Word: benton
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Director-Writer Robert Benton and his cast have made their own Scenes from a Marriage-a domestic drama that starts at a wrenching pitch and builds and builds to the threshold of pain. Yet the film is not imitation Bergman; it is, above all, peculiarly American. Adapting a popular novel by Avery Corman, Benton tells an unpretentious story that might well have served such vintage Hollywood tearjerkers as George Stevens' Penny Serenade and King Vidor's Stella Dallas...
What makes Kramer stand out, even in this often heady company, is its lack of cant or trendy attitudes of any stripe. Rather than tailor his characters to represent the various party lines of present-day sexual politics, Benton allows the issues to develop freely and inferentially from the unruly passions of his story. Kramer avoids explicit feminist debates, and it does not provide heroes or villains of either sex. By such omissions, it departs dramatically from films like An Unmarried Woman and Alice, which feature warm, wholly sympathetic heroines and men who are usually either bastards or saints. Kramer...
...Benton gives his film its depth and complexity by challenging the audience's preconceptions and snap opinions at every turn. The process begins with the opening scenes. When Joanna tells Ted she is walking out, the film is, for a while, completely on her side. Joanna is sensitive, beautiful and demonstrably deprived of her own identity. Ted is a cagey, unfeeling Madison Avenue adman who cares only about the big account he has just landed. Ted is so self-absorbed that he cannot believe that Joanna is really miserable enough to leave him. As she waits for the elevator...
...acting fully matches the wooden level of the screenplay. Why did Jill Clayburgh ever attempt this part? As Erica Benton she was delightful. As a high-powered diva, she's positively grotesque. Those station-wagonned suburban looks don't help and that fabulously skinny body certainly doesn't look appropriate. Who has ever seen or heard an anorexic Joan Sutherland or Beverly Sills? Clayburgh careens about the screen, wildly overacting. Trying so damn hard, Clayburgh becomes positively painful to watch. Matthew Barry reveals some vestiges of talent but when delivering lines like "I must go; she awaits...
Gordon Wayman Benton...