Rodaggio matrimoniale

I was totally charmed by this film particularly by the performances of Jane Fonda and Lois Nettleton. Then I thought the style sounded familiar and I saw that it really was a Tennessee Williams play. It was not anything like his great dark masterpieces "Glass Menagerie", "Streetcar Named Desire" etc., and yet i saw a theme consistent with his other works. Although Williams' sexual orientation was famously opposite, he never ceased to explore the power of heterosexuality and its strength as the source of creation. Even in "Streetcar" it is apparent that Stanley Kowalski and Stella really love each other. In the play (but not the movie) they are eventually reconciled as the baby asserts it's presence. Submission to that strong urge is really the theme of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". The performances are top notch. Tony Franciosa from my old Italian neighborhood of East Harlem was quite adept at playing Southerners as was my fellow Fordham University alumnus John MciIver. Serious issues are confronted and us poor males, trying to live up to the demands of machismo are shown sympathy by the truly admirable young women characters who reveal that love and understanding are what they truly expect.

Nurse Isabel Crane (Jane Fonda) rushes to marry her patient, Korean War veteran George Haverstick (Jim Hutton). She's not happy that he had recently purchased a black hearse and they're driving away from their wedding in it. He quitted his job without telling her. His hands still shake from unknown afflictions. It's Christmas time. They're on their way to their Miami honeymoon but he's stopping in Tennessee to visit his war buddy Ralph Bates (Anthony Franciosa). Meanwhile, Ralph also his own problem within his marriage.

I don't know how this is a comedy. The music cues and the directions keep trying to drive it into the comedic arena. I don't see how this can be a comedy. Non of these people are appealing. There is too much anger for that. Their problems are serious. Their dysfunctions are terribly unfunny unless getting your young son burnt is hilarious to you. Getting yourself burnt can be lots of hilarity but this is not that. This seems to be a lot closer to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. I would be interested in treating this Tennessee Williams play as a much darker drama.

Watching this undeservedly forgotten Tennessee Williams play turned into a movie, it occurs to the viewer how so many other writers, some of them quite good and talented, are still merely scratching the surface. Williams digs and digs until he hits the paydirt of his characters' true selves, the ones they keep hidden behind all their rusty but dependable defense mechanisms. Williams writes in such a way that something extraordinary seems to be revealed in each scene; characters are constantly surprising each other, and themselves, with the clarity of their insights.

Set at Christmas, the film delves into the crumbling relationships of two sets of couples, whose fortunes and outlooks quickly become intertwined. Jim Hutton and Jane Fonda are the mismatched newlyweds who begin to have trouble the moment he kisses her (somewhat harshly) on their wedding day. He's suddenly insensitive, even brutal, and she becomes hyper-sensitive and highly emotional and it appears that by the time they reach their honeymoon destination they will be at each other's throats. Anthony Franciosa plays an old war buddy of Hutton's whose unstable marriage to plain Lois Nettleton ruptures when he rashly decides to quit working for a man he has long held in contempt: her petty, penny-pinching father. Unimaginably ignoring his beautiful though high-maintenance young wife (and Fonda is at her most luscious and desirable) Hutton interrupts his already nightmarish honeymoon to see his supposedly more established friend with whom he is anxious to enter into a business partnership.

And this is where things get very interesting as Franciosa balances his own feelings of attraction towards Fonda with his sympathy for the young couple's necessary but often painful "period of adjustment". Franciosa does a nice job anchoring the film; proud and defiant with his quarreling family members, but wise and protective with the feuding newlyweds. Hutton does good work too in a tricky not always sympathetic part. And Fonda is wonderful as the fragile southern belle with the hilarious attachment to her "little blue zipper bag". Lois Nettleton could've gone the Shelly Winters route and played her housewife as dumpy and pitiful, but she bravely goes for vulnerably dignified instead. Though she knows she was married for her father's money, you believe Franciosa when he tells her that she has "improved in appearance" and that he has indeed grown to love her.

