Les quatre saisons

Ever since I watched her as a kid on The Electric Company and The Rockford Files, I have always loved Rita Moreno. She is one of the best actresses EVER! and most people don't even realize this. She is the only entertainer in history to have won the highest award in all four mediums of entertainment. She has won an Oscar for her movie work, an Emmy for her tv work, a Tony for her stage work and a Grammy for her singing. She is in the Guiness Book of World Records as a matter of fact. People do not realize that Alan Alda wrote many of the episodes of MASH (as they also don't realize Michael Landon wrote many episodes of Little House). He is both a great comic and a great comic writer who is wonderful and witty with words. He also directed this film and did an outstanding job. It is a beautiful film to look at with the lovely scenery and the change of seasons, symbolic of the conflicts the three couples are going through. Alda created six wonderful characters that you really care about and feel bad for and perhaps you see a little bit of yourself in them. Alda's character thinks that he is so in control, Jack Weston's character is a hammy, blustering hypochondriac (Alda says at one point that he is "the Muhammad Ali of mental illness"). Bess Armstrong was just getting her start in films at the time and she is really wonderful as Len Carou's ditzy girlfriend. Sandy Dennis's career had gotten off to an amazing start when she was in "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" but it never really took off the way it should have and she died so young of cancer. She gives a wonderful performance in this film. It is rather low key, but you feel this woman's pain as her husband leaves her for this bimbo. You really feel angry for her. Carol Burnett is a wonderful comic, but a fine actress as well (she was great in Annie), she gives a really sensitive performance especially in the scene where she tells Alda to s*&t or get off the pot! How touching Carol! Seriously Rita Moreno is my favorite in this film. I love Claudia, she is kind and sweet and affectionate and so very very ITALIAN! Rita Moreno should have gotten an Oscar for her performance. She even has a brief nude scene in the film. I don't mean to sound sexist but she looked fantastic! God bless you Rita!

I actually saw this movie by chance... A friend of mine saw the VHS on a shelf, tucked away in the back of Cinema 1. She pointed it out, and I bought it immediately.

The storyline itself isn't realistic; very rarely would this happen in real life (if ever), but it's touching, funny and brilliantly acted. Alda and Burnette have incredibly great chemistry on-screen. It's a laugh a minute with those two. The characters are so finely drawn with their own little quirks and personalities that it's easy to believe they're real.

The film also shows just how easy it is for something so seemingly trivial can threaten a friendship--- In this case, it was the addition of Ginny.

The seasons seem to perfectly follow the character's moods. During the spring and summer, the atmosphere is pleasant and carefree; nothing can go wrong, the sky is the limit. And as the weather turns colder, the moods follow suit, reaching the `coldest' point during the winter, where their true colours begin to show.

Oddly enough, though I bought the movie to see Alan Alda, Anne Callan (played by Sandy Dennis), turned out to be the highlight of the film for me. In contrast to the ditzy and annoying Ginny, Anne is incredibly witty, albeit a little off-beat and *out there*. She has some hilarious lines, and Dennis delivers them perfectly-"The hell with Nick. Tell him it's a goddamn boa constrictor!" And her wacky memory (for example, remembering the day she got her tooth filled)- Too funny.

Whether or not you're a fan of any of the actors or actresses in this movie, I highly recommend it. You'll fall in love with it.

THE FOUR SEASONS (1981) *** Alan Alda, Carol Burnett, Rita Moreno, Jack Weston, Len Cariou, Sandy Dennis, Bess Armstrong. Alda, who wrote and directed, assembles a veteran cast of colorful couples spending their quarterly vacations together during one memorable year of change and confrontations of middle age craziness with deft and frequently funny aplomb. The choice to use Vivaldi's `Four Seasons' and the beautiful scenery only underscores the theme perfectly. Trivial note: the college-aged girls the group visit for parents' day are actually Alda's real-life daughters.

Another reviewer mentioned how this movie has changed for them since they first saw it - and not in a good way.

For me, "The Four Seasons" has only become more relevant.

I'm watching this on Encore as I write this. When I first saw this back in 1981, I was 16 and getting ready to entire my senior year in HS. I absolutely fell in love with this film but my perspective as a teenager had me seeing these people as my parents generation and wondering if when I reached their age I would have this kind of relationship with my adult friends. I also wondered if such people really existed. I laughed at the situations and the lines but without any real world experience.

Now 30 years later, I have a very different perspective on things. I not only see myself (or aspects of myself) in each of the various characters, I find that the dialogue and relationships as presented in the film ring very true. When you are friends with other people for a long time, you do know each other well enough to be able to criticize, annoy, care about, and cherish one another the way these people do.

I have also run into and had to deal with people that are essentially carbon copies of the people portrayed in the movie. I know Jack and Kate, Danny and Claudia, Nick, Ginny, and especially Anne. These people are real - not just characters written into a screenplay. They live in my town. Their fears, dreams, and neuroses are all familiar.

Alan Alda was able to capture authentic portrayals of people by an outstanding cast. And while all movies are a distillation of sorts of character types, the individuals in this film seem particularly authentic to me.

30 years later, I find this still to be a terrific movie. It is timeless in its message, and the emotions (humor, sympathy, anger) I experience come from a genuine understanding of and kinship with these people and their situations.

I was 14 the first time I saw this film in 1981 on HBO. I found it to be a totally engrossing movie that made one actually think about the complexities of life and relationships other than just your typical movie fare of sex and violence. They just don't make movies like this one anymore, and probably never will again (which is sad).

Like Vivaldi's Four Seasons, the cast of characters cover a range of emotions; through anger, grief, and denial of the departure of the spouse of one of the couples who vacation quarterly together and finally acceptance when a new and (younger) addition enters the picture.

The banter between the couples is unusually intelligent, and hysterically funny in some scenes. Jack Weston's character Danny is my favorite. Alda's Jack describes him in one scene as being hypochondriachal, which is the understatement of the year. He seems to feel that he is dying at any given moment of any number of diseases. Death to him is imminent, and his portrayal of this emotion is brilliantly funny because of the sincerity with which he tries to convince the others of the validity of his fears. I loved the scene where he and his wife Claudia have an arguement and she offers up the suggestion once too often that her Italian heritage is the reason for her behavior and Danny cuts loose on her. He gets so into it, that it doesn't seem to matter to the director that he flubbed the line where he's screaming out the window that "I'm sick of your I'm your Italian", when he really meant to say "I'm sick of your I'm Italian". So the scene is left in.

The scene where Jack and Kate laugh their a**e* off on the boat one night while listening to Nick and Ginny having sex is also hysterical.

Really great movie. Highly recommended for people as desperate as I am for some intelligent and thought provoking entertainment.