1980 Week: A Change of Seasons & The Last Married Couple in America & Loving Couples

          Turns out Blake Edwards’ hit sex comedy 10 (1979) presaged a string of Hollywood movies exploring the angst of middle-aged white men who consider marriage and success so inhibiting they must reaffirm their identities with extramarital sex, all under the guise of “finding themselves.” Yes, this is Me Decade entitlement taken to an absurd extreme—adultery as personal growth. Films about midlife crises were nothing new, of course, but something about this group of pictures reflects a collective reaction to body blows inflicted upon the institution of marriage during the Sexual Revolution. In fact, many of these flicks directly question the relevance of lifelong monogamous relationships. Yet despite all their with-it posturing, these pictures are also moralistic and old-fashioned. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

          Cowritten by Love Story’s Erich Segal, A Change of Seasons begins on a lurid note—nubile coed Lindsey Rutledge (Bo Derek) repeatedly emerges from the bubbling water of a hot tub, her long hair flailing and her pert breasts glistening in slow motion. What better illustration of the fantasy element coursing through this subgenre’s veins? The fellow in the hot tub with Bo is graying college professor Adam Evans (Anthony Hopkins). Later, Adam’s wife, Karyn (Shirley MacLaine), correctly guesses that he’s having an affair. He seems perplexed that she’s upset, offering idiotic remarks such as the following: “Men are different—our needs are more baroque.” Karyn responds by taking a lover of her own, freespirited handyman Pete Lachapelle (Michael Brandon). The two couples take a vacation together, and the trip is staged like a watered-down version of French farce, complete with the surprise appearances of new characters at awkward moments. Notwithstanding the spicy opening sequence, A Change of Seasons is all talk, with the cast spewing endless psychobabble about Oedipal issues and such, and the quasi-feminist ending is but one of many false notes. Costar Mary Beth Hurt lands a few jokes as the flummoxed daughter of philandering parents, and Brandon has a nice moment of pathos revealing his character’s overwrought backstory, but A Change of Seasons is ultimately just a lot of navel-gazing superficiality set to sickly-sweet music by Henry Mancini and a slew of awful songs. A baroque-en record, if you will.

          The Last Married Couple in America proceeds from a stronger comic premise and mostly avoids melodrama, but it’s not much better as a cinematic experience. George Segal and Natalie Wood play Jeff and Mari Thompson, an affluent Los Angeles couple who, as the title suggests, become exceptions to the rule as all of their friends divorce. Predictably, Jeff and Mari stray from each other, although the reasons why are neither clear nor convincing. After all, they’re still so hot for each other that at one point, they get hassled by police for making out in their car. Apparently the issue has to do with boredom, peer pressure, and the fact that Jeff has become a fuddy-duddy—somewhat hard to believe seeing as how he married an artist. (Mari is a sculptor.) In a sign of the movie’s desperation to generate hard-punchline jokes, the filmmakers include a pointless subplot about Walter (Dom DeLuise), a friend of the Thompsons who becomes a porn star. This leads to a “wild” party featuring adult-film actors and hookers, but rarely will you witness a tamer depiction of debauchery. Only the bits with Bob Dishy as a sleazy lawyer who seduces divorcées are amusing, simply because Dishy commits so wholeheartedly to his role.

          Loving Couples has echoes of A Change of Seasons, and not just because Shirley MacLaine costars—it’s another story about spouses attempting to accommodate each other’s infidelities. This time, the wife is the first to wander. In the opening scene, Dr. Evelyn Kirby (MacLaine) rides a horse and catches the eye of young stud Greg Plunkett (Stephen Collins) as he drives alongside a horse trail. He crashes his car but suffers only minor injuries, so his recovery provides an opportunity for wooing Evelyn. After these two begin sleeping together, Greg’s hot girlfriend, Stephanie Beck (Susan Sarandon), breaks the news to Evelyn’s husband, self-absorbed Dr. Walter Kirby (James Coburn). Naturally, Walter responds by commencing a fling with Stephanie. Once the truth outs, the Kirbys separate and move in with their young lovers. Complications ensue. Featuring a threadbare storyline and noxious montages, Loving Couples is perhaps the most cynical of these films, playing the destruction of relationships for lighthearted humor.

