lecinemadreams.blogspot.com
http://lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2011/02/the-stepford-wives-1975.html
THE STEPFORD WIVES 1975
Despite the fact that I was a pretty jumpy kid, I nevertheless LOVED to be scared at the movies. More to the point, I liked the idea of being scared. I had fun huddling in a dark moviehouse with my sisters; three shivering clumps of terror with knees drawn tight to our chins, peering timorously over fortress walls of raised sweaters. Unfortunately, I was also a very pensive and over-analytical kid with a habit of spoiling my own fun by taking what happened on the screen way too seriously. The first time I recall doing this was back in 1968 when, at age 11, I broke into tears watching Rosemary's Baby. It was during the scene where the deathly pale and thin Rosemary, fearful that her child is dying inside of her, first feels it kick. In the middle of her cluttered apartment (she and her husband have just had a Christmas party), left alone by her guiltily skittish husband on the pretext of cleaning up, she sits rocking back and forth with her arms hugging her pathetically tiny belly. The look on Mia Farrow's face is so heartbreakingly happy that it just tore me up inside. Most people harbor memories of "Rosemary's Baby" as a fun, thrill-ride of a scary movie (which it is), but I always remember how it struck as being so sad. Years later I had a similar experience with another adaptation of a Ira Levin thriller, "The Stepford Wives." Wellacted, suspenseful, and atmospherically creepy, I nevertheless left the theater feeling that the film was more poignantly sad than frightening.
"Daddy, I just saw a man carrying a naked lady." "Well, that's why we're moving to Stepford."
1/11
"The Stepford Wives" is a feminist nightmare about a city family (Katharine Ross, Peter Masterson) moving into a suburban Connecticut town populated by dull, boorish men who all have stunningly beautiful wives who live for nothing more than slavish domesticity and sexual servility. The ingeniousness of the plot lies in its wry awareness that this women's nightmare is the waking fantasy of a great many men and a cornerstone of the American Dream itself. By pitting repressive traditional values against a more liberated definition of women's role in society, Ira Levin fashions a nifty modern horror story out of contemporary sexual politics.
Katharine Ross as Joanna Eberhart
Paula Prentiss as Bobbie Markowe
Tina Louise as Charmaine Wimpiris
2/11
Peter Masterson as Walter Eberhart
Patrick O'Neal as Dale "Dis" Coba
Nanette Newman as Carol Van Sant
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM Films about the loss of one's identity (like Invasion of the Body Snatchers) only work when the film takes the time to develop the personalities of the protagonists in jeopardy. You can't be invested in the loss of something until the value of that thing is established. What I love about The Stepford Wives is how well it gets us to understand, identify with, and ultimately root for, the flawed humanity of Katharine Ross' character.
3/11
From the film's first frames we get a sense of her restless dissatisfaction and her longing for something more meaningful in her life beyond home and family. All the more tragic then that the very individuality she seeks to express is the one quality least valued in women in the town of Stepford.
Suburban Bliss: Dream House / Nightmare Life
In Stepford, the wives don't even exist on mailboxes
PERFORMANCES The casting of the main ladies of Stepford is flawless. The women are all such distinct, lively, and interesting characters that you feel the men of Stepford have to be nuts (they are) to want to replace them with bland automatons. Tina Louise is surprisingly vibrant and even a little touching in her brief role.
4/11
Paula Prentiss, always a personal favorite, almost walks off with the entire film. But it's Katharine Ross' show and she has never been shown off in a film to better effect. Hers is a deeply appealing, intelligent performance that is the genesis of the emotional impact of the unsettling dénouement.
Strange Things Afoot in Stepford
THE STUFF OF FANTASY I think it was a risky step for the filmmakers to have the women in Stepford speak to one another almost exclusively in TV commercial clichés. It's hilariously appropriate of course (the women in those commercials seem to operate on another plane of existence — they all derive a little too much joy from getting a floor clean or a stain out of a shirt), but it runs the risk of diluting the suspense. Happily, the film strikes just the right tone and unearths the eerie
5/11
subnormality that lies behind the pursuit of conventional perfection.
6/11
"We Stepford wives are busy, busy, busy!"
THE STUFF OF DREAMS As stated earlier, I like to think I enjoy being scared by movies, but that's just another way of saying I like to be engaged by them. I want a movie to draw me into its reality.
7/11
The Stepford Wives achieves this by emphasizing character and relationships over plot machinations. I think it's wonderful how well the film works despite the fact that we never really learn just how the men accomplish what they do (like the issue with the eyes). It's plenty scary just letting your imagination go where the film takes you. I think most good writers and directors will agree that detailed explanations and making sure everything is highlighted and accounted for isn't always necessary if you can successfully suspend disbelief just long enough to keep an audience off balance. Much of The Stepford Wives just wouldn't stand up to the kind of microscopic scrutiny of today's fandom culture, but the film works splendidly because its so well-constructed.
The Men's Association
Speaking of scary, I confess that once again, although the film has much to recommend it in the way of shocks (The
8/11
fireplace poker scene is so well edited I jump every time), for me, what always trumps the suspense is the tragedy. There's a scene late in the film where Ross (who longs for a career as a photographer) is showing her work to a New York gallery owner. Her eagerness to please and desperation to be acknowledged is palpable.
Gallery owner - "What is it you want from it all, do you know?"
Joanna -"I want... somewhere, someday, someone to look at something and say 'Hey, that reminds me of an Ingalls.' Ingalls was my maiden name. I guess I want to be remembered." Oh, gosh. That scene just breaks my heart...and all of a sudden I'm 11 years-old again.
"There'll be somebody with my name and she'll cook and clean like crazy, but she won't take pictures and she won't be me. She'll be like one of those robots in Disneyland."
9/11
BONUS MATERIAL A bit of twisted trivia: Katharine Ross' bathroom wallpaper which is seen briefly in the opening sequence of The Stepford Wives (a horrid kind of mustardcolored jungle print with leopards and flowers) shows up 38 years later in the film, Lovelace.
Top: 1975. With good reason as it turns out, Katharine Ross isn't looking forward to moving out of New York. Below; 2013. In Lovelace, the biographical film about 70s porn star Linda Lovelace, Linda's parents (Robert Patrick and Sharon Stone) watch their daughter on The Phil Donahue Show. An event placing the scene in 1980.
10/11
Copyright © Ken Anderson
About Ken Anderson LA-based writer and lifelong film enthusiast. You can read more of his essays on films of the ’60s & ‘70s at Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For.
11/11