Despite the very talented Lee Grant at the helm and a stellar cast, this movie felt inauthentic to me, with a strange mixture of sentiment and sleaze. The plot twists felt manipulative, and the ending seemed abrupt. 5/10 stars from me.
shareI agree with u 100%. They had a good cast and director but the stories were overly familar and the film felt muted. It never came to life for me. Only the acting kept me watching.
So very true. For all the talent involved here, this should have been a much better film. It's almost like it had too much ambition and tried to go in so many directions that it wound up going nowhere.
shareThat's probably it--too much ambition. Lee Grant is a very intelligent woman and a good director but I think here she was trying to cover too many issues at once and, as a consequence, all the stories suffered. It's not a bad film just a disappointing one.
shareLee indeed is a very smart woman who has made some brilliant choices, thankfully most of them better than this.
Say, do you by chance remember her 1975 sitcom, "Fay"? Seems like I watched every episode back then, but unfortunately there weren't many. It's probably way to obscure to generate any reissue interest:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072501/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Hi. No--I can't say that I ever saw "Fay". I vaguely remember that title though. Remember--she did "Valley of the Dolls" AND "Visiting Hours" which (I assumed) were just for the money. Then again she was in "Shampoo" which was (sort of) good:)
shareI don't know why I was so drawn to "Fay," but I loved Lee and her 40ish divorcee and looked forward to each episode. I think it aired Thursday nights on NBC. (We only had CBS and NBC at that point; ABC wouldn't come until we got cable a few years later.)
I've seen her in all the films you mentioned, and she was inevitably the highlight. She seemed to make a mixture of low-brow camp, disaster pictures, Neil Simon comedies and artier indie films like "The Landlord" and "The Mafu Cage." She seemed perfect to work with Robert Altman, and she had a small role in "Dr. T and the Women," though I wish she had been given a prime role in a "Nashville" or something because she'd be great there. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired, but I'm always up for talking about Lee Grant!
I do remember she was the best thing about "Shampoo" (and won an Oscar for it) and she was also in the excellent "In the Heat of the Night". VERY talented woman.
I have "In the Heat of the Night" somewhere in my many piles of movies, and I need to track that down and finally watch it. She was also a mainstay in '70s and '80s television, with roles on "Columbo" and directing "ABC After School Specials." last I saw of her was in David Lynch's "Mulholland Dr." 12 years ago. She's been pretty much inactive since, and she's 87, so I don't think we can expect a comeback at this point.
I didn't realize until now that Lee was blacklisted in the '50s for refusing to testify against her husband during the Red Scare, but that makes me respect her even more.
I recommend "In the Heat of the Night" but don't see it on TCM. It's edited at the beginning cutting out a crucial nude scene which renders some of the film pointless.
shareI don't have TCM (or any cable, actually), so I won't be watching it there. It seems like nudity in films was still fairly rare for that era (1967, the summer of love).
shareIt was rare but films were basically fighting against the Hays Code. Also the nudity here is mostly silhouette and not long and lingering. But it IS needed for the plot so that's probably how it got through.
shareI actually found it quite entertaining
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