L'école des jeunes mariés

I fell in love with this movie the first time I saw it on TCM. I've always liked Jane Fonda, she is great in this picture. Its well acted and filmed. Its a beautiful movie. I liked the realistic look of the film. In digital it looked brand new, it looked as if it was modern film shot in B&W. Basically its about a couple having marriage problems. Its mostly a one scene shoot with a lot of dialogue. I really enjoyed it, like all Tennessee Williams play adaptations. This is a great movie for repeat viewing.

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.

Jim Hutton and Jane Fonda are a pair of newlyweds, she's a nice, but not terribly bright young lady and he's a bit of a blow-hard. But it will all work out they're told because they're just going through a Period Of Adjustment to each other and to their new status as marrieds.

But the viewer might not think so at first when after a minor quarrel mushrooms the two of them arrive unexpectedly at the home of Hutton's Korean War buddy Tony Franciosa on Christmas Eve. But he's having some marital problems of her own. His wife Lois Nettleton has just walked out on him, taking their young son with him. As gently as he can put it, Franciosa's not one for giving marital advice, especially not at this time. But war breeds some interesting bonds and what's an old army pal to do?

Tennessee Williams whose work is usually heavily laden with dramatic angst about sexual issues, takes a lighter tone in Period Of Adjustment and while it might not always work the film does have some good laughs in it. Of course I'm a bit prejudiced with the presence of Anthony Franciosa in the cast, one of the best and most underrated actors around. Jim Hutton also proves to be a good comedian.

I was a bit confused however because the play was written and debuted on Broadway in 1961 where it ran 132 performances. Hutton looks to be a bit young for a veteran just coming from the war and Williams doesn't really date the play as 1953 when the war ended. I'm sure revivals of the play have made appropriate corrections for the Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq War whatever war as Hutton's character says they're working on starting now.

Part of the problems that Franciosa and Nettleton are facing is that he really didn't love her when he married the richest girl in town, but was looking for a leg up economically and socially. He's made a bad bargain, now having to be under foot and dominated by Nettleton's parents, John McGiver and Mabel Albertson. Turns out though that McGiver made the same kind of bargain back in the day.

I can't forget a very adroit performance by Jack Albertson as a philosophical police sergeant when the whole kit and kaboodle of the cast winds up in front of him on Christmas Day. If they didn't make his Christmas merry, they sure made it interesting. I think Tennessee Williams borrowed from Garson Kanin in My Favorite Wife drawing from Granville Bates's performance as a judge.

Period Of Adjustment is not one of Tennessee Williams better works, but there's still enough of his ideas in the play to satisfy his admirers, even if they are served on the funny side.

Based on a play by Tennesee Williams, the story revolves around two couples-one that's fun to watch, and one that drags. Jim Hutton (Timothy's dad) and Jane Fonda play George and Isabelle Haverstick-a simple, bull-headed young buck and his high-maitenance southern belle bride who drop in on his 'ol war buddy (a handsome Tony Franciosa) married to an unhappy rich girl (Lois Nettleton fleshing out a very difficult role) around Christmas. Jim and Jane inject their characters with enough exuberance to shoot them to the moon; thus, they expose the rather bland quality in Ralph and Dorothea even though Tony and Lois are fine actors who do what they can. Director George Roy Hill tries to keep the action from being too stagy and is generally successful, though less so in the second half.

The main attraction here is Fonda: playing a sweet, jittery mouse with surprising outbursts of anger, she turns in a memorable comic performance. The desperate phone call to 'Daddy', her initial introductory scenes with Hutton, a tragic attempt to get her 'little blue zipper bag', and the first meeting with the Baitz's dog are beautifully done with gusto. If you look at her work here along with Barbarella, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Klute, and Julia-you'll see she had that rare quality few leading movie stars have: the ability to be a damn good character actor.

The movie's harmless fun and I recommend watching it under a blanket with a hot cup of cocoa, a roaring fire, and a lighted Christmas tree. Please read the review submitted by Eric Chapman. Enjoy!

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.