page.

Expect nothing in particular here except a tour-de-force that works on its own depressing terms.

Three sisters find their lives spinning out of control in the wake of their parents' sudden, unexpected divorce.

What do we have here? A Woody Allen film with no comedy, and no Woody. We have Joel Schumacher as the costume designer (before his years as director) and something that amounts to a Bergmanesque family drama, though without the full Scandinavian despair.

Vincent Canby wrote, "My problem with Interiors is that although I admire the performances and isolated moments, as well as the techniques and the sheer, headlong courage of this great, comic, film-making philosopher, I haven't any real idea what the film is up to."

The criticism aside, Canby calls Allen out for being heavy on the philosophy references, with the dense writing of Allen that he is known for and makes his films his own. Is this Bergman? No. Is it Allen trying to be Bergman? Maybe. But it has Allen all over it, in the dialogue, and that has some value in and of itself.

It's pretty obvious that Woody Allen was so resistant in being confined as a comedy filmmaker that in the throes of his success with the wondrous "Annie Hall", he felt a need to make an über-serious drama in the Ingmar Bergman mode. This 1978 Chekhovian family drama is the result, and it is alternately affecting and exasperating. The key problem is that Allen presents such a hermetically sealed world of intellectuals and artistic souls that the interactions among the characters feel pointed and self-conscious. He has obviously since learned that his best films ("Manhattan", "Hannah and Her Sisters") are served most by his particular balance between comedy and drama.

The story concerns an upscale New York family reacting to the news that patriarch Arthur wants to leave his psychologically unstable wife Eve just released from a sanitarium. They have three daughters, all of whom are grappling with their own problems. Eldest sister Renata is a successful poet stuck in a volatile marriage to Frederick, a fellow writer whose lack of commercial success has merely heightened his jealousy and paranoia. Middle daughter Joey is Arthur's favorite, but she is unable to figure out what to do with her life, and her constant flailing frustrates everyone around her in spite of the patience of her boyfriend Michael. Youngest daughter Flyn is the beautiful, emotionally isolated one who moved to Hollywood to become a semi-successful actress.

They all respond to their mother Eve's neediness in different ways, and the inevitable turning point comes when Arthur finalizes the divorce and remarries, this time to a passionate, fun-loving widow named Pearl. Even though Gordon Willis' beige-dominated cinematography and the frigid, almost-too-perfect art direction by Mel Bourne and Daniel Robert lend the extreme austerity for which Allen seems to be striving, the acting is what makes this film dramatically effective. Mary Beth Hurt gives a brave performance as Joey, capturing all the inadequacy and wounded rejection her character feels. Maureen Stapleton is a breath of fresh air as Pearl, lending an amusing earthiness and colorful indifference when she arrives late in the story.

With her severe look, Geraldine Page effectively lends unrelenting, humorless intensity to her heavily mannered portrayal of Eve and turns her character into a hopelessly desperate victim as the story moves toward its conclusion. As Renata, Diane Keaton removes all traces of the lovable Annie Hall but unfortunately comes across as the most contrived, especially when her character cannot help but be patronizing to Frederick and Joey. Richard Jordan plays Frederick in broad strokes that make it difficult to empathize with his plight. Making lesser impressions are Sam Waterson as Michael, Kristin Griffith as Flyn and a surprisingly understated E.G. Marshall as Arthur. Just the original trailer is included as an extra on the 2000 DVD.

Interiors is Woody Allen's first straight drama, and while most compare the film to Ingmar Bergman (one of Allen's favorite directors), the film's examination of a dysfunctional family struggling for normalcy is a forerunner to such '80s films as Ordinary People and Shoot the Moon, and acclaimed '90s films The Ice Storm, Happiness and American Beauty. The film focuses on three sisters (not the first time Woody Allen would do this), and their reaction to their parents' sudden divorce and then their father's affair with a less glamorous, but very REAL, woman.

Maureen Stapleton plays the new woman and has what I feel is the most heartbreaking scene in the movie. One of the sisters (played by Mary Beth Hurt) inexplicably lashes out at Stapleton after she accidentally breaks a vase. Stapleton's reaction to this is so touching that I remembered it long after the other events faded away. The film is good but stagy; I prefer Woody Allen's later serious dramas because they seem less confined or more stylish (the various Manhattan settings in "Another Woman" and the sudden blackout in the Vermont house in "September"). Still, fans of the '90s films should seek this one out, and since Woody Allen doesn't appear, movie fans should invite Woody bashers over to their homes and start the movie right after the opening credits. The reactions may be interesting.

Woody Allen seems to channel one of his idols, Ingmar Bergman, in this film about the struggles in the relationships within a family, and the feelings of not having lived up to one's potential in life. Things invariably change and they don't work out ideally or as expected, leading to angst and quiet forms of desperation. We see that in each of the three daughters despite their successes (one is a published poet, another is an actor who gets parts in TV movies, and the third is very bright but still finding herself), one's partner (a published author), and we see it most of all in their mother, who has been left by her husband after a long marriage.

The film explores the long relationships within a family, with various rivalries and grievances forming over the years and never really going away, and it did a reasonably good at it. The film doesn't demonize the father for finding someone else and seeking a divorce, but at the same, what that means for the mother is heartbreaking. Ironically, the one caring for her the most, and who amplifies her pain for the viewer, is the one who feels never got the same kind of attention when younger, and the situation is reversed with the father. It's those kinds of things that make the film strong, that and an excellent ending scene, the flashbacks included (it could have used more of these).

Still though, this was a film that it was hard to get jazzed over. I don't think the plot came together all that well or was fully realized, an example of which is the attempted rape by the brother-in-law in the garage, which then goes nowhere. The film's focus is the window into these dysfunctional relationships and the cruelty of change, not a fully buttoned up and cookie cutter story, something I liked about it, but still it felt meandering in its subplots. I also think it was less successful in its showing the various artists wrestle with their feelings of inadequacy, where it seemed often forced in its dialogue, with affluent characters whining in one way or another. I never got fully invested in them, and that's the reason for the average review score.