          Quite frankly, however, there’s a bit of nihilism in all of these pictures. By abandoning their principles for cheap thrills, the spouses in these films embrace a sort of spiritual nothingness. In that sense, perhaps even more disquieting than asking what these films say about their era is asking whether the filmmakers recognized the obligation—or even the opportunity—to make any sort of statement whatsoever. One more sign, perhaps, that it was just as well the ’70s were over. As a footnote, while it’s tempting to lump the 1980 Canada/U.S. coproduction Middle Age Crazy into the same category as these pictures, Middle Age Crazy casts a wider thematic net, treating adultery as a symptom of rampant consumerism. Even though it’s a weak film, Middle Age Crazy is a damn sight more thoughtful than any of these vapid flicks.

A Change of Seasons: FUNKY

The Last Married Couple in America: FUNKY

Loving Couples: FUNKY

The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972)

          Released a year before The Exorcist (1973), this intense thriller offers a much different approach to similar subject matter. Virtually no special effects were used for The Possession of Joel Delaney, and the spirit inhabiting the title character belongs not to a demon but to a person. Elegantly photographed, intelligently written, and filled with credible performances, The Possession of Joel Delaney treats its outlandish storyline with respect—so even though the film isn’t especially frightening, it makes for an immersive viewing experience. And while The Possession of Joel Delaney is not up to The Exorcist’s level, it’s still fun to play the contrast-and-compare game. The earlier picture is insinuating and restrained, while the latter is confrontational and spectacular. What both films share the deeply frightening notion of losing control over one’s soul.

          Set in New York City, The Possession of Joel Delaney revolves, as does The Exorcist, around a woman who watches in terror as a loved one succumbs to possession. In this case, the woman is Norah Benson (Shirley MacLaine), an affluent mother of two. (The children’s father doesn’t figure into the story.) Norah worries about her younger brother, Joel Delaney (Perry King), a handsome twentysomething who seems adrift in his life. Then an incident reveals that she has reason to worry—after Joel is arrested for attacking a man, Joel claims he has no memory of committing the crime. Norah arranges to get Joel freed from jail so long as he sees a therapist, but Joel insists he’s fine. Later, when a woman of his acquaintance is murdered, clues suggest an unhinged Joel was the killer. However, clues also point to an at-large Cuban immigrant. Conveniently, Norah has a Cuban maid, so the maid introduces Norah to the world of Santería and the possibility that the Cuban immigrant’s spirit entered Joel’s body.

           The Possession of Joel Delaney takes its time during the investigative phase of the narrative, allowing ambiguity to seep into the storytelling. MacLaine thrives here, showing how her character struggles to comprehend things way behind her normal experience. She’s also fierce and understandably terrified during the film’s creepy finale. King, appearing in his first movie, does well playing a willful young man whose first manifestations of possession seem like mere petulance to those around him. If there’s a big flaw to the film, besides some sketchy gore effects, it’s that neither King nor the filmmakers create much empathy for the Joel character—a greater sense of what is lost by the corruption of Joel’s soul would have deepened the film’s emotional impact. As is, the picture is tense and unnerving, but it lacks the pathos that made The Exorcist work. That said, The Possession of Joel Delaney is among the rare horror pictures that take themselves seriously without seeming ridiculous for doing so.

The Possession of Joel Delaney: GROOVY

Desperate Characters (1971)

          Juxtaposing the countless slights that unhappily married people inflict upon each other with a sociopolitical backdrop comprising petty crime and vandalism, the relentlessly downbeat character study Desperate Characters strives for a very specific mood of oppressive malaise. More often than not, producer-writer-director Frank D. Gilroy, who adapted the movie from a novel by Paula Fox, hits his target. From start to finish, Desperate Characters is intelligent, mature, and severe. The film also benefits from strong performances—something of a must since the cast includes only five major characters—and leading lady Shirley MacLaine demonstrates admirable restraint while portraying a woman at sea in her own life. That said, Gilroy’s dialogue borders on pretentiousness in nearly every scene, and the lack of tonal variety makes the picture a bit of a drag.

          The rarified vibe of Desperate Characters is epitomized by an early scene, during which someone innocently asks MacLaine’s character how she feels. “Fatigue, anemia,” she responds. “All the symptoms of irreversible loss.” It’s true that the people in Desperate Characters are all affluent, hyper-educated intellectuals. Still, one wishes that Gliroy—who earned fame as the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of The Subject Was Roses—had dug deeper into his bag of tricks, since the times when he relies on visual metaphors instead of simply articulating everything through dialogue add tremendously to the film.

