Semiquincentennial Movie Project #5: The Stepford Wives

 

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

Week #(X): Connecticut-

 

 

The state of Connecticut was established on January 9, 1788. 

Details about Connecticut:

State bird: American robin

State flower: mountain laurel

State tree: white oak

Connecticut is the only state to have an officially designated state composer: Charles Ives. Although every state does have a state song, and some acknowledge the state song composers, none have a "state composer" designation.

Do you get annoyed with that 60 or 70 MPH speed limit? Blame Connecticut as it was the first state to establish a speed limit. Although be glad it progressed over the years. Originally the rural road limit was only 15 MPH... And while on the subject of cars, the first permanent license plate originated here.

Connecticut is the home of the origin of such things as the sewing machine and the Frisbee.

Famous names who claim Connecticut as their birthplace: Katherine Hepburn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Bolton, P. T. Barnum and our 43rd U.S. President, George W. Bush. 

 

 The Stepford Wives (1975): 

"Something strange is happening in the town of Stepford..." 

You know what the perfect wife would be? Someone who is docile, agreeable, a homebody, doesn't spend too much of hubby's money, in essence, that age-old male chauvinist idea of the perfect woman, whose only purpose is to stay "barefoot and pregnant". And it seems that the men of Stepford, Connecticut, are more lucky than the rest of the world in finding these ideal wives.

The Stepford Wives started out life as a novel by Ira Levin. Levin is the author who gave us Rosemary's Baby, A Kiss Before Dying, Sliver and The Boys from Brazil, all of which were made into great, or at least fairly good movies.  (Some may disagree whether Sliver was any good at all, but I like it...) Levin wrote 7 novels in his career and 6 of them were made into movies. That's 86% of his novel output that is on celluloid. (Eat your heart out, Stephen King). I just wish someone would tackle This Perfect Day, the only one that hasn't been made, and #2 on my list of favorites of his work.

The cache of talent involved doesn't stop with the author, however. The screenplay is credited to William Goldman (The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,  All the President's Men and Misery, among others.) Of course, director Bryan Forbes rewrote a lot of it, but Goldman's touch is still there. The cast included Katherine Ross in the headliner role of Joana Eberhart, with her husband played by Peter Masterson. (And here's an interesting tidbit. The part of one of their daughters, Kim, was played by Peter Masterson's real daughter, Mary Stuart Masterson, in her film debut.)

Tina Louise (Ginger on Gilligan's Island) and Franklin Cover (Tom Willis on The Jeffersons) were also among the supporting actors in the film. There could have been other big names involved. Diane Keaton, for instance, was approached to be the lead, but turned it down because her analyst didn't like it. (it may be overstated, but I think about at least 50% or more of Hollywood was in some sort of psycho-therapy in the 70's...)  Jean Seberg and Tuesday Weld were also considered.

The movie starts as Joanna Eberhart (Katherine Ross) and her husband, Walter (Peter Masterson) and their two daughters, Kim (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Amy (Ronny Sullivan) prepare to depart from New York City on their way to their new home in Stepford, Connecticut.  The trip is approached with varying degrees of attitude. Walter is enthusiastic about it (at one point he even gushes that "you don't even have to lock your doors in Stepford"). The kids are oblivious, since it's just another day, and probably just thinking about the new friends they'll make.

 

On the other hand, Joanna seems to be having a little apprehension. After all, moving to a small suburb from the hubbub of the big city affects her in more ways than one. For one thing, she is an artist (photographer), and the move will take her away from the artistic word in, say, Greenwich Village, or wherever she happens to do business.

To make things even more disconcerting for her, she finds that most of the women in Stepford are the exact opposite of her: they are more interested in being dedicated housewives, keeping clean kitchens and making exquisite meals, rather than being open to the feminist ideals that Joanna adheres to. And strange things happen; like when Carol Van Sant (Nanette Newman) takes a blow to the head in a traffic accident and Keeps repeating the same thing over and over again.

