The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

[kingrat]

In The Pumpkin Eater (1964) Anne Bancroft wants two incompatible things: her role as mother of a large number of children and her passion for a film writer (Peter Finch). Because this is a film adapted by Harold Pinter (from a novel by Penelope Mortimer), this central matter is never treated directly. Bancroft and Finch meet while she's married to her second husband (Richard Johnson), then she's suddenly with Finch and her children moving into a new house. If you can accept that you're shut out from much that you'd like to know about the main character, The Pumpkin Eater has many pleasures to offer.

As in many British films of this era, the acting is very good. I don't know how our British friends feel about Anne Bancroft's performance as an Englishwoman, but I enjoyed her considerably. Peter Finch is good in everything (no, wait, there's I Thank a Fool), and supporting performers include James Mason; Gerald Sim, familiar from many Bryan Forbes films, in a bit part as a party guest; a hilarious Maggie Smith as a young girl infatuated with Finch; and Yootha Joyce as the woman you do not want to be seated next to at the beauty parlor. Harold Pinter made a career, and a fortune, by crafting dialogue that makes skillful use of banalities, repetitions, contradictions, and pauses, and Maggie Smith, especially, makes well-written lines even better. Director Jack Clayton does a superb job of getting natural performances from all the children. Not one of the children has a moment that seems stagy or self-conscious.

Two more stars of the film must be mentioned: Georges Delarue, who wrote a spare, wonderful score with a lovely main theme, and Oswald Morris, one of my favorite black and white cinematographers. Virtually every shot of the film is imaginatively framed and beautifully lit. The digitized print is so good that you know this is how Clayton and Morris wanted their film to look. If, like me, you've never thought of Anne Bancroft as a great camera subject, you might change your mind. Morris knows exactly how to photograph her.

In retrospect, The Pumpkin Eater, especially in the scene where Anne Bancroft has a breakdown in Harrods, seems a forerunner of films like Diary of a Mad Housewife and An Unmarried Woman. Has anyone else seen the film recently, or do you have vivid memories of it?

[JackFavell]

Agggh! it's a harrowing movie to watch, but I have to agree with your assessment. Don't watch this on a bad day. Or maybe it's good to watch if you are really blue, because it will make your life look so good to you!

The acting is what keeps me coming back to this movie when I walk in on it. I have never purposefully watched it. I admit, though, that it sucks me in on the strength of the performances and the stunning cinematography. It's the type of movie where you really can't distinguish the actor from the role - if I saw Peter Finch today, I would probably sock him in the jaw, just because of this movie. And James Mason, too.

[charliechaplinfan]

I just reviewed this on our movies thread, here's what I wrote because I was puzzled by it,

I watched The Pumpkineater a few days ago, I was blown away by the story and performances. Does anyone know the book this film was based on? Was it a bestseller at the time? I felt the character portrayed by Anne Bancroft at odds with her image, surely a mother of so many could not look so coiffured and styled? Perhaps it's part of the point, her father had some money and her husband led the kind of life that could give her a relief from her brood. Yet she didn't want it, it made her unhappy yet she sees a psychiatrist at her husbands behest. I was puzzled as to whether she wanted to constantly reproduce or was it some crazy hormones at play. What a terrible betrayal by her husband who encouraged her to abort and be sterlised then got someone else pregnant. Or was the James Mason character just imagining an affair? I forgot what great actor Peter Finch was, James Mason in a small but memorable part, Yoothe Joyce, the woman in the hairdressers later to find fame in George and Mildred, as a woman also struggling with a metal illness, a frightening mirror image? Anne Bancroft gave a believable performance as a woman on the edge of despair, madness, sadness at one minute to normality, happiness and joyful motherhood.

I think because there is so much not mentioned about our principals, I absolutely loved it though, I didn't find it depressing rather a refreshing look at mental/hormonal imbalance, something that possibly wasn't discussed much in those days, women just got on with it or got prescribed meds to make them artifically happy. Now I'm thinking of the Rolling Stones song 'Mother's Little Helper'. I do think her desire for more and more children is a desire driven by either something in her past, out of control hormones or mental illness that results in her breakdown. I don't feel quite as badly about Finch's character as you did Wendy, he deserved his beating, what he did was unforgiveable but I feel he was committed to her and her brood and that was where he wanted to be but found the ups and downs of her life difficult to deal with, he was dreadfully cruel though and compounded it by leaving heer at his father's funeral.

British film at it's best.