          MacLaine and Kenneth Mars play Sophie and Otto Brentwood. She’s a book translator between projects who has too much time on her hands, and he’s a lawyer in the midst of a separation from his business partner. Over the course of the film, the couple deals with emotional distance, the lingering effects of an affair, startling encounters with gutter-level crime, and the heavily metaphorical presence of a bite from a stray cat that may or may not be rabid. Gilroy presents the film somewhat like a stage play, with extended dialogue scenes in tight settings. As a result, much of the picture is quite arch. When Otto declares, without any evidence to support his statement, that the aforementioned cat is not rabid, Sophie retorts: “The American form of wisdom—no room for doubt.” Otto: “Do you hate cats?” Sophie: “No, I hate you.” A very long vignette involving Sophie’s older friend and the friend’s love/hate dynamic with an ex-husband makes for even slower going.

          All in all, however, Desperate Characters basically works. At its best, the picture captures what happens when people fall out of sync with each other, and the visual motif of New York City in decline parallels the ennui pervading the story. It’s also interesting to see a solid dramatic performance from Mars, whom most moviegoers know for his comic work in Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1968) and Young Frankenstein (1974).

Desperate Characters: GROOVY

The Turning Point (1977)

          Making fun of The Turning Point requires little effort, since it’s such a consummate “chick flick” that it almost seems like it was designed to repel heterosexual males—the picture is a tearjerker about friendship in the ballet world starring two middle-aged women. And, indeed, the movie’s narrative is exactly as soapy as the premise might suggest. That said, The Turning Point is worthwhile in every important way. The acting is great, the cinematography is beautiful, the dancing is terrific, the direction is fluid, and the writing is intelligent. In short, The Turning Point is highbrow schmaltz—very much like The Way We Were (1973), another project that sprang from the pen of writer Arthur Laurents.

          The Turning Point tells the story of two lifelong friends who reconnect after a long period of estrangement. As young women, DeeDee (Shirley MacLaine) and Emma (Anne Bancroft) were both promising ballerinas in New York City. DeeDee chose family, hooking up with fellow dancer Wayne (Tom Skerritt) to set up housekeeping in Oklahoma, while Emma became a star. The picture begins with Emma arriving in Oklahoma for a performance, which occasions a reunion with her old friend after the show. As the women subsequently bond and clash, old differences manifest in harsh judgments about each other’s lives. The picture also tracks the ascendance of DeeDee’s daughter, Emilia (Leslie Browne), a promising young ballerina onto whom both older women project their dreams. The biggest subplot involves Emilia’s hot romance with Yuri, a ballet star played by (and modeled after) Mikhail Baryshnikov.

           The movie’s torrid narrative tackles such themes as age, ambition, betrayal, jealousy, regret, and, eventually, the gaining of wisdom through experience. Much of the film, of course, is devoted to dance, with long sequences of Bancroft faking her way through routines and of real-life dancers Baryshnikov and Browne strutting their stuff. Director Herbert Ross, himself a former dancer, clearly approached this film with great love—in fact, Browne was his godchild—and he generated both impassioned acting and lyrical imagery. Nobody phones in a performance for The Turning Point, and all four principal players—Bancroft, Baryshinkov, Browne, and MacLaine—received Oscar nominations. (The picture scored 11 nods in all, though it lost in every category.)

          Yet even with such exemplary work, The Turning Point is not one of those niche-interest movies that surpasses its inherent limitations by speaking to universal themes. Viewers who don’t dig ballet or scenes of women talking about their feelings will find little to love here. Even the picture’s breakout star, Baryshnikov, is a treat for the ladies, because he’s charismatic, muscular, and sensitive—an exotic hunk in tights. So perhaps it’s best to regard The Turning Point as a beautifully made throwback to the studio era, when such powerful actresses as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis regularly starred in what are now pejoratively referred to as “women’s pictures.”

