STONE PILLOW
US, 1985, 100 minutes, Colour.
Lucille Ball, Daphne Zuniga, Stephen Lang.
Directed by George Schaeffer.
Stone Pillow focuses on the street people in New York City. It is a tour de force performance for Lucille Ball a few years before her death. She gives a spirited performance as Flora, one of the bag-ladies who wander the New York streets. Daphne Zuniga in an early role is the earnest young social worker who learns from Flora.
The film is at pains to show the character of the street people, their way of life on the streets and how they survive (with great instinct and skills) and how they are more at home on the streets often than being looked after by bureaucratically-minded and authoritarian social workers.
The film was directed by George Schaeffer (a director who has offered TV opportunities for ageing actresses like Bette Davis in Right of Way and several films for Katharine Hepburn including Laura Lansing Slept here and Mrs Delafield wants to marry.
It is a bit difficult moving away from the screen persona of Lucille Ball to believe that she is an authentic street lady - but it is a very good attempt and the film is often moving.
1. Interesting and entertaining telemovie? Social problem for the wide audience? A possibility for understanding and sympathy for street people?
2. New York settings, the streets? Frightening aspects of Brooklyn? The authentic New York landmarks like Grand Central Station? The musical score?
3. The title, the street people, their sleeping on the streets?
4. Lucille Ball's portrait of Flora: the papers, waking up in the morning, her trolley and her possessions, her grasp on reality or not, memories of her son (and the flashbacks to her husband and little boy)? What unhinged her and sent her on the streets? Her spot, her friendship with shop owners, clashes with other shop owners, the policeman with the sandwiches, the vegetable-carriers giving her some? Her wandering the streets? Her finding the social worker, assuming she was a runaway, helping her? Their wandering, the old lady stealing the carriage and the social worker returning it? Helping her with hints - about what to eat, restaurants and garbage tins? Paper padding, places to sleep - bus stations, Grand Central, underground heating systems? Being moved on? The thugs attacking the social worker and Flora frightening them away? Her techniques for defending herself? The illness, her going to her friend to get some pills? The police clearing the squatters away? Being taken to the shelter, finding out the truth? Her being hurt - and used? Going to Brooklyn, the bus, putting on tantrums at the hostel, the meals, the bed, defending the woman who couldn't speak English, being blamed, sent out into the cold after she returned? Fear, lost, the rats? People thinking she was dead, turning up again? The dead woman, interactions with the social workers? Befriending the girl? Trusting her and the new house with the garden? A sympathetic but tough performance? Making street people sympathetic, credible?
5. The social worker, straight out of college, earnest, not communicating with people? The advice of the authorities? Her being attacked, losing her purse? Befriending Flora? Not telling her the truth? Listening, sharing the experiences, the water, the food out of the garbage tins? In the shelters? Her being ill? The truth, her concern about Flora, the phone calls? The attitude of her authorities? Her responsibility? Finding Flora again, the one-to-one help, offering her the home and the garden? A future?
6. The friendly people on the street: the shopkeepers, vegetable-carriers, the police? Passers-by - the man who bought Flora the coffee?
7. The social workers, being busy, the rules, hard stances? The interrogation in Brooklyn, ousting Flora as a troublemaker? The guards and their being too busy to help out? Despising of the down-and-outers? The social worker's boss and his lecturing her.
8. Treatment of real social problems for a wide audience?
