The Stepford Wives (1975)

Ira Levin's scary novel about forced conformity in a small Connecticut town made for this compelling 1975 thriller. Katharine Ross stars as a city woman who moves with her husband to Stepford and is startled by how perpetually happy many of the local women seem to be. Her search for an answer reveals a plot to replace troublesome real wives with more accommodating fake ones (not unlike the alien takeover in Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The closer she gets to the truth, the more danger she faces--not to mention the likelihood that the men in town intend to replace her as well. Screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and director Bryan Forbes (King Rat) made this a taut, tense semiclassic with a healthy dose of satiric wit. --Tom Keogh Amazon.com

The Stepford Wives is an American Classic

I love this film. This is film-making at its American Classic best. There is so much depth to this film. And the subtleties are amazing. I've seen it more than once and it really does have a lot of layers. Maybe, as a previous review indicated, it seems slow-paced compared to the movies we're accustomed to seeing now. However, if you watch closely there are a lot of things that are revealed but not underscored in a heavy-handed fashion. Joanna insists her husband finish doing the dishes as she does other kitchen chores. Joanna is asked if she's ever made it in front of a fireplace by her husband and she replies "Not with you." Joanna was a strong and opinionated woman, and that obviously grated on her weak-willed husband. The reasons he loved her to being with are also the reasons he plots to replace her.

I also really enjoyed the documentary that sheds some light on the behind-the-scenes casting and writing issues, such as learning Diane Keaton was originally to play Joanna but dropped out, and master-screenwriter William Goldman wrote a draft of the script and fought with producers and was fired.

To me, the plot's seemingly slow pace actually furthers the central theme - one way or another, moving to Stepford is going to envelop Joanna either like quicksand or the more horrifying ultimate truth. Joanna even unwittingly contributes to her own demise, allowing herself to be studied by the guys from the Mens' Association. By the time Joanna realizes what is happening, it is too late.

I tend to think of this film as more of a European film in some ways, rather than 1970's style filmmaking, because they don't do blatant exposition. They allow the viewer to see the clues and arrive at their own conclusion. It is a matter of treating the audience's intelligence with respect. August 27, 2008

Nicely drawn allegorical suspense movie

This film certainly deserves to be rated a classic for the imprint it has left on popular culture alone. Everybody knows what a Stepford Wife is even if most people haven't seen the film. And as a straightforward suspense horror it belongs in the premier league. Perhaps a little slow in the first half but more than making up for it in the second.

In terms of its message, I found it wasn't so easy to interpret. Is it simply, as others here suggest, an allegory parodying the resentment felt by men after the first feminist revolutions of the 60's? Of course we are supposed to identify with the women in the story and especially the lead heroine, the suspense and drama of the film wouldn't work at all otherwise. But perhaps we are entitled to feel a little bit of empathy with the menfolk of Stepford and their motivations. In particular the poor Walter, stressed to the hilt through working non-stop to provide for his children only for his self-indulgent wife to pursue her egotistical and vain dreams of becoming a famous photographer. Is the allegory more subtle - are we really looking at the disorientation of men, and are the Stepford wives merely experiencing what it feels like to have your identity, expectations and certainties overturned almost over night?

Actually, I'm inclined to see the film as merely a well made satirical portent of the possible dangers of a vengeful male backlash against the recently won gains of feminism. It must be remembered that in the 1970's it wasn't clear at all what the eventual outcome of the great gender war would be. Most of the men in the film are cold, calculating and evil. The only sympathetic male character is Walter and he comes across as much of a manipulated victim to the 'Men's Association' as the women do. Any feminist should delight in the carefully charicatured mysogny on display, from the mens' 'objectifying' picture drawing to the dismissal of the lead character's conspiracy paranoia as merely an over emotional hissy fit.

We now know that womenkind decisively won the 20th century sex war, unless or until Islam one day re-takes the west for the forces of patriarchy. The ending of the film, where all the women parade contentedly around the supermarket aisles with their trolleys, so dutiful and robotic that they do not even get sexually distracted at the sight of a black man, must strike most 21st century viewers as both unbelivable and kitschy.

