The Group (1966) Queer Film. A Lost Opportunity. (C)

DIRECTOR: Sidney Lumet

Based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Mary McCarthy about the lives of eight female graduates (played by Joanna Petit, Jessica Walter, Mary Robin Redd, Candice Bergen, Shirley Knight, Joan Hackett, Kathleen Widdoes, and Elizabeth Hartman) from Vassar from 1933 to 1940, director Sidney Lumet’s movie is like a microcosm of his career – biting off more than he can chew. The film meanders incessantly, with only Joan Hackett’s Dottie (at the beginning), Elizabeth Hartman’s Priss (in the middle), and Shirley Knight’s Polly (at the end) getting the respect they deserve. The other five actresses and their characters get no respect or insight whatsoever. It’s a lost opportunity. This goes double for Candice Bergen, making her movie debut as the film’s token lesbian character, Lakey. Lakey spends most of the movie in Europe, a place where rich lesbians were banished in film like this before there was a California.

Clockwise: Joanna Petit, Jessica Walter, Mary Robin Redd, Candice Bergen, Shirley Knight, Kathleen Widdoes, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman

At the outbreak of World War II, Lakey returns to the United States with a baroness in tow. However, said Baroness (Lidia Prochnicka) gets no dialogue. Her sole purpose is to be introduced to The Group at the railway station so we can see the shock on their faces; her queerness is not subtle! So, unlike Lauren Bacall and Katherine Kurasch in Young Man with a Horn or Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood in The Fox, no relationship is documented here. Probably just as well since, even though Bergen’s natural beauty is striking, she is so tightly coutured in a series of stiff lesbian outfits by designer Anna Hill Johnstone that it’s a wonder the poor thing could even breathe. I swear, in some of her scenes, she looks like a prototype for the Corleone brothers in The Godfather, for which Johnstone would design her landmark costumes six years later.

Cinematography

Boris Kaufman

United Artists

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