 

To make matter worse, there is a thriving social club in town, but it is strictly "men only", which is an affront to the radical feminist Joanna. One of things that stands out early in the picture is that Walter seems to be overly eager to cave in to his wife (to use a derogatory term; [expletive deleted]-whipped).

 

But he gradually gets his own backbone upright by joining this men's club, albeit to the objections of Joanna.  Joanna meets a neighbor, Bobbie (Paula Prentiss), who is like her a free-spirited feminist, and the two decide to start their own "women's club". But while Joanna and Bobbie, and another woman in town, Charmaine (Tina Louise), are receptive to the concept, the rest of the women fit into that dedicated housewife category. 

 

Bobbie

Charmaine

 

In fact, at their first meeting, although the feminist sector open up about their feelings on the male-dominated society in Stepford, the housewives delve into what the best product is to keep food from sticking to the pan when baking. (It all comes off like a TV commercial...)

 

Joanna and Bobbie start to get suspicious when Charmaine suddenly turns into one those dedicated housewives. Initially Bobbie thinks there must be something in the water and takes samples to a science lab, but they find it's nothing but ordinary tap water. And then, somewhere along the way, Bobbie also turns into one of those dedicated housewives. Joanna decides she's had enough, and if Walter won't pack up and leave Stepford, then she will take the kids and leave herself. 

 

The roadblock to that occurs when Walter, for some reason, has sent the kids off, so he can have a quiet weekend with Joanna. Since the "quiet weekend with the husband" occurred prior to her friends becoming the "alien" personalities, she gets her hackles up and decides to delve into this mysterious "men's club" meeting house.

 

I'll leave just enough for you to be curious about the ending, although it's a good bet that most of you already know, even if you never have watched the movie. The term "Stepford wife" has insinuated itself into the lexicon far enough that just the basic idea may be in your mind already. 

The film was released in February of 1975. The only real competition for it appears to be Shampoo, a Warren Beatty film that ended up being  the third highest grossing film of the year, making $49 million dollars. The Stepford Wives, although not a "dud", only managed to pull in $4 million dollars. Critical response was generally mediocre. It currently holds a rating of only 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. One critic even stated that the screenplay from the source material was "tedious and padded".

One of the more interesting aspects of it's reception was with the feminist sector of the population. I personally thought that the film had a fairly strong feminist tinge to it, but then, I am a male, and a single male at that, so what do I know? Wikipedia, quoting an article from Entertainment Weekly, says that at one showing to an audience of feminists, it was met with "hisses, groans and guffaws." Betty Friedan, a respected leader of the feminist movement, called it "a rip-off of the women's movement." However, some feminist authors did come to it's defense, and director Bryan Forbes objected to the criticism by claiming that if the message of the movie was anything it's anti-men.

The movie spawned three made-for-TV sequels and, in 2004, a remake starring Nicole Kidman in the Katherine Ross role. Haven't seen that, but I am given to understand it was beneath the original, and only barely made back it's production costs in the theater. 

In my opinion, the 1975 version gets a lot of bad press. I think that Katherine Ross carries the film well, and some of those "transformed" Stepford women give me the creeps, which says a lot about how well they became the docile, subservient women the men of Stepford created. There are also some decent parallels to the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in that sometimes the changes in the "victims" can be so insidious and yet subtle that you just don't realize until it's too late. It doesn't seem to be a coincidence, to me at any rate, that both movies take place in bucolic suburbs rather than in the big city. (Of course, the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers did occur in a big city, and as I said in my review of that movie, it's up to you to decide which is a more scary scenario.

The one issue that I had with the movie is that it seems to ignore the children. One wonders how the children responded to the change in Mommy's personality. After all, besides Joanna, I'm sure there must have been some of the others who had had kids prior to their change. What did they think of the new attitude of Mommy?

The Stepford Wives was a much better movie than the remake with Nicole Kidman, that much is certain. Watching Ross and her gradual realization dawn that something is not quite kosher in Stepford is well worth the price of admission. 

Well, that's it for this time folks. Drive safely.

Quiggy