The Stepford Wives
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Movie Reviews of The Stepford Wives
Movie Review: GREAT THRILLER!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent quality DVD and a great movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat!Movie Review: prompt service, pristine product
Summary: 5 Stars
Thank you for the prompt delivery - the DVD is new - just great!Movie Review: I'll just die if I don't get that recipe. . .
Summary: 4 Stars
This 1975 film is based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin, who also wrote "Rosemary's Baby", "A Kiss Before Dying", and "This Perfect Day" (and why the latter hasn't been made into a film yet is beyond my comprehension). The excellent script is by William Goldman.
The premise of the story (a group of men in a wealthy Connecticut suburb figure out a way to knock off their wives and replace them with compliant, eternally young, robotic replacements so lifelike that the rest of the world can't detect the physical difference) would have been utterly unfilmable were it not so obviously meant to be allegorical. The tenor of the times must be taken into consideration, as well, for the film's timeliness in 1975 was its satirical response to the backlash against the first wave of feminism that had taken place.
The 2004 remake is so awful as not to deserve even one viewing, but the original, although it doesn't really answer some of the very questions it begs about the nature of intimate relationships, still makes for suspenseful viewing just by posing the questions. The premise works because there is just enough suspicion buried in most women's hearts that most men, in THEIR hearts, would prefer an eternally beautiful, utterly pliant, sexually undemanding, brainless robot to the complexities of intimacy with a living, breathing, intelligent, three-dimensional, adult woman with distinct needs and ideas.
Walter and Joanna Eberhart live in a crowded Manhattan apartment with their two children and a dog. Joanna is a talented photographer who has been home with the children for some years and is beginning to get restless. She adores the gritty and intellectually stimulating city life, but Walter, a high-earning corporate lawyer, hates the crime, the dirt, and the cramped quarters, and thinks it's time to move to a a big house with a lawn in a manicured suburb filled with white Republicans. He is less than enthused about Joanna's wish to step outside homemaking and see if she can make something of her photography.
When Walter suggests a move to the suburbs to Joanna, she is not happy, and even less so when she finds out that Walter has already found the town and the house he thinks they should all live in, and bought the house. Joanna is presented with a fait accompli - something Walter apparently has a habit of doing. Of course, why a brainy, accomplished woman like Joanna has ended up married to a narcissistic d*** like Walter is never explained.
Joanna grudgingly agrees to give suburban life a try, and in no time, we see the family driving up to Connecticut, to the town of Stepford, where Walter has purchased a large, beautiful colonial-style white house with hardwood floors and bay windows and crown moldings and fireplaces and all those details that make people rush out to buy homes like that, situated on a country road lined with big trees. Everything is clean and bright and Anglo-Saxon. Their new next-door neighbor, Carol Van Sant (Nanette Newman), who exhibits a somewhat fey affect and is wearing an outfit reminiscent of "Little House on the Prairie", brings over a homemade casserole to tide the family through Moving Day. After supper, we see Walter and Ted Van Sant (Josef Somer) nodding conspiratorially together as Walter whispers, "She looks as good as she cooks, Ted!".
It does't take long for Stepford to pall on Joanna. For one thing, there is that Men's Club that Walter tells her he's thinking of joining, whose meetings take place in a large house of Gothic aspect that could serve as a site for a Hawthorne story. Walter follows his habit of asking her opinion on it when, as she knows perfectly well, he has already joined. He brings the Men's Club home for coffee one evening, and as she entertains them, one of their members, who turns out to be a professional advertising artist, begins to sketch Joanna from various angles (he is actually meant to be the man who did all those idealized Breck Girl portraits - remember them?!). Another asks if she will help him with a regional accent recognition project he's doing, and provide him with an exhaustive recording of common words from A-Z. Walter looks on unconcerned as all this takes place.
And then Joanna meets The Wives, who are an oddly mixed group. There's Bobbie (Paula Prentiss) and Charmaine (Tina Louise), who clearly aren't happy with their lives in Stepford, either - but the rest are all women who live to shop, iron, cook, and clean. You can spot these women a mile off by their clothes: long, frilly dresses and big hats, and by their kitchens: always spotlessly clean. At their very first community social event, a barbecue, the feckless Carol van Sant has a minor "breakdown" and walks around the pool with an hor d'oeuvre in her hand repeating, "I'll just die if I don't get this recipe!". Ted takes his wife home, blaming the little scene on her inability to tolerate alcohol, but Joanna and Bobbie are horrified when, the next day, Carol shows up to apologize for her behavior, and lets it slip that the Men's Club is sending her around to apologize to everyone who was at the barbecue.
Well, it's just a matter of time before Joanna begins to be not just bored in Stepford, but suspicious. She and Bobbie become close friends, partners in their mutual suburban misery. One day, they knock on Charmaine's door, only to back away in shock when the feisty tennis player opens the door in a long dress, murmuring happily about all the pretty new clothes her husband has given her, now that she's letting him turn her beloved tennis court into a swimming pool. Bobbie and Joanna are so alarmed by Charmaine's "conversion" that they have the town water analyzed, but no mysterious drug is found in it.
