A Delicate Balance (1973)

          Fun fact: When screenwriter Ernest Lehman earned an Oscar nomination for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), which was adapted from Edward Albee’s play of the same name, Albee was not amused. He lamented that all Lehman did was “typing” because the film incorporated so much text from the play. Perhaps that’s why Albee wrote the screenplays for the next two film adaptations of his own work, both of which were basically direct transpositions from stage to screen. Following the made-for-TV Zoo Story (1964), Albee helped bring his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Delicate Balance to movie theaters. Produced for the American Film Theatre and starring the venerable Katharine Hepburn, A Delicate Balance offers more suburban angst in the mode of Virginia Woolf. From start to finish, the movie is filled with sophisticated people unleashing fusillades of extravagant language to attack each other’s psyches. And while A Delicate Balance lacks the wow factor that Virginia Woolf achieved onscreen, it’s still a ferocious rumination on the anxieties of people whose luxurious lifestyles allow them to wallow in their entitled misery.

          Director Tony Richardson films the piece simply, letting his camera roam through the interiors of a grand house but often simply locking the camera down while masterful actors burn through lengthy exchanges and monologues. Albee’s verbal style is deliberately literary here, for even though he uses false starts and incomplete sentences to great effect, most of the play comprises perfectly crafted grammar tinged with sad poetry. As the character Claire remarks at one point, “We submerge our truths and have our sunsets on troubled waters.” Not exactly casual chit-chat.

          Hepburn and the great British actor Paul Scofield play Agnes and Tobias, wealthy New Englanders in late middle age. As bitter and caustic as they are with each other, Agnes and Tobias descend into outright hostility whenever they engage with their current houseguest, Claire (Kate Reid), Agnes’ alcoholic sister. Things get even worse when the couple’s best friends, neighbors Edna (Betsy Blair) and Harry (Joseph Cotten) show up unexpectedly one evening and announce they’re moving in with Agnes and Tobias because some unidentified fear has made their own home seem terrifying. And then Agnes and Tobias’ 36-year-old daughter, Julia (Lee Remick), arrives following the end of her fourth marriage, adding another set of emotional and psychological problems to the mix.

          A Delicate Balance explores many themes, including alienation, betrayal, detachment from reality, and the façades people create in order to tolerate life’s disappointments and indignities. Heavy drinking plays a role, as well. Characters talk about “silent, sad, disgusted love” and the “plague” that personal problems represent when introduced into new environments. Albee tackles this subject matter on a largely metaphorical level, with characters assaulting not just each other but also the qualities they represent. As Agnes says to Tobias in a particularly shrewish moment, “Rid yourself of the harridan—then you can run your mission, take out sainthood papers.”

          Whether all this gets to be a bit much is a matter of taste, though the quality of the piece is beyond reproach. Hepburn, Reid, and Remick incarnate the paradox of powerful women who make dubious life choices, while Cotten and Scofield portray emasculated men desperately trying to assert themselves. And while watching 133 minutes of humorless vitriol is not precisely fun, Albee’s extraordinary language and his keen insights make the experience rewarding intellectually, if perhaps not viscerally.

A Delicate Balance: GROOVY

Ned Kelly (1970)

          The first in a string of violent ’70s features about 19th-century Australian outlaws, this offbeat pseudo-Western is notable for featuring rock star Mick Jagger’s first starring role as an actor. (The same year this picture was released, he costarred with James Fox in the freaky psychodrama Performance, but he’s the sole protagonist of Ned Kelly.) Since Jagger was well on his way toward becoming a living legend in the rock world at the time Ned Kelly was made, there’s no way to avoid the impression that acting was a lark rather than a serious endeavor, and, indeed, his halfhearted performance drains the movie of vitality right from the first frames.

          Awkwardly wrapping his voice around an Irish accent that varies from scene to scene (when not disappearing altogether), Jagger seems like a kid playing with toy guns whenever he flits around the screen brandishing firearms or leading his outlaw mates into action. Worse, the legendary charisma that Jagger exudes onstage is mostly absent from Ned Kelly, so even bit players command greater attention simply by giving committed performances.

          In Jagger’s meager defense, it’s not as if Ned Kelly would have been a spectacular film even with a better leading man. Directed by journeyman Tony Richardson, whose films often boasted more intensity than discipline, Ned Kelly explores the trite subject matter of a working-class criminal whose exploits lift him to folk-hero status, and the movie romanticizes Kelly so unrelentingly that frog-throated country crooner Waylon Jennings appears on the soundtrack singing ballads about Kelly during the picture’s many montages. These fanciful elements clash with the movie’s grimy production design, suggesting that Richardson was unsure whether to celebrate, or merely document, his subject.

          As did the real Ned Kelly, Jagger’s character turns to horse thievery when paying work proves scarce, eventually enlisting members of his extended immigrant clan as cohorts in criminality. Most of the picture features dull and interchangeable scenes of Ned and the lads committing crimes and avoiding authorities, relishing their celebrity when they see that rewards for their capture have increased. The somewhat novel climax involves Ned’s gang fashioning handmade armor for a decisive standoff, and Richardson’s filmmaking gets energized in the final moments: The key scene of Jagger facing his enemies while encased in head-to-toe iron has a memorably claustrophobic vibe. However, the fact that the costume is more interesting than the actor inside the costume speaks volumes about why Ned Kelly is mediocre at best.

          FYI, several Australian movies were made about Ned Kelly prior to the ’70s, a low-rent comedy about the character was made in 1993 by Aussie comedian Yahoo Serious, and Heath Ledger starred in a big-budget 2003 flop that was also titled Ned Kelly.

Ned Kelly: FUNKY