INTERIORS

US, 1978, 93 minutes. Colour.
Kristin Griffith, Mary Beth Hurt, Richard Jordan, Diane Keaton, E.G. Marshall, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton, Sam Waterston.
Directed by Woody Allen.

Woody Allen's windows and mirrors in beige interiors: rooms and souls.

Chekhov wrote of three sisters. Woody Allen is surely an admirer of Chekhov, but this story of three sisters and their parents owes more to the screenplays of Ingmar Bergman. One thinks of the power of the far more intense portrait of three sisters in Bergman's Cries and Whispers. They inhabit a world of interiors, a world of art and culture, a world of sensitivity that is often a cover for self-centredness, a world of American angst. This is a world that Woody Allen can both create and destroy. He is wittily insightful and the master of the gently devastating mock. This is often true of the characters that he writes for himself. However, he does not appear in Interiors. The clown and the fool are absent. The film is the more subdued (and sometimes dour) because of it.

Interiors is an ensemble piece. It focusses on a family: the parents are played by E.G. Marshall (Arthur a prosperous lawyer on the verge of retirement) and Geraldine Page (Eve, a talented and sensitive interior decorator who has suffered nervous illness); the daughters are played by Kristin Griffith (an actress of whom we see comparatively little), Diane Keaton (Renata, a self-consciously gifted poet) and Mary Beth Hurt (Joey, the youngest, a restless, dissatisfied searcher for affirmation in the family and in a career). Renata is married to Frederick (Richard Jordan as a tormented novelist with an outlet in cynical reviews). They have a daughter. Joey is in a relationship with Michael (Sam Waterston as genial and long-suffering). Later in the movie, a key character, Pearl (played by Maureen Stapleton) is introduced. She is a widow whom Arthur meets on vacation in Greece, brings back to meet his snobbily dismayed family and then marries.

An indication of the quality of Interiors is that both Geraldine Page and Maureen Stapleton received Oscar nominations for their performances.

It is the women whose roles are so well written that they lend themselves to discussion. The men's roles are well written but not so precisely defined.


1. Woody Allen serious? Its place in Woody Allen’s canon? The criticism for its being serious? Taking itself too seriously?

2. Ingmar Bergman, the influence, themes, style, visuals, compositions, patterns, the sombre colours, the structure, the themes – a European film from the United States?

3. The title, the opening, the profiles looking out, the interior decorator, control? With each character, their interior monologue? Joey at the end?

4. The New York homes, Long Island, the interiors and moods, shapes and colours? Eve’s colours? Pearl’s contrast? The various homes? Design and control, order and neat – neat interior lives, but how they came out? The lack of a musical score?

5. Physical interiors, psychological interiors, moral and spiritual? Healthy and sick psyches and spirits? The looking out from the interior? The environs outside? The influence of the past, the need for change?

6. The ensemble acting, its effect? Woody Allen’s skill, writing and directing? His viewpoints? The dialogue, serious and humorous, real and surreal? The speeches? The situation and their plausibility? Contrived and/or realistic?

7. The family, the past, the memories, looking out and back? Tensions and regrets? Love and hate? Hurt, healing? Change, sensitivity? Anger and rivalry? Deaths? Life and illness? Madness? People locked into their interiors? The generation differences, relationships, fidelity, infidelity, change, taking responsibility? For life, for death?

8. The three sisters, echoes of Chekov? Their past and the visuals, as little girls, together? Relationship with their parents? The effect of the relationship on each of them, different? Expectations? Art and potential? Growing up and its effect? The place of careers? Finding selves? The different relationships to men? The changing attitude towards parents? Attitudes towards moral responsibilities? The catalysts for change? Reconciliations and grief?

9. Joey as the focus, a Woody Allen character? Perverse, young and her father, with her mother? The jobs? Arguing all sides of a case? Mike and living with him? Supporting Eve – seen as negative? The outings? With Renata? Suicide, the hospitalisation, her father? The reconciliation, the abortion? Her behaviour at the meal with Pearl? Play? Approving the wedding? ‘Animal’? Eve and the truth, the sea, her being saved, the change towards Pearl, reaching out? The diary? Her being considered non-creative? Michael and his career? Michael and Pearl saving Eve? Joey’s final speech?

10. Renata, her mother and father, psychoanalysis and remembering, competitiveness, shopping for her mother, poetry, the change because of the poetry, the reaction to the suicide? Withdrawing from Joey? Flyn and her love, work, support, flattery? Drinking? Going out, the child? Eve and her suicide attempt? Approving of Pearl? The dinner chat, the arts, Pearl down-to-earth? The wedding? Walking with Flyn? The drugs? The reconciliation? Her fending off Joey, the beach walk, the future? Her autobiographical talk?

11. Flyn, away, the starlet, her arrival, sharing, the background of film work, her style, Frederick? With each of her sisters? With her parents? The walk on the beach and her fears? Frederick and the boots, flirting, the attack? Drugs and tears? The background of glamour, estimation, TV, flirting, rape, superficiality of her life?

12. Eve, the contrast between when she was young and a beauty, aged? Sterile and neat? The pillow? Her children, moving away, her career? What she put Arthur through? The comments about the ice palace, her control, her subdued colours, the separation, becoming more neurotic, the suicide attempt? The discussions with Arthur? With her children, anti-Joey? Renata and her approval? Frederick, the men, Mike and his taste, the vase and colour, exquisite, the gifts? The church and the beauty, the candles? Stalking, the truth – into the sea, the rescue, her death? How sympathetic a character? Her neurotic behaviour and attitudes? The apartment, the hospital, people talking about each other, the divorce? The end and going into the sea?

13. Arthur, his initial looking out, audience sympathy for him or not? The past and its glow, becoming more rigid? As a father, his affairs? The separation and handling it? Being discreet with Eve? The suicide attempts? Joey floundering, with Renata? Pearl and her style, his love, change of attitude? Wanting the family’s approval – not getting it? The wedding, dancing? Death as the background to the wedding? His responsibility for his own life, his responsibility for Eve? Gazing out to the city? The change for a man in his sixties? His time with Pearl, the sudden engagement and marriage, going to Greece, learning affection? The showdown with the girls? Pearl, earthy, earth mother, her colours, manner, her speech, her interests, the seeming limitations from the point of view of artistic people, her past, children, love for Arthur, marrying, dancing with everyone, wanting to be called Mother? Her point of view being the Woody Allen point of view? Her arrival, the food, talking about Greece and culture, her ignorance, the daughters testing her out at the table, Las Vegas, in pink, the gravy, the cards and the jokes? Her joy in life? Her watching the others – and the final rescue of Eve with Michael?

14. Frederick, his bitterness, writing, the reviews and cruelty, flattery, his marriage, drinking, his capacity for humour, with Flyn, the functions, attacking Flyn? His anger and drunkenness, feeling inferior? The flirting, the attempted rape, his future?

15. Michael, the background, film, Joey, the vase and Eve and her comments, pleasant man, jobs, the baby, the cards and the dancing, his warming to Pearl? Saving Joey? The issue of birth, love, abortion?

16. The family, control of feelings, expectations, reserve, love, learning affection, reconciliation and forgiveness?

17. Woody Allen’s themes of intelligence and creativity versus ordinary feelings and ordinary life? The discussions about the play and how the characters responded, Pearl and her common-sensed point of view?

18. The meal sequences, the drinks? Communication and lack of communication? The atmosphere for suicide? Hospital, funeral, the contrast with the wedding?

19. The close-ups of exteriors and interiors? Expression? The ending? Renata – wrong? The good and the bad, ambiguity?