Desperate Characters stars Shirley MacLaine and is written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy, the TV scribe and playwright of the Pulitzer Prize winner The Subject Was Roses. He also wrote and directed the wonderfully thought out but poorly executed From Noon 'Til Three. Roses was warmly received despite its relentless pessimism. Dysfunctional families were cultural news in 1968, and audiences were gratified to see actress Patricia Neal acting again after recovering from a series of catastrophic strokes.
In Desperate Characters the misery is relentless. Shirley MacLaine plays the part of an emotionally brutalized woman reeling from the casual cruelties of a New York City interpreted as an outer circle of Hell. Gilroy populates the picture with a dozen excellent and unfamiliar stage actors, but the film is a real downer, an intelligent but unrewarding slice of despair. The well-crafted curiosity was a theater owner's worst nightmare, a picture that inspires mass walkouts.
Frankly, that fact alone should be reason enough to see it.
Synopsis: Brooklyn housewife Sophie Bentwood (Shirley MacLaine) is collapsing into a state of emotional anxiety. Her lawyer husband Otto (Kenneth Mars) is obsessed with work problems and holds her in low esteem. Their conversations are full of unfinished thoughts and suppressed resentments and when they disagree he tells her to "shut up." Their small circle of friends is also collapsing. Young people, strangers and even friends seem quietly contemptuous of Sophie, and she notices that several either ignore her or refuse to acknowledge her attempts at conversation. Sophie visits old friends Claire (Sada Thompson) and Leon (Jack Somack), former activist lovers who have broken up, even though he visits regularly. Sophie cannot bear it when they argue, and has to leave. She spends the small hours of the morning listening to the complaints of her husband's ex- law partner Mike Holstein (Chris Gampel). The weekend is tense because Sophie's been bitten by a stray cat that might be rabid. The Bentwoods try to relieve the pressure by visiting their Summer House, only to find that strangers have broken in and created a big mess. The picnic ends in emotional disaster when Otto takes out his frustrations by 'making love' to Sophie -- totally against her will.
Jack Valenti's rating system saw a number of satires bemoaning the collapse of living conditions in big cities. The Out-Of-Towners was an unfunny comedy about tourists brought low by dozens of petty indignities, and the anarchic Little Murders tried to make a black comedy out of dog dirt on the sidewalks and families that release their anxieties by shooting pedestrians from their windows. Neil Simon and Jules Feiffer had widely diverging aims but the result was the same -- audiences came out of their movies more disturbed than when they went in.
The image of a smiling Shirley MacLaine on the cover of this DVD must come from some universe other than that of Desperate Characters; the original poster was a grainy B&W photo of two isolated figures on a sidewalk. Writer-director Frank Gilroy seems to be reaching for a cosmic notion of human misery. Sophie Bentwood is a fairly affluent New Yorker who won't automatically elicit sympathy. But ugly social pressures brought on by the breakup of her insensitive husband's law partnership have left Sophie alienated and hurt. Every personal encounter leaves Sophie feeling as if she's committed some grave offense, but nobody will tell her what she's done. It's Kafka in Queens.
The entire narrative basically repeats the same situation: hoping for a meaningful human contact, meek Sophie puts out a pitiful feeler only to suffer yet another affront to her crumbling spirit. Husband Otto is a closed-off drudge who takes her existence almost totally for granted. Sophie goes on a long walk in the middle of the night with her husband's ex-partner, but he mostly expects her to support his wounded ego. She seeks solace with old friends, and cannot bear the tension when the couple launches into a fight. Many of the situations remind us of the oppressive, soul-crushing cruelties in the stories cof James Joyce's Dubliners. Acquaintances and shopkeepers are intolerably rude, as if Sophie didn't merit simple courtesy. An old friend in the street ignores Sophie friendly greeting, and then exits rolling her eyes, as if Sophie had become a social untouchable.
In an altogether too symbolic development, Sophie reaches out for affection to a neighborhood cat, and gets a nasty scratch for her trouble. For the entire weekend, people remark about the scratch, as if she's some idiot who doesn't know how to care for herself.
It goes without saying that the sun never shines in this part of New York. Nowhere is there to be found a truly sincere human relationship. The Bentwood's cozy row house fronts on a street frequented by derelicts and sleazes, one of which intimidates $20 from Otto with a cheap con game. The crowning indignity arrives when Otto and Sophie discover that their summer place has been ransacked. Otto becomes furious when the duplicitous watchman and the local police claim that the place was intact just the day before, implying that the vandalism is Otto's fault. The already angry Otto takes out his rage on the easiest target around: Sophie. What was meant to be a healing weekend turns brutal when Otto more or less rapes his own wife.
Like Diary of a Mad Housewife, Desperate Characters must be the antithesis of a Date Flick; I can't imagine a marginal relationship surviving the experience of a trip to this picture. Yes, it's emotionally honest and Shirley MacLaine can be proud of her good performance. She gets excellent support from Kenneth Mars (who we're most used to seeing in silly comedies), Sada Thompson, Chris Gampel, Mary Alan Hokanson, Rose Gregorio and the talented Michael Higgins, of Barbara Loden's Wanda and Horton Foote's On Valentine's Day and Courtship. Carol Kane has a brief bit as a rude young woman. This one's for students of quality acting, sociologists and psychiatric specialists. Placed in the hands of someone suffering from depression, it could be a dangerous weapon.
Legend Films presents Desperate Characters in a good but not exceptional transfer that probably reflects the look of the original film. The many dark interiors and dank colors seem designed to smother joy in its cradle; Sophie's attractive house is a claustrophobic trap. The audio is functional and the dialogue clear, and the disc has no extras. Perhaps the movie needed a song, like Judy Collins' haunting Who Knows Where the Time Goes in The Subject Was Roses;, or From Noon Til' Three's darkly pragmatic love ballad Hello and Goodbye by Elmer Bernstein and Alan and Marilyn Bergman. I don't think Ted Nugent's Cat Scratch Fever will do.
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by Glenn Erickson
