Interiors
Director: Woody Allen. Cast: Geraldine Page, Mary Beth Hurt, Diane Keaton, E.G. Marshall, Sam Waterston,
Kristin Griffith, Maureen Stapleton, Richard Jordan. Screenplay: Woody Allen.
Woody Allen's first attempt at straight-faced chamber drama is not so interesting or accomplished as his
later effort in this vein, 1988's Another Woman. Nonetheless,
Interiors, which received a bevy of award nominations but very little popular enthusiasm when it
was released, is a strong and attention-worthy piece of work. Importing wholesale characters, scenarios,
and visual concepts from two of his most consistent inspirations, Ingmar Bergman and Anton Chekhov, Allen
tells the story of a troubled family, starting with parents played by Geraldine Page and E.G. Marshall.
She is an interior decorator with a history of mental breakdowns; he all but guarantees another of these
episodes when he announces objectively over lunch that he wishes to instigate a trial separation.
While Page struggles to understand and accept what her husband tells her, her two older daughters sit at
the table stunned. Renata (Diane Keaton), a successful poet, eventually decides that her mother needs as
much encouragement as possible, so she bolsters her hopes that Marshall will want a reconciliation. Joey
(Mary Beth Hurt), a pragmatist, faults Renata for giving false hope but is rebuked by her mother for not
viewing the prospects for a reunion with sufficient optimism. Joey feels that her valid opinions are not
taken seriously because she has not been as professionally successful as Renata, though Keaton's character
in turn feels that Joey's opinion is of more value to their father than is her own. Both women have
husbands, played by Sam Waterston and Richard Jordan, who see their wives' perspectives but have their own
reasons for wanting to remain as far outside the situation as possible. Making occasional drop-in
appearances within all this tension is Kristin Griffith's Flyn, Renata and Joey's youngest sister. Flyn is
a beautiful TV-movie actress who at first seems to have found happiness by perceiving and appreciating
herself for exactly the mid-level talent that she is. Flyn, however, may not be so contented or stable an
individual as she seems.
Allen maps the interactions between all these characters across the challenging thematic terrain of all
his best pictures, comedic or dramatic: the illusion of happiness, the indifference of time and morality
to art, the complexity of maintaining family relationships, and the urge to compare oneself by hopeless or
inappropriate standards. Interiors was a grand shock to the filmgoing world in 1978, just one year
after the buoyant popular and critical juggernaut of Annie Hall. Curiously enough, though it is now
easier to view Interiors in a context of Allen's other work, the film may actually have worked
better when the filmmaker's darker preoccupations were not so well-known. As it is, Interiors is
an admirably quiet, deliberate movie that valiantly maintains its tone of melancholy verging toward
despair. The shots are long and quiet enough to be Chantal Akerman's, even though Allen's dexterity with
language is still evident in the speeches; just listen how Page and Keaton in particular try to keep the
world at a formal, safe distance by using unnecessarily large words to express simple or emotional
thoughts.
On the other hand, Interiors is almost too controlled, too deliberate, less of a unified vision
than an occasionally redundant and often overstated exercise in gloom. Geraldine Page's tightly-coiled
hairstyle, the gray/yellow/brown color palette, the rarely-broken silence, and the motif of fences and
boundaries all serve the same dramatic purpose, when only two or three of these elements would have
persuasively reinforced the guarded, dehydrated state of the characters. By contrast, while Maureen
Stapleton gives a wonderful and natural performance as Marshall's new flame, Pearl, her vibrant red
costuming and dramatic, dark hair are such an obvious contrast to the rest of the film's visual scheme
that we know she represents a Vital Life Force among all the anomie. Allen might have deepened his film
by reaching for more than one emotional effect at a time, as the redoubtable Page does in her luminous,
unflashy, but incredibly powerful performance. I have now seen her in Interiors and in the
original Sweet Bird of Youth, and the two portrayals she gave in those films make me think F.
Murray Abraham may have been on to something in calling her America's greatest actress.
Allen is the unique filmmaker who rarely makes bad choices, overlooking big missteps like Shadows and Fog; he is more apt to make his mistakes by repeating himself,
either with wholly redundant projects (like Mighty Aphrodite and Celebrity) or with films that are more repetitive in their individual
structures than they need to be. Certainly, Interiors is not guilty of the first offense; not only
was the film unprecedented for Allen at the time of its premiere, it is still a unique and atypical effort
after 20 more years and 21 more films. The popular images of Allen—derived from his own writing and
screen appearances, from documentaries like 1998's Wild Man Blues, and
from ex-companion Mia Farrow's exquisitely insightful memoir What Falls Away—all agree on the issue
that Allen feels an existential despair and burden of futility as strong as those expressed in his serious
movies, and, if you're watchful, even in his funny ones. It is a telling attribute of this filmmaker's
long, terrific career that it becomes harder and harder over time even to distinguish "the funny ones"
form "the serious ones." Interiors, raw, proficient, but lacking in nuance, is an undiluted
expression of tortured thoughts that would work more effectively when blended into his later work. Grade: B
- Academy Award Nominations:
- Best Director: Woody Allen
- Best Actress: Geraldine Page
- Best Supporting Actress: Maureen Stapleton
- Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen
- Best Art Direction: Mel Bourne
- Golden Globe Nominations:
- Best Director: Woody Allen
- Best Actress (Drama): Geraldine Page
- Best Supporting Actress: Maureen Stapleton
- Best Screenplay
- Other Awards:
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association—Best Supporting Actress (tie): Maureen Stapleton
- New York Film Critics Circle—Best Supporting Actress: Maureen Stapleton