[JackFavell]

I must be stupid or single minded, or maybe I missed something at the beginning.... but she didn't seem like she had a clinical psychological problem to me. I thought she was just an earth mother who really was happiest with a lot of kids around, and wanted a husband who actually liked children. I thought she was torn between pleasing him and having kids or doing what made her happy. I did think the coiffed and made up woman was at odds with the earthy, fun loving woman underneath... I think he thought it would all be fun and games and sophistication when they met, but that was not what she wanted. I thought the movie was about women subverting themselves so completely for a man that it destroyed them. She never could come to grips with what SHE herself wanted.

[kingrat]

The problem, I think, is that Harold Pinter was not capable of writing a direct, linear screenplay, and thus the story may be more confusing than satisfyingly ambiguous. I see things similarly to JF: Anne Bancroft is playing a woman who loves motherhood, who finds the role of a mother more satisfying than anything else in the world. In most eras no one would find anything unusual about this. However, in the modern world people begin to look askance at this kind of woman. Trying to please the man she loves leads to emotional devastation.

On either imdb or amazon there's a review from a woman who says this is her favorite film and that she's seen it 60 (? some large number) times. She's a braver soul than I am.

[JackFavell]

Maybe she is the one with the clinical depression.

[charliechaplinfan]

I'm unsure as to whether the root of her problems is the fact that her wants ie her large brood of children are at odds with that of her husband and that that causes a breakdown or if she has a psycological need to keep reproducing, it's like an appetite that can't be filled. Perhaps I'm looking at it too deeply, or perhaps I'm putting into the story something that is happening to one of the Mums at school, quite simply she has a baby and immediately tries again and doesn't know what she will do when she's unable to reproduce, then there's me who feels it's a wonder to have two. I digress, I think as viewers we aren't allowed to understand her background, she looked more of the earth mother when she was with her previous husband who did love her, yet she moved on. I accept that it was the strength of attraction between the two that caused them to commit and kept them together. Yet why does she unravel in the first place? Why is she so grateful that she's been set free from childbearing? That made Peter Finch's character a little more palatable to me, I felt she'd been a slave to her body and he helped give he courage to set her free. I will admit to watching whilst I was coping with the holiday ironing but I was gripped and didn't feel that my attention was swayed. I feel there is a lot there and I think I'll look at the library to hire the book. Then I can find out what the author intended.

Am I the only one who feels lulled back into a simpler world when I watch these 60s British movies? I think it's because I used to love pouring over my Mums old photos which were predominantly 50s and 60s black and white and hearing about the good old days, so automatically when I watch a movie from this period I'm taken back to time that has a rose coloured glow to it even when the message isn't a joyful one.

[JackFavell]

The sixties in movies like this one remind me of my mom, who dressed beautifully, like Jackie Kennedy. I have fond memories of many of her dresses. She wore beautiful high heels, which unfortunately gave her horrible foot problems that made her almost unable to walk as she grew older.

[charliechaplinfan]

My mother's feet are grotesque and misshapen for the same reasons. She had lovely dresses, she could make her own from a pattern and her auntie could look at a dress and make her own copy. That is clever to me, it's the time of year for sewing labels onto school uniform, that I can manage but not much else. I've asked Mum to teach me but I don't think she knows how, it's second nature to her but to try to explain to me, something gets lost in the translation. I can't see me ever running up a new dress but I'd love to be able to take clothes in in a way that doesn't look amateurish.

[JackFavell]

Sewing is such a lost art. My mom could run up dresses in a day or two, she was always so stylish without being in the least ostentatious. She had a knack for sewing and I think she took it for granted...she never thought about it as a skill. We always had beautiful dresses.

I cannot make head or tails out of a sewing pattern and my MIL is a seamstress... she will tell me exact instructions, but somehow, I can't seem to understand the measuring and the turning things inside out - something gets lost in translation.

[charliechaplinfan]

It's not just me then, that's good to know. Maybe, when I feel up to it I'll take a needlework course, it's something I would be really pleased about if I could master the art.

[knitwit45]

My grandmother was a skilled seamstress for a very elegant (read expensive) store in KC. She made my Easter dresses, prom dresses, and my beautiful wedding gown. Her talents bypassed my mother, and landed on me in very diluted form. I made lots of things in the 60's - granny dresses, tank tops, shorts, etc. Then the skill and the interest ran out. Now, if I use my sewing machine 2 times a year, I'm surprised!

[JackFavell]

You are lucky that your brain works for sewing... I sat for half an hour while my MIL explained to me how to make a pillow with french seams. I'm still confused.

[charliechaplinfan]

I think we were seperated at birth Wendy, I can usually take most things in but sewing, I'd have more chance trying to understand Chinese.

[JackFavell]

Ha ha! That's it exactly!