Questions for an Unmarried Woman

1 Discussion Questions for Women in Film Gathering, December 4, 2012: Focal Film: An Unmarried Woman (1978; U.S.; Written & Directed by Paul Mazursky) Paul Mazursky (1930‐ ) is an American actor, writer, producer, and director. He began his career as a performer—an actor and stage comedian—and then transitioned to TV comedy writing (e.g., The Danny Kaye Show, The Monkees). His breakthrough to feature films was his co‐authorship and co‐executive producing (with Larry Tucker) of the screenplay for I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968; Dir.: Hy Averback); this experience motivated him to direct his own work. His directorial debut was the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), which again he co‐wrote with Tucker. Other Mazursky films you might recognize are Harry and Tonto (1974), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), Tempest (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), and Enemies: A Love Story (1989). Mazursky both wrote (or co‐wrote) and directed all of these. Source material for these films ranges from semi‐autobiography (Next Stop, Greenwich Village) to Shakespeare (Tempest) to a Time magazine photo (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) to the tales of an attempted Russian defection in a department store as told to Mazursky by a film crew member (Moscow on the Hudson) to classic French poetic realism film (i.e., the 1932 Jean Renoir film Boudu Saved from Drowning revisited as Down and Out in Beverly Hills). Paul Mazursky’s films have been variously described as: “Personal, intimate observations of the human condition” (Actors Turned Directors, Stevens, 1997) “Deceptively accessible” (like Preston Sturges, Leo McCarey, and Blake Edwards; Hollywood Renaissance, Jacobs, 1980) Investigating “characters in transition” (Jacobs) Focusing on an upper‐middle‐class milieu, with characters who don’t know “what to do next” (American Jewish Filmmakers, Desser & Friedman, 2004); about this, Mazursky says, “You can be privileged and be likable” Incorporating “humanism,” and “freedom, and the price of freedom; change, and the price of change” (Mazursky himself, in Word Into Image, 1981) Satires of “modern American foibles” (Holden, 2007) Dealing with important social and political issues, yet “tempered. with hope, a belief in the possibility of making things better, of starting anew” (Siegel, 1984) Using food as a motif (Tuchman, 1986) An Unmarried Woman was nominated for three Academy Awards—Best Actress (Jill Clayburgh), Best Original Screenplay (Paul Mazursky), and Best Picture. Mazursky's screenplay won awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Jill Clayburgh won Best Actress at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. In An Unmarried Woman, the principal characters are: * Erica, a happily married woman (played by Jill Clayburgh) * Martin, her husband (played by Michael Murphy) 2 * Saul, an artist (played by Alan Bates, in his first film shot in America) * Patti, the teenaged daughter of Erica and Martin (played by Lisa Lucas) Other characters include Erica’s three girlfriends, her therapist (played by a real therapist), and a male friend with whom she has fairly casual sex (played by Cliff Gorman). 1. Do you identify with the character of Erica? In what ways, and at what points in the story? 2. Do the events of the film seem true‐to‐life to you? Have you known anyone who has gone through some of the challenges that face Erica throughout the narrative? (Mazursky himself has been married to wife Betsy for nearly 60 years, but has said that most of their friends have been divorced. “It’s hard to stay neutral” when that happens, he says.) 3. What is the real significance of the title, An Unmarried Woman, in your estimation? Much speculation has been given to this, and Paul Mazursky’s own comments lead one to believe that he was and is sympathetic to the plight of women. Mazursky has explained the title’s origin in this way: “One day we had some friends over and one of the divorced women had just bought a house. Something she said suddenly struck me as very strange: On the deed to the house, she said, right after her name, she was described as ‘an unmarried woman.' As if somehow that described her, or was important to home ownership.” 4. Mazursky on An Unmarried Woman—“All my movies are comedies. They’re not big, broad comedies. I love the combination of darkness. that’s the beauty of life. it’s the human tragedy. it’s the human comedy.” In your opinion, is An Unmarried Woman a comedy? 