Word: stepford
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...inauspicious occasion of this movie's debut, condolences again to the great Anne Bancroft. There has been, recently, a spate of movies about women -Alice Doesn 't Live Here Anymore, The Stepford Wives, A Woman Under the Influence-which has led to the suggestion that at last the American cinema is losing its masculine bias, that now there are lots of good roles for women and lots of good actresses to play them. Well, the actresses may be there, but the parts are not. Why would Anne Bancroft be in this movie otherwise...
...STEPFORD WIVES...
...some good points by having his living dolls talk exactly like the female humanoids in TV commercials-fretting about the need for spotless floors and coffee that tastes fresh-perked. Forbes, on the other hand, sees an opportunity for serious suspense. Will Katharine Ross and Paula Prentiss, newcomers to Stepford, realize what is afoot in this too, too peaceful Connecticut town and get out before they are traded hi for living dolls? He manages to work up some reasonable suspense over this matter. Somehow, though, the writer's prime concern and the director's never quite fuse...
...maybe they just should have skipped the whole thing. Obviously, The Stepford Wives aspires to be a women's lib parable, realizing the female's worst fears about her mate's desire to dehumanize her. But it is too glibly on the side of the fashionable angels. Moreover, the movie never shows a single man whose feminine ideal exceeds gatefold dimensions. That too is a form of dehumanization...
...Levin has had his greatest success with books (A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary's Baby) that turn on the fact that men (especially lovers and husbands) will do absolutely anything to women. The plasticity of the Stepford wives, therefore, is linked to the secretive Men's Association up on the hill with its gifted membership, including a chap who once helped animate all those historical characters out in Disneyland...