THE GROUP
US, 1966, I50 minutes, Colour.
Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartmann, Shirley Knight, Joanna Pettit, Mary Robin Redd, Jessica Walters, Kathleen Widdoes, James Broderick, Larry Hagman, Hal Holbrook, Richard Mulligan.
Directed by Sidney Lumet.
The Group is based on Mary Mc Carthy's famous novel. It recaptures the look and the sound of the world of the Vassar graduates of 1933 and their careers throughout the rest of the 30's.
This is a woman's film in the sense that it centres on 8 girls and their lives and asserts the value of woman - men appear generally as slightly ridiculous in the film.
Sidney Lumet (director of such excellent films as Twelve Angry Men, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Pawnbroker) keeps the pace moving rapidly in a long film keeping interest quite well in the group and in some girls in particular, Kay and Polly. Lakey appears at beginning and end and Pokey does not get much attention.
One of the drawbacks of the film is that it is very hard to understand why the girls did form such a group, when they were so varied in personalities and interests. Kay is fairly central to the whole film and it is rather hard to see why she failed in her life.
The acting is quite good, especially Shirley Knight and Joan Hackett at the beginning. With so many characters and diverse social situations, there is plenty of scope for discussion.
1. What was special about the Vassar close of '33? Why did these eight girls form the group?
2. How had their education prepared them for living in the US of the 30's? Cries applauds freedom of expression during Helena's opening speech?
3. What kept the group together during the following seven years?
4. Kay - the film opens with her engagement and ends with her funeral. In what way Was she central to the group? They also say she was an outsider,
- her living with Harold, the wedding (and her parents' refusal to go),
- her pushing of Harold's career and her success at Macy's,
- why was she on the go all the time? Why did Harold go to Noreen?
- why was Harold's play-launching party a failure?
- why did she go almost mad - Harold, Lakey, the War, Hitler?
- why did she want to fall out of the window?
Polly - her skill as a scientist, her quiet and unobtrusive ways,
- her love for her father and eccentricity,
- her love for Leroy, how real was it on each side?
- her love for the doctor,
- what success did she achieve?
Libby - why so full of push, gossip and cattiness?
- why did she succeed in her career?
- why did she never develop beyond a glittery surface?
- why was she all talk, yet afraid of men?
- her behaviour at the arrangements for Kay 's funeral and her not going to the funeral
- Helena - her ambition for working as a teacher,
- her social background and father's dominance,
- her role in keeping the group together and informed,
- Noreen calls her a 'neuter',
- what had she achieved by the end of the film?
- Dottie - Boston reserve, ready to be taken,
- her naivety in thinking her first encounter was lasting,
- her social marriage and its success,
- Prise - socially minded,
- victim of a theoretician husband,
- Lakey - her European sophistication, her countess,
- her presence in their minds even when she was away, her cold and hard personality,
- her taunting of Harold about Kay on the way to the funeral (and this the note on which the film ends as Harold says Kay was dominated by the group and Helena's speech of '33 is repeated),
Pokie - the ordinary woman of society who marries, has children and is despised by types like Libby?
5. Were any of these women admirable? Were they successes or failures? How did their backgrounds and education contribute to this? How did they fit into the U.S. of the 30's?
6. How were the men portrayed in the film? Moat of them appeared mean or ridiculous - e.g. Leroy on his psychoanalysis, Harold as weak and a failure.
7. How much happiness was there in The Group?