But perhaps the dream of having women who once again accept their natural place in society (without having to resort to a neolithic religion) is not so fanciful after all. Feminism arrived late in Japan - it's first devasting effects (breakdown of the family, spiralling youth delinquency, horrendous abortion rates, the progressive retardation of the arts and sciences etc) are only just being felt and the first anti-feminist backlash only just beginning. But whilst Japan is behind the west in the social effects of feminism, it is years ahead of the west in terms of robotics. The most advaced and life like androids in the world were recently unveiled at a science fair in Tokyo - they can talk - very politely. They will do whatever their male inventors and programmers tell them to do. They are beautiful...and they are female...

May 25, 2008

CHILLING, DISTURBING, & HORRID

Another twisted tale from the late Ira Levin, who also gave us "Rosemary's Baby" and "Deathtrap." The film is quite effective in its use of creepy foreshadowing. Just before she moves with her husband and kids from Manhattan to tranquil Stepford, photographer Joanne (Katharine Ross) snaps a photo of a man carrying a mannequin across the street-- terribly symbolic of the environment she will soon find herself trapped in.
Once settled in Stepford, we see her husband (Peter Masterson) wearing a shirt with the word "PAPA" on it. He soon joins the Stepford Men's Association. The wives are much too tranquil-- they are vapidly "blank." They sound like TV commercials-- prattling on endlessly about the joys of ironing, baking, cleaning, etc. Everybody remembers the party scene where one "wife" keeps repeating "I'll just die if I don't get this receipe." Perky Paula Prentiss as Bobbie gives the only lively performance in the film; that is, before she is "changed." Katharine Ross is not particularly good; although her peformance grows much stronger (by "stronger", I mean "emotionally overwrought") by the time she visits the psychiatrist until the end. Perhaps Ross, like the doomed character she portrays, realized she was trapped in a mess!!
I wish I could have "enjoyed" this film as a satire of surburban assimilation, but I just can't. I don't find any humor, either black or camp, in the plot, either. At first, I thought it was all sickeningly misogynistic but, after reading another review, I realized the film is neither anti-women or pro-men. The men are all evil, and the women are all victims. I believe the basic premise was recycled for TV movies like "Stepford Children," (Parents kill their difficult children and replace them with perfect robot duplicats!), "Stepford Husbands," "Return To Stepford", "Revenge Of The Stepford Wives" or some such titles, equally inane and unnecessary. The original film accomplishes its disturbing chores in competent enough fashion. At the end, the evil president of the Men's Association tells Ross they do what they do "because we can." The implications therein are so horrid I can not, I did not, laugh at this film or "enjoy" any of it. April 20, 2008

A Classic!

I was born in 78, so I missed out on some of the good 1970's horror movies. I had read the novel and loved it, and as soon as I signed up for a mail order rental service, it went to the top of the list. I was not disapointed. I thought Katherine Ross was amazing! Yes, the pacing was slow at parts, and it didn't quite portray the growing dread as scary as I had imagined it, but those were my only real issues with it. This is a really frightening movie for me, that these men would be so heartless and selfish and hate their wives so much that they would turn them into "Stepford Wives." Destroying someone you claimed to love so they can cater to you every need and never complain or take time or think for themselves. Wow! That kind of stuff beats most recent horror hands down! April 13, 2008

I'll just die if I don't get that recipe. . .

This 1975 film is based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin, who also wrote "Rosemary's Baby", "A Kiss Before Dying", and "This Perfect Day" (and why the latter hasn't been made into a film yet is beyond my comprehension). The script is by William Goldman (yes, THAT William Goldman, author of "Lord of the Flies").

