A Delicate Balance

source: A Delicate Balance

Trailer—A Delicate Balance

A Delicate Balance

I've seen the great Edward Albee play twice, and I've read it twice. This adaptation is agonizingly slow. The camera seems to be about 6 inches from the actors' faces, and I wanted to escape. I walked out of the theater after 45 minutes, before Lee Remick, Betsy Blair and Joseph Cotten showed up. See it at your own risk.

This Edward Albee play was directed for film by Tony Richardson and has an all-star cast headed up by Oscar winners, Katherine Hepburn, and Paul Scofield as a late middle-age couple living a "delicate balance" in their up-scale New England home. The balance is disrupted when their best friends (Betsy Blair and Joseph Cotton) arrive to stay with them because they feel "an indescribable sense of terror" in their OWN house. After these friends are given their married daughter's room, she (Lee Remick), returns "home" to re-take residence in her old room, announcing that she is on the verge of yet another of her several divorces. Added to this is the fact that Kate Reid (who plays Hepburn's sister) has never left the home in the first place. The drama plays out as each of these characters try to confront their situations without knowing how to broach it except through drinking, worrying, and trying to talk it through.

Scenes from the life of an argumentative middle-class family: a strong-willed wife and a resigning husband are confronted with her alcoholic sister, their continuously marrying daughter, and their friend couple who are afraid of being alone. Completely uncinematic, downbeat and very static photographed play, from a Pulitzer prize-winning Albee material, with all the psychological soul-killings expected from the author. A pretty valuable record of a theatrical performance: brilliant dialogue and acting are the best it can offer - and it does so.

Time has not been kind to the movies made under the umbrella of the well intentioned American Film Theater. The bulk of these works are way off the mark, failing to achieve one of the major goals of the project; the preservation of these important plays on screen. "Butley", "The Homecoming" and "A Delicate Balance" are the ones that came off best. "A Delicate Balance" Albee in his prime; relentlessly razor sharp. Director Tony Richardson thankfully makes little effort to diminish the inherent staginess and theatricality. He allows his superb cast to milk Albee's barbs to their last drop. Katherine Hepburn turns in a terrific performance, though those who have a distaste for the Hepburn mannerisms, will not be converted. It's a pleasure to watch both Kate Reid and Paul Scofield, consummate stage performers who fared far less well in the cinema. While overlong and at times uneven, "A Delicate Balance" is strictly for theater lovers. They will not be disappointed.

What a tremendous production! I had avoided seeing it because I thought it might be too brutal. It is certainly merciless in the dialogue between hateful sisters, but there is much more to the film than that. The writing is so very many-splendoured; some of the lines (Katharine Hepburn has the best ones) sound like Shakespeare and Albee even makes a self-referential joke about that after one of Claire's declarations.The cinematography contributes greatly to the liveliness of this stage drama; it is never dull or boring. Mesmerizing performances all around; terrifically complex and deep questioning of life's meaning and the value of love, loyalty, friendship, family. An unqualified 10 for me. The DVD has very interesting contemporary interviews with Albee and the cinematographer, and text from a very helpful review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this as a piece of filmed theatre and was never bored. The actors are all very good, and the lines are so rich it is tempting to rewatch it just to hear them. I liked the central premise of the 'fear' that drives the best friends to seek shelter with the upper class New England family on display. Perhaps the daughter's breakdown and recovery - mostly off-screen - don't quite convince, and it could be claustrophobic for some. But the characters' revelations about their own failures to go beyond their own skin and really love anyone else, as well as their fear of approaching old age and death, are all too relevant to be casually dismissed. The surface coldness and very lack of a real dramatic climax is the climax and the tragedy here. All the actors excellent, and Joseph Cotton was particularly good to see in a small but memorable role.

There is no music in this superb autumn melody. The words in the mouths of the characters are by Edward Albee and that is music enough. Katharine Hepburn plays Agatha, a close relative of the actress if I ever saw one, Paul Scofield is amazing playing the mild volcano of a husband promising eruptions that when they come they are so civilized that, irrigate rather than decimate. Kate Reid, took over from the extraordinary Kim Stanley and as sensational as Miss Reid is I can't help wondering what Stanley would have done with "a" alcoholic like Claire. Lee Remick is the perfect offspring for Hepburn and Scofield. Selfish, tenuous, childish, rich failure. Joseph Cotten and Betsy Blair are the catalysts, they and their fear, their plague coming to contaminate the contaminated. For film and stage gourmets this is an unmissable treat.