O Grupo

Widescreen, Technicolor and the best round up of girls since "The Women". What more could you ask? All the girls are great, but Jessica Walter is outstanding as she changes from self-assured sexy-romantic to a gossiping sexually repressed Bitch! No one else at that time could have played that part so beautifully. The movie addresses some women's issues that were not commonly discussed back in the 60's. Abuse, mental illness, pregnancy, drugs. Candice Bergen, Shirley Knight, Elizabeth Hartman, these are all stage trained actresses, and the lovely Joan Hackett who died much too soon but while she was here always gave a top notch performance. Script/dialogue, camera work, all first class.

Just watched for the second time in my life this Sidney Lumet adaptation of Mary McCarthy's novel "The Group", this time on Netflix streaming. It's about eight women who graduated from Vassar in 1933 and their trials and tribulations during that time and subsequent years through the beginning of the second World War. Among those women, the standout for me was Shirley Knight as Polly who goes from an affair with a publisher boss (Hal Holbrook) of one of her friends to falling for a doctor (James Broderick) she works for. She also willingly suffers a father (Robert Emhardt) who's eventually diagnosed as manic depressive. Emhardt's performance is perhaps the most enjoyable to me since he talks up a storm and says such inappropriately funny lines! It was also fascinating to see Larry Hagman play a role here not too different from his later iconic evil character of J.R. Ewing on both versions of "Dallas" only here, he's not such a fun person to watch. I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that the Richard Mulligan and Joan Hackett characters were awkward to each other but the actors would eventually marry in real life not long after. Oh, and Candice Bergen, for all her reputation of not being much of an actress during her early career, acquits herself nicely among her more trained co-stars in the few scenes she has here. In summary, The Group perhaps comes on a bit fast at the beginning to really get an understanding of what's going on and who these people are but eventually it slows down enough that you do get to know and mostly like these people as the film progresses. In the words of many of the characters of this film, "Who'd a thunk it?"

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.

I saw this film last night and was absolutely stunned by how excellent it was. Not only did it seem to be one of the first 'chick flicks' (sorry for anyone who hates that title) but it was incredibly brave to deal with extremly contentious issues. The colours and the costumes in the film made the film seem like a true snapshot for life for seven educated women getting by in the first half in the century. It did not shy away from the issues of sex, and mental illness which is brave for a film made over thirty years ago. I started watching this film because I couldn't sleep but ended up watching it until 2.30am defintely entertaining and possibly superior to 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'??

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 ****