The Turning Point: GROOVY

Being There (1979)

          After spending much of the ’70s starring in schlocky comedies, British funnyman Peter Sellers doggedly pursued the lead role in this adaptation of Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, recognizing a chance to deliver a subtle performance that would contrast his usual over-the-top silliness. The involvement of director Hal Ashby was an added incentive, since Ashby had scored with the offbeat comedies Harold and Maude (1971) and Shampoo (1975). Together, Ashby and Sellers present Kosinski’s social satire as a media-age fairy tale, to winning effect.
          When the story begins, Chance (Sellers) is the live-in gardener for a wealthy senior. Chance has never left his employer’s estate, and his main companion is television—Chance’s IQ is so low that he’s incapable of anything beyond bland remarks and mundane tasks. After his employer dies, lawyers inform a confused Chance that he must leave the estate, so he’s forced to explore the outside world for the first time in his life. Walking the streets of Washington, D.C., in a hand-be-down suit, Chance looks like a man of wealth and power though he’s actually a homeless simpleton.
           By the time night falls, Chance is bewildered and hungry, so he walks right into the path of a town car belonging to Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), the wife of an elderly but super-wealthy tycoon named Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas). Accepting an invitation to receive care from the Rand family physician (Richard Dysart), Chance becomes an unexpected but welcome houseguest.
           The comic premise of Being There is that modern Americans are so narcissistic they only hear what they want to hear. Thus, whenever Chance makes childlike comments about the only thing he knows, gardening, the Rands perceive him as a guru delivering wisdom through cryptic metaphors. Taking the contrivance to a wonderfully farcical extreme, the story reveals that Rand has the ear of the U.S. president (Jack Warden), and shows the president falling under Chance’s spell. The strange and surprising paths the narrative follows thereafter are better discovered than discussed, but suffice to say the filmmakers gracefully advance from an outlandish premise to a poetic ending.

          Being There is not without its flaws, since the movie is paced quite slowly and the tone is precious (lots of tasteful classical music played over painterly shots of the lavish Rand estate). The movie also walks a fine line by asking viewers to accept the absurd concept of Chance becoming an important national figure, and also asking viewers to empathize with Chance’s plight as a lost little boy. Is he a metaphor or a character?

          Notwithstanding these issues, Ashby creates a wonderful framework for the film’s rich performances. Dysart and David Clennon (as a litigator who suspects the truth about Chance) leaven oiliness with sincerity, while Warden energizes his scenes with amiable bluster. MacLaine is charming and funny as the woman who transposes her fantasies onto Chance, and Douglas earned an Academy Award for his sly turn as an aging tycoon with an eye on his legacy. As for Sellers, the impressive thing about his performance is how little he actually does onscreen; given the frenetic nature of his usual comedy acting, it’s wild to see him pull back completely.

Being There: RIGHT ON

Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)

          Picking apart the logic of the offbeat Western action-comedy Two Mules for Sister Sara would take little effort, but since the picture never aspires to be anything except Hollywood hogwash, quibbling seems pointless. Clint Eastwood plays Hogan, a gunslinger wandering through Mexico. He stumbles across a nun named Sara (Shirley MacLaine), who’s being assaulted by a gang of thugs. After rescuing her, Hogan is conflicted by his attraction to the woman and his respect for her vows, so he reluctantly agrees to escort her to safety. He soon discovers, however, that she’s part of a guerilla force rebelling against French occupation of the region, so Hogan is inadvertently drawn into dangerous political intrigue. Thus begins a contrived but enjoyable odyssey involving an impregnable fortress, superstitious Indians, violent rebels, and various other action-flick tropes.

          The joke of the movie is that Sara uses her wiles to manipulate Hogan even though she’s betrothed to Jesus, so there’s a bickering It Happened One Night quality to Eastwood’s interactions with MacLaine. Is their dynamic believable? Not even for a minute, but who cares? Eastwood is churlish and rugged, while MacLaine is bawdy and sexy, so they mesh well. In fact, watching Two Mules for Sister Sara reveals what a shame it was that Eastwood mostly avoided going head-to-head with strong women in later movies; it wasn’t until he costarred with Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County a quarter-century later that Eastwood tackled another role this purely romantic in nature.

          As written by the manly-man duo of Budd Boetticher and Albert Maltz, and as directed by Eastwood’s mentor in no-nonsense cinema, Don Siegel, Two Mules for Sister Sara delivers the popcorn-movie goods from start to finish, even though it’s bit fleshier than Siegel’s usual efforts, sprawling over 116 minutes. (The extra screen time comes, in part, from an overly long and overly violent climax.) Nonetheless, the picture’s problems related to logic and tone don’t change the fact that Two Mules for Sister Sara is solid escapist entertainment. For instance, why question the way MacLaine complements her nun’s habit with thick mascara when she looks so great that it’s easy to see how she wraps Eastwood around her rosary-clenching fingers?

Two Mules for Sister Sara: FUNKY