Joanne Woodward portrays Rita Walden, an aging New York wife/mother/daughter struggling with her place in a world that seems at once dull and unnavigable. She is a dissatisfied, unhappy person, combative with the people in her life her grown daughter, mother and sister. Martin Balsam is Harry, her oculist husband, a mild man, patient with his wife's chronic bitterness. When Rita's mother (Sylvia Sidney) dies unexpectedly, Rita falls headlong into a midlife crisis that recalls many painful memories of the past.
If the film title and its existential probing seem Bergmanesque, it's no accident. In one scene, Rita and her mother see a Bergman film together, Wild Strawberries (1957), in which the lead character, like Rita, faces his dawning mortality and begins to question his relationship with his family and the choices of his past. Like that character, Rita has frightening visions, mostly involving her adult son, who has fled to Amsterdam to be free of his parents' conventions and live with his boyfriend. Her regrets of how she's dealt with her son's homosexuality are a recurring theme in the film.
Eventually, perhaps spurred on by his wife's crisis, Harry begins to grapple with his own ghosts. On their trip to Europe, he revisits the site of the Battle of the Bulge and his traumatic experiences there. The visit unhinges him and it's this break in his normally steady demeanor that gives Rita a chance to comfort him for a change, to her benefit as well as his.
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams was written by Stewart Stern, who penned Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Rachel, Rachel (1968), another much-lauded role for Woodward, in which she also depicts a character having to come to terms with her lot in life. For Stern, who so exquisitely explored the angst of '50s youth in Rebel, Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams offered a chance to explore the anxieties of late middle age.
Director Gilbert Cates has worked primarily in television and is best known as a long-time producer of the Academy Awards®. His 1970 film, I Never Sang for My Father, another dissection of family relationships, earned three Oscar® nominations. He is the uncle of actress Phoebe Cates.
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams is a true reflection of an era when moviegoers were more patient with somber character studies. It was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar® for Woodward and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for Sidney. Woodward won the BAFTA for best actress, the New York Film Critics Circle Award and was nominated, along with Sidney and Balsam, for a Golden Globe.
Producer: Jack Brodsky
Director: Gilbert Cates
Screenplay: Stewart Stern
Cinematography: Gerald Hirschfeld
Music: Johnny Mandel
Film Editing: Sidney Katz
Cast: Joanne Woodward (Rita Walden), Martin Balsam (Harry Walden), Sylvia Sidney (Mrs. Pritchett), Tresa Hughes (Betty Goody), Dori Brenner (Anna), Ron Richards (Bobby Walden).
C-89m.
by Emily Soares