Described as "heartwarming" by Leonard Maltin, it's still not terribly surprising that this has not become a perennial Christmas favorite. It does represent Williams at his "lightest" but it's too emotionally punishing to be viewed by the whole family like say "A Christmas Story" or "White Christmas" as the kids are putting up the tree. There is a brilliant but agonizing scene towards the end, where both couples are driving along in a hearse, and the older couple up front believes that the other two in back can't hear the raw, uncomfortably honest conversation they're having due to a supposedly soundproof dividing window between them. But they do hear all too well, and it gives them a brand new perspective on their own marital difficulties.

It is, however, an off the beaten path Christmas gem refreshingly free of false sentiment and schmaltzy resolutions. And there is a terrific running gag involving a bunch of tipsy carolers who just can't refuse all those neighborly offers to come in and have a drink. I think, and I could be wrong, that Williams employs the holiday setting as a harness for some of his darker impulses.

I am amused that this film based on Tennessee William's work got nominated as a comedy for two different cinema awarding bodies. If this is a comedy, so would Albee's "Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf" be termed a comedy. Can this work be called a black comedy? Even this is doubtful--you could call "MASH" a black comedy but not "Period of Adjustment."

The play made me sit up, not laugh. The play may not be of the same caliber as William's other work like "The Night of Iguana" or "The Streetcar named Desire" but it forces the audience to look inwards. Unfortunately, director George Roy Hill in his first regular film effort as a director does not display the capability that he showed in directing his later films ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Sting," "A Little Romance," etc.). He fumbles with his editing: the shift of scene from the Baitz' to the Haversticks on stage would have been aided by a curtain or the lights going off, but in this film the switch from Fonda/Hutton to Franciosa/Nettleton is too abrupt and confusing. Yet Roy Hill shows his capability of eliciting fine performances from his cast, especially Jane Fonda (as he did later with Redford, Newman and Lord Laurence Olivier), and the dog!

Viewing this film 40 years after it was made, one cannot but appreciate the values of Tennessee Williams (and George Roy Hill) and the subject under discussion. How many contemporary directors would venture to make a film of the play today?

The film is fine entertainment value for those who like a good play on film (you need cinema to show visual shock of viewing the hearse for the first time, the stage can never provide the same effect).

Hold Tennessee Williams in very high regard indeed, and although his plays work better performed as filmed productions or television films that doesn't mean that they don't translate well to film. Even when toned down thematically there are good to great film adaptations, 'A Streetcar Named Desire' being the best. Come to think of it, 'Summer and Smoke' is one of the few to not do much for me and that was still watchable because of the incredible lead performance.

'Period of Adjustment' is not one of the best Tennessee Williams film adaptations and may not have the complex characterisations or as mature themes as others. It is a very easy and likeable watch though and is a good adaptation of a lesser known play that is actually one of Williams' most accessible, that it is also one of his most light-hearted for many will work in its favour. The film manages this light-heartedness as well while avoiding over-syruping and still taking the content seriously enough.

It's not perfect. The message could have been delivered with more subtlety, one of the biggest traps often fallen into with messages in film is heavy-handedness which is the case here.

Williams' work can be very melodramatic, 'Period of Adjustment' is no exception and for a play as comparitively light-hearted compared to other work of his as this the melodrama here can get over-heated. George Roy Hill did go on to do better with 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' and 'The Sting', he was an inexperienced director at this point and it can show in some awkward shifts here and there (mostly though all things considered he does pretty well).

However, 'Period of Adjustment' looks great. Especially the photography, which is positively luminous and really enhances the sumptuous production design. The music suits the tone, without too much syrup or bombast. Williams' writing really shines through, it's funny, it's touching and it has the right amount of intensity. The story manages comedy and drama well individually, with the comedy well timed and rarely less than amusing and the drama poignant but never dreary, and balances them with coherence and without imbalance.

A big part of 'Period of Adjustment's' appeal is the cast. A cast against type, her more homely look very different from her usual glamorous image, Lois Nettleton is absolutely sublime and gives to me the film's best performance in a difficult role. Anthony Franciosa is excellent too in a role that actually does him justice, and Jim Hutton does bring charm and adept timing to a character that is very different to Hutton himself, a likeable actor playing an unlikeable character but one one doesn't completely hate. Jane Fonda is the biggest surprise though, am not a fan of her usually but her sparkling performance here is one of her better ones.

Summing up, there are better Tennessee Williams film adaptations but this does justice to an undervalued play. 7/10