THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES
US, 1968,108 minutes, Colour.
Patricia Neal, Jack Albertson, Martin Sheen.
Directed by Ulu Grossbard.
The Subject Was Roses is one of those mirror films that show us as we are in our day-to-day situations with all our pettiness and our lack of love and forgiveness. This is the film version of Frank D. Gilroy's Pulitzer-prize winning play and some critics have complained of a certain staginess. However there is no mistaking the impact of the unhappiness possible within an ordinary, happy-looking family.
The Clearys are a New York family, father ostentatiously Irish- Catholic, the mother used to more genteel life, the son a nervous boy who has returned from World War II, where he was healthier than he ever was at home. The tangle of the relationships of love and hate is presented so realistically at times that we wince, so close does the film cut to the bone.
Patricia Neal, in her first film after her serious illness, was nominated for an Oscar for her work as Nettie. Jack Albertson was Best Supporting Actor for the year and Martin Sheen completes the fine trio. Very few people have seen the film, which is a pity, as we all need films like this to show us something of ourselves.
1. What is the theme of the film? What does it say about happiness, relationships, communication, suffering? What does it say about the expectations people have of life?
2. Were the Clearys a happy family? Give examples from the dialogue and the situations of tensions and hurt, What was needed to make othe Clearys a happy family?
3. Choose and discuss some of the evocative scenes where the mood and visual images enhance the dialogue and contribute to the theme: e.g. the opening scene, Tim and Nettie dancing, Tim's and his father's visit to the lake-house, the visit to the nightclubs. Nettie's day out, on the sea shore?
4. Did the songs 'Where does all the time go?’ and 'Albatross' contribute to meaning and mood?
5. Mother: try to evaluate her character, also her blame for the situation - e.g. loving but possessive, her ‘ganging-up’ with Tim, her attitude to her mother, and crippled cousin, Willis, her reaction to the roses, her relationship with her husband, her memories and ambitions, her love of good things?
6. Father: good, self-opinionated, loving an audience, money, moods, attitude to Tim, his memories and ambitions, his pretence at being a fine Irishman and good Catholic, his anxiety at Nettie's disappearance, his refusal to believe his wife's story, the incident of the roses, the saying of ‘I love you' by Tim?
7. Was Tim's leaving home the best ending? Did his parents agree?
8. Ti,, a change from 18 to 21, how he blamed his father, then his mother, his sickness of a boy, the change in the army, 18 to 21; Mass, the roses, hia admiration for his father's singing, his trying to assert some freedom, his listening to his parents' memories, his need to hear his father say 'I love you’?
9. Who should have forgiven whom? Who was to blame for all that happened?
10. The film was not popular at the box-office. Why?
