Le Journal intime d'une femme mariée

Carrie Snodgress is wistful, sad, conflicted, fed-up and funny playing harried NYC housewife on the verge of collapse; Richard Benjamin is her anal-retentive husband; and Frank Langella is her uncommitted lover. From Sue Kaufman's book, one of the funniest satiric novels of its era, comes this sometimes-surreal jumble by Frank Perry, who is so concerned with making a monster out of Benjamin's Jonathan that he in turn makes Snodgress' Tina look a little pathetic. The character was feistier in the book, with a (self-contained) deadpan sense of humor that Perry isn't quite able to replicate on film. This Tina has her moments--throwing her ruined Thanksgiving platter against the wall, berating Jonathan for making fun of her in front of the kids--and Snodgress is terrific, really the only reason to see the film. She overcomes the knockabout structure and obvious swipes at indifferent urbanites and makes something touching out of the material. I first saw this on television and admired a couple of scenes with Snodgress and her headstrong daughters (a beauty involved smacking her kid when she deserved it, and then going to apologize). I later rented the video and found a number of those scenes missing. Turns out they had been added to the network version to pad the picture's length from other cuts--mostly sexual ones involving Langella. This is a first: I liked the discards much better than what ended up in the actual movie. **1/2 from ****

Richard Benjamin would drive anyone crazy in 'Diary of a Mad Housewife'(1970).Benjamin and wife Carrie Snodgrass are an upper- middle class New York couple, he totally absorbed with social climbing and Ms. Snodgrass bored to death with her isolated life.Director Frank Perry(David and Lisa) does an excellent job directing this sometimes funny, sometimes sad film of a materialistic, yet emotionally empty lifestyle.Script by Eleanor Perry.

If one were to make a list of the All-time Most Annoying Movie Characters, it would properly include only those whom we can enjoy as they annoy. They're the ones who cause you to smile as you squirm, not those who make you reach for the remote. Right alongside DeNiro's Rupert Pupkin, and Honey, as played by Sandy Dennis (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf), ranks Richard Benjamin as Jonathan Balser. His unctuous whine is the best reason to watch this period piece. Carrie Snodgress, as the brunt of his annoying personality, also does a fine job. Frank Langella, playing her lover, is a bit too unlikeable, but it only serves to heighten our empathy for the unfortunate heroine.

Tina Balser (Carrie Snodgress) is a tired NYC housewife married to the demeaning pompous Jonathan (Richard Benjamin). He criticizes her on everything even in front of their two young impressionable daughters. At a party she got dragged to by her husband, she meets the arrogant chauvinistic writer George Prager (Frank Langella). She has an affair but George isn't much better than Jonathan. Essentially, I like Tina enough to watch this movie despite the annoying Jonathan and the callous George. This movie is a bit of a torture but it's a fascinating one. It's also a movie of its times. It was probably more compelling back in the day.

I've often wondered if the lady of the title is crazy-mad,or angry-mad.Probably some of both.Benjamin's husband is one of the truly most detestable characters of domestic drama.Selfish,overbearing,pompous,ego-centric,domineering,callous,insensitiv e-and those are his good qualities.In all fairness,I don't think that Richard Benjamin likes him either.He's not a character,he's a caricature.And Langella's lover is every bit as much a swine.Oh,granted,he's sexy and sensuous,but he's every bit as much a villain-and equally immature.Maybe things were different back then,but Tina's decision to stick around after the nonsense her husband pulled,seen in a 90's perspective,makes one wonder as to any masochistic tendencies in her makeup.