O Grupo

Sidney Lumet is a masterful craftsman of socially aware drama that tackles important cultural questions, and even for its time, which was a time of radical social change that beginning to reflect on theater screens, The Group treated some divisive themes, for example the association of free love with progressive social revolution, and depicting it as a forerunner of a new anti-fascistic, anti-oppressive awareness and critique of marriage as a form of social bondage, not to mention contraception, abortion, lesbianism and mental illness. And owing to Lumet's subtle use of technical skills, The Group---possibly his biggest, least characteristic and least considered film---is a skillfully paced and giftedly acted adaptation of Mary McCarthy's novel charting the kismet of eight Vassar graduates, class of '33, up to the start of WWII. Sidney Buchman's script does some outstanding couture work on the material, clipping away all the adipose tissue and slashing the remaining into hundreds of pointed little scenes which are assembled as a charmingly droll montage of the decade, though Lumet's concerns are towards the thematic nature of McCarthy's story rather than the setting.

Joanna Pettet is quite convincing as the one who marries Larry Hagman's prototype self-destructive aspiring writer, there's an impressive debut by Kathleen Widdoes, and as does the great Hal Holbrook, and Candice Bergen as a Paris refugee who returns courted by a German countess. But the most memorable performance for me is by Jessica Walter, who is now exercising great comic ability on a wholly new generation of television such as Arrested Development and Archer. There is a real conflict between who she is on the inside and out that she portrays so authentically and epitomizes a familiar but difficult-to-depict personality. Also Joan Hackett, in a BAFTA-nominated debut performance of her own, provides an especially varied array of emotional conversion. And willowy, eye-catching ginger leading lady Elizabeth Hartman displays her versatility between her upper-class collegiate role here and the capricious, heartbreaking flirt she played in Francis Ford Coppola's debut film You're a Big Boy Now the same year.

Director of Long Day's Journey into Night, The Pawnbroker, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon and Network, Lumet is noted for drawing award-winning performances from his casts. Chiefly cunning in this, his tenth film, is the way in which the girls, each one elegantly and idiosyncratically characterized, are seen to develop individually. For example viewing the Hackett of the closing scenes, bigheaded wife of an Arizona oil-man, subtly changing physically as well, and almost certainly a mainstay of the local ladies' league, and recalling her first, desperately bold affair with a Greenwich Village painter, one thinks with amazement that's just how she might become.

With Boris Kaufman's superbly striking cinematography to appreciate, the Kurosawa-style multi-plane tableaux of various characters in single painterly shots, demonstrating a poetic and caring property in his capturing of these layered images, a quality that marked his extraordinarily noble career, The Group is a vividly experiential chronicle of the girl-to-woman sexual and social transitions as the characters try on sex, religion and politics. It's the thinking viewer's Sex and the City.

Sidney Lumet directed this busy, bustling, chatty character study-cum-soaper concerning eight Vassar graduates in 1933 who take different paths in life but always manage to stay in touch. Writer-producer Sidney Buchman nearly pulls off the heady task of adapting Mary McCarthy's well-loved novel to the screen, despite insurmountable story obstacles, a self-defeating length, and a persistent claim from professional critics at the time that maybe a female screenwriter should have been hired instead to adapt McCarthy's prose (Pauline Kael was the most vocal in this area). With much crisscross editing between apartments, hospitals, and places of employment, it's nearly impossible to determine how many years pass in the course of the story--and this episodic structure leaves Candice Bergen's Lakey and Mary-Robin Redd's Pokey with hardly any screen-time. Joan Hackett as Dottie makes a very appealing impression in her early scenes (falling for heartless womanizer Richard Mulligan), but then she too disappears. There's far too much of Joanna Pettet in the overtly-showy role of Kay (and with her comes Larry Hagman, doing nothing new in the impossible role of Kay's hard-drinking, womanizing husband). Elizabeth Hartman as Priss and Shirley Knight as Polly end up doing the finest acting work, with Knight practically carrying the film's final third--but then, the screenplay is tipped towards our liking those characters the most (if Jessica Walters' gossiping Libby was revealed to have half a heart, we might feel the same towards her). The scattershot humor is there, but it's always undercut by sourness--which is then replaced with grimness. If Buchman was inappropriate as the writer, Lumet was equally a questionable choice as director. He keeps the pacing lively, but the film is far more vitriolic than nostalgic. **1/2 from ****

Glossy soap opera about 8 Vassar graduates of 1933. It follows their lives after college and deals with alcoholism, mental breakdowns, frigidity, beatings, adultery, child rearing, lesbianism and death.

