KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Stepford Wives

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy

The Stepford Wives

I did some on-line reading about the reception of this movie at the time of it's release, and amazingly enough, it was objected to by some feminist groups who saw it as anti-woman. My immediate thought was that there is a large continent of the population that does not understand satire. This movie is for all intents and purposes a depiction of a feminist nightmare. It visualizes a world where women are erased as individuals and replaced by stereotypes of femininity. In other words it is mocking the men who want to have women be subservient sex machines with no purpose other than satisfying their mates needs. They are the villains of the piece but somehow in 1975, there were people who did not see this, amazing how ideological blinders can prevent you from recognizing an ally. 

Author and playwright Ira Levin had a big hit when his novel "Rosemary's Baby"   was adapted and filmed by Roman Polanski. No doubt the makers of this film had a similar goal of making a modern gothic horror story into a money making machine. The returns however were modest at best and it is the cultural impact that makes the movie memorable. the phrase "Stepford Wife" immediately produces an image of a docile, attractive, robotic perfectionist and the connotative meaning is all too well known, even by people who have never read the book or seen the movie (including the execrable 2004 remake/reinvention).  Regardless of the controversy or the lack of box office muscle, the film has managed to worm it's way into the culture and influence our thinking about gender roles ever since.

As a movie, this would definitely be a slow burn which is typical of the 1970s and one of the reasons that those movies can be appealing. We get introduced to characters before we get thrown into the plot. We see how Katherine Ross as the protagonist Joanna, slowly realizes that something is amiss. We understand because of her career ambitions and uncertainty about having relocated to Stepford, that the threat is to her being not just to her physical manifestation. As I watched the friendship she develops with Bobbie, played deliciously by Paula Prentiss, I cared about the women, even when I thought there were times that they were being annoying and self centered. The most arcane moment of the film comes when Joanna, Bobbie and their friend Charmaine (Tina Louise) make a deal to get the other local wives to participate in a consciousness raising meeting. Feminist ideas and relationship talk get sidetracked by the programming of the local women. 

The movement to a more horror driven "Body Snatchers" feel, comes in a couple of ways that were nicely set up. Charmaine's surrender of the tennis court that meant personal freedom for her, was a scary moment even though the only horrifying image is a Caterpillar Tractor pulling up some concrete. The Men's Association is visualized as an old dark house, and it is taboo to go there, even though the warning is the politest brush off a cop can give. We know that bad things are coming when Joanna's dog goes missing, and we simply see it in a cage in the bed of a truck driving down the road. These are the creepy moments that make the movie worth sitting through, even if you don't buy into all the social signaling that is going on. 

Screenwriter William Goldman was unhappy with changes made to his work. The well known story in Hollywood is that the Screenwriter has the least amount of power of the major players on a project. Somehow Goldman, had managed to block Brian DePalma as the director of the film and ironically, his replacement, Bryan Forbes, was the source of all of Goldman's subsequent unhappiness. Regardless of the power issues, Goldman's screenplay is a well paced reveal of the plot, with interesting characterizations along the way. Bobbie has the funniest lines, Joanna parry's with her husband and Diz, the head of the Men's Association who is played by Patrick O'Neal. You would expect a lot of gaslighting but Goldman let's the characters with bad intent, play things normally for the most part. The artist who is drawing details of Joanna's face doesn't try to hide them from her, he shares them with her. The stammering vocal designer has a logical reason for her to record his list of words. Her husband concedes that an ambulance did seem to go off in the wrong direction, instead of insisting she is nuts. He also suggests she get help, not at an inappropriate moment but at exactly the right time, he does not insist on a therapist of his choice but defers to her. It's during her first meeting with the therapist that the true horror gets stated, "If I am wrong, I'm insane... but if I'm right, it's even worse than if I was wrong."

The climax of the picture mixes some great moments with some unfortunately trite tropes. Joanna's confrontation with the changed Bobbie is a perfect moment, her running around in the rain and running from Diz in the Men's Association is just woman in jeopardy boiler plate writing. The visualization of the new Joanna is a great creepy moments that reveals the twist and it works without having to go into a lot of detail. Little shots of the town, the industry in the area and the jobs of the local men, were all we needed. An exposition dump is wisely avoided. 

