Glass Houses

I watched this movie incidentally on Spanish TVE, Sunday late at night many years ago, and it planted a disturbing but lasting effect in my mind. Every now and then I look for the film in the internet, or in every TV channel I can get home, but to no avail. I didn't see it from the beginning. I recently saw "Bob, Carol, Ted & Alice", the "established" Paul Mazursky's portrait of that era of free love and "strange" personal and group behavior, later remodeled somewhat into "new age". I still don't know if "Bob..." was ironic in its happy feelings. "Glass Houses" was fully tragic and more accurate I think. French writer Michel Houellebecq has described well the French equivalent to this in his book "Les particules elementales" (don't know the English title, but sure it's very similar).

I haven't seen this movie since it appeared in theaters. I've never heard of its being on TV. But I feel compelled to make some comment about it for the guidance of others if it ever does show up in public. The story involves a kind of triangle, as I recall, involving an older man, a younger woman (O'Neill), and another young woman with whom the guy has some sort of avuncular relationship (Dierde Lenehan, who was being heard of at the time). O'Neill is beautiful and has some racy lines and a nice swim scene. She represents rejuvenation. Lenehan is less striking, and is jealous of the other woman. The story is uninvolving, both because the line is loosely constructed and the acting is poor. It's well photographed, but that's about it. There are a number of flashy directorial intrusions. I remember it -- to the extent that I do -- partly because of the final shot. It's a freeze frame of Lenehan's bare foot on a carpeted staircase. The film simply sits on this frame for a few seconds then slowly moves in on this bare foot, the image growing grainier and grainier. The first effective use of a final freeze that I am aware of is in Truffaut's "The Four Hundred Blows." A distraught young boy, having just done something despicable, runs away from his parents to a wintry beach. He races along the sand in circles, without direction, and the film freezes on a frame in which he is staring into the camera with an anguished expression. It's effective because it is the remorseful face of a budding criminal, an ambiguous image, staring at the audience as if they were members of a jury about to pass judgment on him. Dierdre Lenehan's foot is nothing more than Dierde Lenehan's foot. On the plus side this movie does have Jennifer O'Neill exclaiming about how many erections the older fellow managed. But it's not worth wading through the whole thing to hear those lines. Skip it.

Unfortunately most of this film's reviews are mostly skewed towards the negative, which does the film an injustice. Although the film's scenario sounds porno-esque (that is. infidelity and incestuous desire occurring within a middle-class Californian family), GLASS HOUSES does have a lot going for it. I first saw it on TV when I was seventeen years old, and it has remained in my memory.

When watching the film I was struck by the acting of the cast, the beautiful cinematography, and the highly evocative score by David Raksin. The film's final scene is exemplary in its use of cutting, and, in my opinion, has as much mystery as that of the French film LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (1961). The time has come for this sleeper film to finally be unearthed, and put on video or DVD, where the film buffs of the world can decide for themselves about GLASS HOUSES.