The Four Seasons

Alan Alda the actor has come up with a few worthwhile projects over the years as a writer and director. This movie, his feature directorial debut, is quite enjoyable.

Three upper-middle class couples are seen during the four vacations they take annually. They enjoy each others' company, but a fissure in the friendships begins to grows when one man tires of life with his wife and introduces his new, younger girlfriend into the group, and things go from there. Alda manages very successfully the balance between comedy and drama, aided by the excellent cast of veterans. All the principals here (the first seven listed in the credits) do fine work.

Ever since I watched her as a kid on The Electric Company and The Rockford Files, I have always loved Rita Moreno. She is one of the best actresses EVER! and most people don't even realize this. She is the only entertainer in history to have won the highest award in all four mediums of entertainment. She has won an Oscar for her movie work, an Emmy for her tv work, a Tony for her stage work and a Grammy for her singing. She is in the Guiness Book of World Records as a matter of fact. People do not realize that Alan Alda wrote many of the episodes of MASH (as they also don't realize Michael Landon wrote many episodes of Little House). He is both a great comic and a great comic writer who is wonderful and witty with words. He also directed this film and did an outstanding job. It is a beautiful film to look at with the lovely scenery and the change of seasons, symbolic of the conflicts the three couples are going through. Alda created six wonderful characters that you really care about and feel bad for and perhaps you see a little bit of yourself in them. Alda's character thinks that he is so in control, Jack Weston's character is a hammy, blustering hypochondriac (Alda says at one point that he is "the Muhammad Ali of mental illness"). Bess Armstrong was just getting her start in films at the time and she is really wonderful as Len Carou's ditzy girlfriend. Sandy Dennis's career had gotten off to an amazing start when she was in "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" but it never really took off the way it should have and she died so young of cancer. She gives a wonderful performance in this film. It is rather low key, but you feel this woman's pain as her husband leaves her for this bimbo. You really feel angry for her. Carol Burnett is a wonderful comic, but a fine actress as well (she was great in Annie), she gives a really sensitive performance especially in the scene where she tells Alda to s*&t or get off the pot! How touching Carol! Seriously Rita Moreno is my favorite in this film. I love Claudia, she is kind and sweet and affectionate and so very very ITALIAN! Rita Moreno should have gotten an Oscar for her performance. She even has a brief nude scene in the film. I don't mean to sound sexist but she looked fantastic! God bless you Rita!

I'm always surprised to read negative comments on this film. I guess I have a strange sense of humor because there are parts of this movie--quite a few parts as a matter of fact--that I find simply hysterical. There are also parts that are maddening--I do not care for Sandy Dennis' (ex)-husband at all. When you have seen the movie as many times as I have, you also begin to find flaws in the dialogue & situations--things that don't make sense to you. But never enough to make me dislike this film which has so many more truths about human nature & couples. Every one of the cast is good in their roles. Carol Burnett & Alan Alda are perfect together & have one scene in the "Fall" section that cracks me up every time. Rita Moreno was truly funny. When her husband, played by Jack Weston, leans out the window on the hotel & shouts, "She's Italian!" "There, now everyone in the state of CT knows that you're Italian." Though I've often thought that she had every right to say what led up to this scene, it is still very very funny.

I just wish it would come out on DVD. I would definitely get it.

I was 14 the first time I saw this film in 1981 on HBO. I found it to be a totally engrossing movie that made one actually think about the complexities of life and relationships other than just your typical movie fare of sex and violence. They just don't make movies like this one anymore, and probably never will again (which is sad).

Like Vivaldi's Four Seasons, the cast of characters cover a range of emotions; through anger, grief, and denial of the departure of the spouse of one of the couples who vacation quarterly together and finally acceptance when a new and (younger) addition enters the picture.

The banter between the couples is unusually intelligent, and hysterically funny in some scenes. Jack Weston's character Danny is my favorite. Alda's Jack describes him in one scene as being hypochondriachal, which is the understatement of the year. He seems to feel that he is dying at any given moment of any number of diseases. Death to him is imminent, and his portrayal of this emotion is brilliantly funny because of the sincerity with which he tries to convince the others of the validity of his fears. I loved the scene where he and his wife Claudia have an arguement and she offers up the suggestion once too often that her Italian heritage is the reason for her behavior and Danny cuts loose on her. He gets so into it, that it doesn't seem to matter to the director that he flubbed the line where he's screaming out the window that "I'm sick of your I'm your Italian", when he really meant to say "I'm sick of your I'm Italian". So the scene is left in.

The scene where Jack and Kate laugh their a**e* off on the boat one night while listening to Nick and Ginny having sex is also hysterical.

Really great movie. Highly recommended for people as desperate as I am for some intelligent and thought provoking entertainment.

Another film I never get tired of re-watching, THE FOUR SEASONS is an entertaining, albeit predictable comedy-drama about three affluent couples who vacation together, whose perfect circle of friendship is forever altered when one couple decides to divorce and the man tries to bring his new girlfriend into the circle. There is a lot of funny stuff that goes on here and a lot of unpleasant stuff as well, especially the way the circle treats the new girlfriend, but most of it rings true and the emotions expressed among these friends about losing the wife who was rejected for a younger woman, are quite real. My only problem with this film is that all the characters talk like Alan Alda. Yes, Alda wrote and directed the film, but he should have given the characters their own personalities, not his. Alda and Carol Burnett make a very believable long-married couple, Jack and Kate as do Jack Weston and Rita Moreno as Danny and Claudia. Len Cariou makes the most of an unpleasant role as Nick, the husband who divorces his wife (Sandy Dennis, in a lovely and heartbreaking performance)and tries to bring his new girlfriend (Bess Armstrong) into the circle. There is slapstick and sentiment and pathos and I have to admit to cheering the first time I saw the scene where Armstrong tells the group off for treating her like an outsider. It's not Chekhov, but it is a charming film with likable characters, realistic situations, beautiful scenery and a lovely musical score. If you hate Alan Alda, beware.