The premise of the story (a group of men in a wealthy Connecticut suburb figure out a way to knock off their wives and replace them with compliant, eternally young, robotic replacements so lifelike that the rest of the world can't detect the physical difference) would have been utterly unfilmable were it not so obviously meant to be allegorical. The tenor of the times must be taken into consideration, as well, for the film's timeliness in 1975 was its satirical response to the backlash against the first wave of feminism that had taken place.

The 2004 remake is so awful as not to deserve even one viewing, but the original, although it doesn't really answer some of the very questions it begs about the nature of intimate relationships, still makes for suspenseful viewing just by posing the questions. The premise works because there is just enough suspicion buried in most women's hearts that most men, in THEIR hearts, would prefer an eternally beautiful, utterly pliant, sexually undemanding, brainless robot to the complexities of intimacy with a living, breathing, intelligent, three-dimensional, adult woman with distinct needs and ideas.

Walter and Joanna Eberhart live in a crowded Manhattan apartment with their two children and a dog. Joanna is a talented photographer who has been home with the children for some years and is beginning to get restless. She adores the gritty and intellectually stimulating city life, but Walter, a high-earning corporate lawyer, hates the crime, the dirt, and the cramped quarters, and thinks it's time to move to a a big house with a lawn in a manicured suburb filled with white Republicans. He is less than enthused about Joanna's wish to step outside homemaking a bit and see if she can make something of her photography.

When Walter suggests a move to the suburbs to Joanna, she is not happy, and even less so when she finds out that Walter has already found the town and the house he thinks they should all live in, and bought the house. Joanna is presented with a fait accompli - something Walter apparently has a habit of doing. Of course, why a brainy, accomplished woman like Joanna has ended up married to a narcissistic d*** like Walter is never explained.

Joanna grudgingly agrees to give suburban life a try, and in no time, we see the family driving up to Connecticut, to the town of Stepford, where Walter has purchased a large, beautiful colonial-style white house with hardwood floors and bay windows and crown moldings and fireplaces and all those details that make people rush out to buy homes like that, situated on a country road lined with big trees. Everything is clean and bright and Anglo-Saxon. Their new next-door neighbor, Carol Van Sant (Nanette Newman), who exhibits a somewhat fey affect and is wearing an outfit reminiscent of "Little House on the Prairie", brings over a homemade casserole to tide the family through Moving Day. After supper, we see Walter and Ted Van Sant (Josef Somer) nodding conspiratorially together as Walter whispers, "She looks as good as she cooks, Ted!".

It does't take long for Stepford to pall on Joanna. For one thing, there is that Men's Club that Walter tells her he's thinking of joining, whose meetings take place in a large house of Gothic aspect that could serve as a site for a Hawthorne story. Walter follows his habit of asking her opinion on it when, as she knows perfectly well, he has already joined. He brings the Men's Club home for coffee one evening, and as she entertains them, one of their members, who turns out to be a professional advertising artist, begins to sketch Joanna from various angles (he is actually meant to be the man who did all those idealized Breck Girl portraits - remember them?!). Another asks if she will help him with a regional accent recognition project he's doing, and provide him with an exhaustive recording of common words from A-Z. Walter looks on unconcerned as all this takes place.

And then Joanna meets The Wives, who are an oddly mixed group. There's Bobbie (Paula Prentiss) and Charmaine (Tina Louise), who clearly aren't happy with their lives in Stepford, either - but the rest are all women who live to shop, iron, cook, and clean. You can spot these women a mile off by their clothes: long, frilly dresses, big hats, and by their kitchens: always spotlessly clean. At their very first community social event, a barbecue, the feckless Carol van Sant has a minor "breakdown" and walks around the pool with an hor d'oeuvre in her hand repeating, "I'll just die if I don't get this recipe!". Ted takes his wife home, blaming the little scene on her inability to tolerate alcohol, but Joanna and Bobbie are horrified when, the next day, Carol shows up to apologize for her behavior, and lets it slip that the Men's Club is sending her around to apologize to everyone who was at the barbecue.