On a side note, I find it particularly satisfying that Paula Prentis as Bobbie, is caught up in a world of artificial persons, since in real life she is married to Richard Benjamin, who two years before this movie, ran into the same problem in "Westworld".  

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Fathom Events/TCM Series

In preparation for this Fathom Event, I went back to an excellent post written my my friend Michael for his own blog three years ago. "An Appreciation: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" is well worth your time. There are nuances that I found really interesting and anybody who loves Butch and Sundance should love it. I also know that sitting somewhere on the other side of town, Michael was enjoying the same experience I was because there is no way he would miss an opportunity to see this wonderful film on the big screen.

I myself wrote about this film for the final post I did for "Fogs Movie Reviews", a site that I contributed to for several months before its ultimate retirement. That post was about the three great Westerns of 1969. Today I am going to focus exclusively on the George Roy Hill film. As Ben Mankiewicz said in his intro to the film today, it was the biggest film of 1969.That was an understatement, it made over a hundred million dollars and that was more than twice as much as any other film made that year. I first saw the movie with my friend Don Hayes when his family took me with them to a drive-in theater to see the flick, that was probably late 1969 or early 1970.

The secret of the films success is so easy to identify after watching the movie again, that it surprises me. There are three essential ingredients that make this movie sing. First is the star pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. In old Hollywood, they say you could feel the chemistry of stars in a film. Bogart and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, Flynn and DeHavilland all had charisma together that made their films fly. Here is a match between same gendered co-stars that had the same effect. Their only other outing together is the Academy Award winning "The Sting". That's a pretty good track record for casting. From the opening sequence, the two of them showed perfect comic timing, playing off of one another's facial expressions and body language. In the long sequence of the film where they are fleeing the pursuing super posse, they sweat and squirm and kibbutz with a real relationship that seems built on years together as outlaws. Mankiewicz mentioned some of the original choices for the film cast and I can't imagine Jack Lemmon as Butch but I could see Steve McQueen as Sundance. Lucky for us that we had to wait for that Newman/McQueen flick until 1974.

The direction of George Roy Hill is another piece to the success of the film. Hill has managed a number of films with a nostalgic feel, including "The Sting" and "The Great Waldo Pepper". He may not have been as stylish as other film directors but he had an eye and an ear that would let the past come to light and I think his creative use of music cues, sepia tones and timing of comic scenes accouts for a lot of the reasons that people can love this movie. The first five or ten minutes of the movie look like the nickelodeon feature that plays behind the titles. When the three main characters head off to Bolivia, they make a stop in NYC near the turn of the 20th century and the photo montage delivers enough information that we don't need the extended film sequence that had to be condensed for reasons of studio politics. The lighting choices for most of the night scenes feel very distinctive from other films at the time. Of curse he was aided by Conrad Hall's cinematography.

Finally, the most important ingredient in the whole concoction is the script by William Goldman. He had done extensive research, and for the spine of the story, the opening tag that declares "Most of What Follows is True" is mostly correct. Long time fans of "The Princess Bride" will be able to recognize the attitude of some of these characters. They are non-conformists with a wicked sense of humor and a streak of fatalism about them, for instance when Sundance turns his back on Butch as he kids that he is stealing Etta from him, he mutters "Take her".  That sounded like the Man in Black and Prince Humperdink all at once. Percy Garris mocking the two bandits turned payroll guards as Morons, is just priceless. Sheriff Bledsoe, played by Jeff Corey, speaks wisdom without the humor when he points out that times have changed and that the two outlaws have outlived their minor legend. Sundance complains about where they have landed in Bolivia, "this might be the garden spot of the whole country." The gallows humor is abundant and it is one of the most wonderful things that Goldman contributed to the story. Goldman wrote in one of his books that this was one of two real life stories that he thought were instantly compelling and cinematic. Somehow they managed to neuter "The Ghost and the Darkness" but thank heavens this story was brought to life by the right set of artists.

The movie will be playing two more times this coming Wednesday, I can't think of anything you might be doing that would be more enjoyable for two hours than taking in this film. Get thee to a TCM/Fathom participating theater and set yourself down for the best time to be had in 1969 and so far, 2016.