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The Pumpkin Eater

1964, Movie, NR, 118 mins

The Pumpkin Eater: Review

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Bancroft, in an Oscar-nominated performance, plays a twice-married mother of six. She divorces her second husband (Johnson) and takes up with Finch, a highly successful screenwriter. The two marry; it seems like a perfect marriage until Bancroft realizes her philandering husband will never buckle down to her notions of marital fidelity. She gives birth to her seventh child and suffers a nervous breakdown. This, along with an encounter with an unbalanced woman at her hairdresser's, sends Bancroft to a psychiatrist (Porter). He is not much help. Bancroft's father dies, and she discovers that she is once more expecting a baby. She refuses to accompany Finch to a film location in Morocco but agrees to his arguments for sterilization. Later she runs into Mason, a man who once made a pass at her. Mason reveals that Finch has been having an affair with his wife (Gray), who is now expecting a child. In an ugly scene Bancroft confronts Finch and returns to Johnson. After she spends the night with her former husband, Johnson gets a phone call from old-friend Finch, whose father has just died. Bancroft goes to the funeral, but Finch pretends not to notice her. As she chases him, she slips and falls in the mud. Demoralized once more, she goes to their unfinished country house and spends the night alone. In the morning she wakes to the sound of her children as Finch leads them up a hill. Bancroft resigns herself to life, for good or ill, with the man. This is a fine film, encompassing the joys and tragedies of life: birth and death, marriage and divorce, love and hate. The leads give their characters life. They seem to be real people on the screen, not actors in a drama. Bancroft lends her role real depth, switching moods with eerie and wonderful believability. Mason, in a small supporting role, is nothing short of excellent. The script, by noted playwright Pinter, is complex and painful but often exhibits a good sense of the comic as well. The direction, slow and even-handed, allows the story to develop at its own pace, gradually building in speed as the story's intensity grows. This is a fine and sensitive work, a truthful portrait of human foibles and complexities. The film was charismatic character-actor Hardwicke's final one; he died the year of its release. leave a comment
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