Well, it's just a matter of time before Joanna begins to be not just bored in Stepford, but suspicious. She and Bobbie become close friends, partners in their mutual suburban misery. One day, they knock on Charmaine's door, only to back away in shock when the feisty tennis player opens the door in a long dress, murmuring happily about all the pretty new clothes her husband has given her, now that she's letting him turn her beloved tennis court into a swimming pool. Bobbie and Joanna are so alarmed by Charmaine's "conversion" that they have the town water analyzed, but no mysterious drug is found in it.

The increasingly nervous Joanna begins to see a therapist to air her fears, and tells Walter that she wants to move away from Stepford as soon as possible. To her surprise, Walter is very understanding and promises to put the house up for sale right away.

Alas, if only it were the water! On a rainy night when Joanna can no longer live with her mounting fears, she comes home from her therapy session, planning to grab the children, pile them into the car, and run for it, but the house is dark and the children are gone. She goes to Bobbie's house to ask if they are there, and is stunned when her friend opens the door in a ruffled blouse and long flowered skirt, and takes her into a sparkling kitchen that used to look as if a tornado had gone through it. When Joanna tries to convey her terror to Bobbie, and her suspicion that the word lists and the Men's Club are somehow all mixed up in these extraordinary personality changes, Bobbie will only reply that what she needs is a good cup of coffee. In her frustrated terror, Joanna picks up a kitchen knife and thrusts it into Bobbie's pelvis - and sees that the truth is far more terrible than her worst suspicions about doctored water, hypnosis, mind control, etc. Joanna cuts a few wires as she stabs Bobbie, who starts to move erratically and hilariously around the kitchen, dumping cups of coffee on the floor and repeating indignantly, "I thought we were friends; I thought we were friends; I thought. . ."

Joanna rushes to the Men's Club, where she thinks her children are being held, and is at last confronted with the full horror of what has been going on in Stepford. There, upstairs, is the not quite finished robotic replica of herself, in a replica of Joanna's own bedroom, sitting at a replica of her own vanity, dressed in a beautiful negligee - through which show a noticeably larger and more perfect bosom than Joanna's own. The family dog, who disappeared inexplicably shortly after the Eberharts moved to Stepford, is ensconced on the bed - obviously there to get used to the new model of his mistress and not give her away when she takes over Joanna's life. Nearly complete, the only thing the New Improved Joanna is missing are her eyes, which are still dark pools of emptiness, although she smiles sweetly as she gets up and moves gracefully toward Joanna, twisting a chiffon scarf tightly in her hands.

The fabled last scene of the movie takes place in a supermarket almost as immaculate as the homes it serves, as the Stepford Wives glide along its aisles in long dresses, white gloves, and picture hats, greeting each other placidly as they fill up their carts with oven cleaner, Ajax, laundry detergent, and Pledge.

However, over in another aisle, we see what is probably filmdom's first black yuppie couple, quarreling, as the husband hisses that the wife should at least give the place a chance, look how nice and clean it is here, while the wife complains bitterly she doesn't know why he brought her here, this is the whitest place she has ever seen . . .they are still bickering ominously as the fadeout begins on Joanna's empty, smiling face.

"The Stepford Wives" makes "Aliens" look like a scholarly paper in The Scientific American. But allegories make their point in broad and oversimplified brushstrokes. This particular allegory illuminates a less admirable corner of the male id, but it works because of the suspicion, not exactly allayed by a review of gender history, that that corner still exists, and that given immunity from punishment or the disapproval of the larger social order, it would reactivate. If this were not the case, this would be a comedy, and would never have worked as a suspense film.

Stylishly done and well-performed by all hands, the film manages to draw the viewer in to its illogical allegorical world, despite the logical questions that arise almost immediately. Katharine Ross is excellent, and Paula Prentiss oddly touching as the exuberant, funny Bobbie - they makes us hope desperately that both will somehow escape the fate of the other Stepford Wives. That we are devastated when they do not is evidence of how seriously we still take the allegory's point.

April 4, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...