The increasingly nervous Joanna begins to see a therapist to air her fears, and tells Walter that she wants to move away from Stepford as soon as possible. To her surprise, Walter is very understanding and promises to put the house up for sale right away.
Alas, if only it were the water! On a rainy night when Joanna can no longer live with her mounting fears, she comes home from her therapy session, planning to grab the children, pile them into the car, and run for it, but the house is dark and the children are gone. She goes to Bobbie's house to ask if they are there, and is stunned when her friend opens the door in a ruffled blouse and long flowered skirt, and takes her into a sparkling kitchen that used to look as if a tornado had gone through it. When Joanna tries to convey her terror to Bobbie, and her suspicion that the word lists and the Men's Club are somehow all mixed up in these extraordinary personality changes, Bobbie will only reply that what she needs is a good cup of coffee. In her frustrated terror, Joanna picks up a kitchen knife and thrusts it into Bobbie's pelvis - and sees that the truth is far more terrible than her worst suspicions about doctored water, hypnosis, mind control, etc. Joanna cuts a few wires as she stabs Bobbie, who starts to move erratically and hilariously around the kitchen, dumping cups of coffee on the floor and repeating indignantly, "I thought we were friends; I thought we were friends; I thought. . ."
Joanna rushes to the Men's Club, where she thinks her children are being held, and is at last confronted with the full horror of what has been going on in Stepford. There, upstairs, is the not quite finished robotic replica of herself, in a replica of Joanna's own bedroom, sitting at a replica of her own vanity, dressed in a beautiful negligee - through which shows a noticeably larger bosom than Joanna's own. The family dog, who disappeared inexplicably shortly after the Eberharts moved to Stepford, is ensconced on the bed - obviously there to get used to the new model of his mistress and not give her away when she takes over Joanna's life. Nearly complete, the only thing the New Improved Joanna is missing are her eyes, which are still dark pools of emptiness, although she smiles sweetly as she gets up and moves gracefully toward Joanna, twisting a chiffon scarf tightly in her hands.
The fabled last scene of the movie takes place in a supermarket almost as immaculate as the homes it serves, as the Stepford Wives glide along its aisles in long dresses, white gloves, and picture hats, greeting each other placidly as they fill up their carts with oven cleaner, Ajax, laundry detergent, and Pledge.
However, over in another aisle, we see what is probably filmdom's first black yuppie couple, quarreling, as the husband hisses that the wife should at least give the place a chance, look how nice and clean it is here, while the wife complains bitterly she doesn't know why he brought her here, this is the whitest place she has ever seen . . .they are still bickering ominously as the fadeout begins on Joanna's empty, smiling face.
"The Stepford Wives" makes "Aliens" look like a scholarly paper in The Scientific American. But allegories make their point in broad and oversimplified brushstrokes. This particular allegory illuminates a less admirable corner of the male id, but it works because of the suspicion, not exactly allayed by a review of gender history, that that corner still exists, and that given immunity from punishment or the disapproval of the larger social order, it would reactivate. If this were not the case, this would be a comedy, and would never have worked as a suspense film.
Stylishly done and well-performed by all hands, the film manages to draw the viewer in to its illogical allegorical world, despite the logical questions that arise almost immediately. Katharine Ross is excellent, and Paula Prentiss oddly touching as the exuberant, funny Bobbie - they makes us hope desperately that both will somehow escape the fate of the other Stepford Wives. That we are devastated when they do not is evidence of how seriously we still take the allegory's point.
Movie Review: The original visit to the quaint little town of Stepford
Summary: 4 Stars
With the remake of "The Stepford Wives" coming out on DVD next week I decided to watch the 1975 original again. This is one of the most understated horror films of all time, more akin to an episode of "The Twilight Zone" than the bloodbaths that usually defined the genre at that time. Of course, with William Goldman adapting Ira Levin's novel, you knew that this one was going to be more cerebral.
Stepford is a quaint little Connecticut town where the Eberharts have moved to in order to escape from New York City, whose urban horrors are reduced to the sight of a man carrying an inflatable rubber doll down the street. The decision to move the family was done by the husband, Walter (Peter Masterson), who apparently makes all of the decisions for the Eberharts, much to the distress of his wife, Joanna (Katharine Ross). She finds the idyllic life of Stepford to be too different and actually admits she misses the noise of the big city. While her husband makes plans to join the local men's club, Joanna finds herself turning back to her love of photography as a way of keeping sane. Then she finds a kindred spirit in neighbor Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss), and they go off in search of other like-minded ladies for some increasingly necessary female bonding.