5. In her 1982 Screen article, “A Subject for the Seventies,” Charlotte Brundson classifies An Unmarried Woman with such films as Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Scorsese, 1974), Three Women (Altman, 1977), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Brooks, 1977), The Turning Point (Ross, 1978), and Julia (Zinneman, 1978)—she contends that all the films focus on central female protagonists and address “changing conceptions of the appropriate modes of femininity in contemporary Western culture” appealing to a “new female audience.” However, Brundson argues that Erica is rather unique among the heroines of these 1970s films, in that she is sexual, desired, and “OK” (not particularly neurotic, nor dangerous). For those who might remember the 1970s, do these notions seem to hold true? 6. Brundson also contrasts the “married scene” of a joyful Erica dancing in shirt and undies to “Swan Lake” with the “unmarrying scene” of Erica creating a funereal pile of her husband’s belongings, and removing her wedding band. Do you think that these two scenes create a contrast of opposites? 7. Paul Mazursky often appears in his own films, usually in a role that is somewhat more than a cameo (e.g., Hal in An Unmarried Woman). He also places family members in small roles (e.g., his wife Betsy is the nonplussed floor manager in Moscow on the Hudson who, when Robin Williams’ Soviet character defects in Bloomingdale’s, deadpans, “We don’t like that kind of thing here at Bloomingdale’s.”). Some of his characters are based substantially on his wife or daughters (Farrell & Bacon, 1990). And, Mazursky’s 3 own real‐life therapist has played a therapist in several of his films. Does this insertion of the private Mazursky into his filmic creations have a particular impact? 8. It should come as no surprise that Mazursky reportedly “loves women” (Farrell & Bacon, 1990). More than a half‐century of marriage to the same woman, the raising of two daughters, and his two granddaughters have immersed him in a network of women, seemingly a welcome immersion. (“I find women more open to talk to than men.”) And, his primary “source material” for An Unmarried Woman was, he says, talking to women—lots of them. How does this inform our interpretations of An Unmarried Woman? 9. In an article title, “The Happily Married Man Who Examines the Shaky State of Marriage” (Haller, 1978), this consistent Mazursky motif is introduced; we could identify it in nearly all of Mazursky’s films. Your thoughts on what Mazursky is saying about marriage in An Unmarried Woman? And, how can such a happily married man give full due to the process of a marital breakup? 10. Jill Clayburgh as quoted about An Unmarried Woman: “I was completely shocked by the public’s reaction. Not that people loved it, but that it had this political significance. feminism was in the air, but it hadn’t trickled down. It was a bit rarified” (Paul on Mazursky, Wasson, 2011). Was it truly a feminist picture, as Wasson asks? 11. Jane Fonda turned down the role of Erica because it was not political enough, she said. Mazursky told her, “Jane, this is the most political role you’ve ever played, if you do it. It’s a woman on her own, it’s all about where women are coming from [in 1977].” What exactly are the politics of Erica’s life, then? 12. In a review of the film at the time of its release, critic Roger Ebert focused on the “women’s club” sequences—“There are scenes in An Unmarried Woman so well written and acted that our laughter is unsettling, the laughter of exact recognition. Women friends tell me that the first meeting of Clayburgh and her “club” of three old girlfriends is presented with precise accuracy; all the words and attitudes ring true. The scene with the four women in the bar sounds right, too, and when Mazursky has them all sprawled on a bed, leafing through the Sunday Times and the photographs of great movie stars, the interplay between their fantasies about actresses and their realizations about themselves is so revealing it hurts.” We should also recall the scene in which the four women hold hands as they ice skate at Rockefeller Center. What particular functions does this “women’s club” serve for the film? 13. Another key female/female relationship demonstrated in An Unmarried Woman is that of the mother/daughter pairing of Erica and Patti. Mazursky says that in their on‐screen relationship, we see “real emotion,” not a “sitcom,” the locus of so many other mother/daughter portrayals, especially in the 1970s. The realism is enhanced by such fortuitous additions as the piano scene, which was inserted after Mazursky observed the two actresses playing together on break. What particular functions does the mother/daughter relationship serve for the film? 14. The inimitable critic Pauline Kael, while pronouncing An Unmarried Woman a “buoyant comedy,” found something to be desired in Mazursky’s treatment of the Erica character. “[H]e shies away from 4 having her look foolish; in crucial parts, he suppresses his sense of satire, and the picture becomes virtuous.” Do you agree with Kael’s point of view? 15.

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