I tried reading the book this was based on but I couldn't understand it. They kept throwing in 1930s slang and politics and lost me. This movie keeps out the slang, tones down the politics (but it is there) and came up with a good movie. Yes, it is a soap opera but well made with some great actresses and it deals with it's subjects seriously. Some of the story lines involve: Polly (Shirley Knight) falling in love with a married doctor (Hal Holbrook); Kay (Joanna Pettet) dealing with an alcoholic husband (Larry Hagman); Dottie (Joan Heckett) falling in love with a womanizer (Richard Mulligan) and Priss (Elizabeth Hartman) dealing with raising a child.

It's fascinating to see these actors so young and full of life. All the acting is good but Hartman and Knight stand out. Also Candace Bergman shows up at the beginning and the end as a lesbian--quite daring for 1966. The surprise is that she's dealt with in a very sensitive manner and not made evil.

This movie is long (150 minutes) and its cast is very big (it took me at least an hour to figure out who was who) but I ended up enjoying this and recommend it. I give it an 8.

but this film is interesting for the cast, and the time period it depicts. Also the costumes are rather amusing. I have not yet read the book although several reviews have mentioned the time warp factor. Candice Bergen is in an early role as member of an elite group of Vassar graduates. Joan Hackett, Joanna Pettet, Larry Hagman (as her alcoholic husband), Hal Holbrook, James Broderick, Jessica Walter (as swinging single gossip in the NY publishing world), Kathleen Widdoes, Carrie Nye, Elizabeth Hartman and several other notable appearances make for an interesting cast. Some of the dialog will take you back to a different time. The controversy of breast over bottle feeding, Republican vs. FDR Democrat (there are some pretty amusing scenes between Priss (Elizabeth Hartman) and her pediatrician husband, a Republican, who says after her second miscarriage this will give him a bad reputation in the hospital (!). Obviously, the book may be more interesting, and less histrionic. Jessica Walter is very good, and amusing; wish she had done more films in the 80's and 90's (She was great in "Slums of Beverly Hills", with Alan Arkin, as well). I do not watch regular television although several have mentioned she is very good in the Ron Howard comedy "Arrested Development". At any rate, a good escapist film, which I would not completely dismiss as soap opera, since there are skilled actors and some worthwhile dialog. 8/10.

One of Sidney Lumet's first directing attempts is a brilliant, powerful and undeniably courageous motion picture - not at all a sprawling frenzy of feelings strung by hammy performances and corny dialogues, this film is a rather organized , neat telling of eight graduates from Vassar-like college and their respective lives and times, that in it's own quiet way, became a masterpiece of great beauty, displaying strong, formidable performances by Pettet - as Kay Strong, a lovely young lady whose promissing future is teared to shreds as her cruel Play Writing husband ruins her life and slowly corrompts her mental sanity -, Hackett - as Dottie Renfrew, whose heart is broken by young, hip bohemian, that steels her virginity and commits herself to a futile, selfish fate - and Hartman(One Of The Most Wonderful Actresses That Ever Lived, And Whose Life Was Brought To A Horrid Ending, As She Comitted Suicide, Jumping Off Her Apartment Window) - as a pure , fragile young girl that has agonizing experiments with pregnancy and breast-feeding, as well as other cast members, like Bergen, Widdoes, fascinating Knight and Walter. This is adapted from Mary MacCarthy's brilliant novel, launched at the same time as 'Valley Of The Dolls', Jacqueline Sussan's hideous all-american best-seller - although' they both treat of feminine sagas, they are surely not to be confused.