Everything that is wrong with Stepford is personified by Carol Van Sant (Nanette Newman), the perfect model of a Stepford wife, who lives next door. There is something odd about Carol, for whom cleanliness is before everything else. All of the other wives seem to be like Carol, with the exception of Charmaine Wimperis (Tina Louise), who seems all ready to complete the triad of sanity with Joanna and Bobbie. But then, overnight, Charmaine becomes just like Carol and the others. Bobbie thinks it has to be the water. Of course, she never suspects the truth until it is way too late.
Of course everybody knows the twist. "The Stepford Wives" became a paradigm for the flip side of the feminist movement of the Sixties. While many women were interested in having their consciousness raised, some men were wishing they could drag their spouses back to the Stone Age. Of course, Levin found a solution by going in the opposite direction.
My reading of this film has always been slightly idiosyncratic. My sympathies are with Joanna, not because she is a gifted artist with a camera who deserves to become self-actualized and do more with her life than take care of the house and kids seven days a week, but because she is Katharine Ross. After "The Graduate" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," Ross was the actress from the Sixties that I thought of as being the most beautiful. Consequently, when Walter is unsatisfied with his wife I find it unbelievable because the man is married to Katharine Ross. She is bright, she is articulate, she has a cute smile to go along with great eyes, and there is no reason to enhance her bust line. Walter is a toad who has married far above what he deserves.
"The Stepford Wives" is an exercise in misdirection, and not simply because most of the clues hint at something simpler than advanced robotics. The story spends most of its time trying to figure WHAT is going on, with directly addressing the question of WHY. Goldman's satire is often too subtle. A pivotal scene is when Joanna, Carol and Charmaine get together with a couple of the other wives to unburden themselves. The three women each admit deep dark secrets, unbarring their souls. The other women get rhapsodic over cleaning agents. Clearly there is a wide gulf here, but the idea that gender equality would result in a male backlash that would do more than simply yearn for the good ol' days never becomes explicit. There is a lot more going on here than rehashing "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" for a new generation.
The movie also requires Joanna not to put two and two together in enough time to flee Stepford, although she does have two children who can be used against her at the key moment. Still, "The Stepford Wives" cannot be accused of being heavy handed, which is usually the fatal flaw in such thrillers and the final scene is as elegant a conclusion to a horror movie as you are going to find in the genre. I still pity the Stepford husbands, who think that perfect housewives make the world a far, far better place.
Movie Review: Nicely drawn allegorical suspense movie
Summary: 4 Stars
This film certainly deserves to be rated a classic for the imprint it has left on popular culture alone. Everybody knows what a Stepford Wife is even if most people haven't seen the film. And as a straightforward suspense horror it belongs in the premier league. Perhaps a little slow in the first half but more than making up for it in the second.
In terms of its message, I found it wasn't so easy to interpret. Is it simply, as others here suggest, an allegory parodying the resentment felt by men after the first feminist revolutions of the 60's? Of course we are supposed to identify with the women in the story and especially the lead heroine, the suspense and drama of the film wouldn't work at all otherwise. But perhaps we are entitled to feel a little bit of empathy with the menfolk of Stepford and their motivations. In particular the poor Walter, stressed to the hilt through working non-stop to provide for his children only for his self-indulgent wife to pursue her egotistical and vain dreams of becoming a famous photographer. Is the allegory more subtle - are we really looking at the disorientation of men, and are the Stepford wives merely experiencing what it feels like to have your identity, expectations and certainties overturned almost over night?
Actually, I'm inclined to see the film as merely a well made satirical portent of the possible dangers of a vengeful male backlash against the recently won gains of feminism. It must be remembered that in the 1970's it wasn't clear at all what the eventual outcome of the great gender war would be. Most of the men in the film are cold, calculating and evil. The only sympathetic male character is Walter and he comes across as much of a manipulated victim to the 'Men's Association' as the women do. Any feminist should delight in the carefully charicatured mysogny on display, from the mens' 'objectifying' picture drawing to the dismissal of the lead character's conspiracy paranoia as merely an over emotional hissy fit.
We now know that womenkind decisively won the 20th century sex war, unless or until Islam one day re-takes the west for the forces of patriarchy. The ending of the film, where all the women parade contentedly around the supermarket aisles with their trolleys, so dutiful and robotic that they do not even get sexually distracted at the sight of a black man, must strike most 21st century viewers as both unbelivable and kitschy.
But perhaps the dream of having women who once again accept their natural place in society (without having to resort to a neolithic religion) is not so fanciful after all. Feminism arrived late in Japan - it's first devasting effects (breakdown of the family, spiralling youth delinquency, horrendous abortion rates, the progressive retardation of the arts and sciences etc) are only just being felt and the first anti-feminist backlash only just beginning. But whilst Japan is behind the west in the social effects of feminism, it is years ahead of the west in terms of robotics. The most advaced and life like androids in the world were recently unveiled at a science fair in Tokyo - they can talk - very politely. They will do whatever their male inventors and programmers tell them to do. They are beautiful...and they are female...