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Post by topbilled on Jan 15, 2024 14:41:52 GMT
TEA AND SYMPATHY, I considered posting this under teen issues-it fits both teen and feminist. I saw the trailer for this film on TCM this a.m. The trailer declares the subject can be told on film if done with good taste. Hmmm. Do you think it was done in good taste or in the usual Hollywood veiled references to pass the code of the day? We discussed this film elsewhere. Here are my additional questions: What was considered feminist at that time-that a woman sacrifices herself for a greater good or did society condemn her for shocking behavior? I don't think women of the day would sympathize much with the Deborah Kerr character-my mother didn't. Would the John Kerr character in that time have been universally reviled? Wasn't there the equivalent of the nerd group? And Erickson's role as the coach. Was he gay, but didn't realize it? Note in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, Burton says if the Grayson Hall character ever discovered she was lesbian, it would destroy her. Or did the coach believe as some men did at the time, maybe now too, that having sex with a woman made a man weak? I don't think TEA AND SYMPATHY was done in good taste. I think it was done skirting the issues of the story in order to appeal to a broader audience.
We screened this film live one Sunday. Fading Fast selected it. I won't go into the many issues I have with the film (and the original play). But I will say that the production code was not the main problem, nor was the problem trying to appeal to the audience. I think it's the type of story that will never appeal to everyone, no matter how artistically done it is. Even if they had been able to adapt it faithfully to the screen, the story is on so many levels irresponsible.
Anyway, I sense I am about to start speechifying. So I will stop. LOL |
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Post by topbilled on Jan 15, 2024 15:45:51 GMT
I want to add that I am not criticizing Fading Fast for selecting TEA AND SYMPATHY. He sees the film in a more positive light than I do.
That is part of what makes a film discussion board so interesting. We all have different take-aways when watching the classics.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 15, 2024 18:27:51 GMT
I guess that this one would qualify as feminist melodrama, since the woman and her troubles are front and center. I first saw Poor Cow (1967) when it was released because I was a huge Donovan fan and he did some songs for the movie. It came when British filmmaking was still skewed toward so-called "kitchen sink" dramas and this one also has a gritty, almost despairing feel to it, although the woman herself has an optimistic tendency in spite of all the rotten stuff which gets thrown her way. She married young and had a kid, but her husband was abusive and then went to prison after a robbery. She spends time with his friend (Terrence Stamp) and they start to bond, including her young son, but the law catches up with him too and he's imprisoned as well. She drifts into a kind of semi-prostitution to support herself but when her husband is released she lives with him again, with the same abuse and child neglect on his part. She still harbors hopes for a relationship with the friend who went to prison and the movie ends with her in that limbo. I haven't seen it since and I've never seen it scheduled anywhere, but I still think of it from time to time, mainly because of the shining performance of the actress, Carol White. I've never seen her in anything else, but I still remember this one.  |
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Post by kims on Jan 16, 2024 1:17:59 GMT
What does the title POOR COW mean?
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Post by topbilled on Jan 16, 2024 5:42:39 GMT
What does the title POOR COW mean? |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 16, 2024 18:37:29 GMT
What does the title POOR COW mean? Yes, and the irony is that she's the only one with any kind of vision of what her life should be like, even though there's so much stacked against her. When your options are dumb there's a good chance you'll do dumb things. There's also definitely a level of misogyny when it's used by a man to describe a woman. |
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Post by kims on Jan 16, 2024 23:46:15 GMT
Did women go see POOR COW? It's insulting in America for a woman to be called a cow also. That's why I thought there must be some other meaning to the title, but no. I would not be convinced to see the film. Your description of the film reminds me too much of real life in a period of my life. I pass on this one.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jan 17, 2024 0:26:50 GMT
Did women go see POOR COW? It's insulting in America for a woman to be called a cow also. That's why I thought there must be some other meaning to the title, but no. I would not be convinced to see the film. Your description of the film reminds me too much of real life in a period of my life. I pass on this one. I'm not sure you could see it anyway; as I said I've never seen it scheduled and I've looked at movie schedules a lot over the years, though it's probably been available on some form of home video. I'm not sure how I'd feel about seeing it now either. It may not have been shown much in this country and if it was it may have been more in "art houses". The Donovan songs may have helped sell it because he was at the height of his popularity at the time. I have no idea whether women went to see it, but it was based on a novel written by a woman and I think it was a case of a woman taking back a pejorative label which had been used against women and trying to neutralize it, the way "queer" has been reappropriated over the years by gay men and women. But I totally get what you're saying about it hitting too close to home and I'm sure that would be the case with many women. The thing which the movie had in its favor, at least as I remember it, was that she kept her spirit and her sense of identity in spite of being pulled in so many different directions by circumstance and by the men in her life. As I said before there's a sense of irony in the fact that the "poor cow" was the one who somehow kept herself together while the men around her self-destructed, so in that way I think it was truly feminist. |
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Post by topbilled on Jan 20, 2024 0:44:57 GMT
A copy of POOR COW can be viewed online...
here
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