Under The Soles Of Your Shoes

The first image we see in Dario Argento’s INFERNO is a giant close-up of a large knife. Considering what is to come over the next few hours, this is not so surprising. But slightly unexpected in this context is its initial use, to assist in carefully moving through the pages of a certain very old book. Of course, what results from reading this book, moving through a history that is in the process of being uncovered, pretty much has the same result. The second entry in its director’s famed Three Mothers trilogy, INFERNO, which was made in 1980, has never been an easy film to pin down. Not so much a sequel to the previous entry SUSPIRIA, which it shares no main characters with, but an alternate take on several of its themes, in some ways a retelling of the earlier film but in a harsher, more minor key. While that film has the completely human presence of star Jessica Harper and its one key location of the Dance Academy for us to focus on, INFERNO hops around the map a little more, as well as seemingly experimenting with how long it can go on without actually starting the narrative we expect, as well as giving us a character who we believe will be the lead. This does eventually happen, almost by default, and it’s not necessarily the person we would have chosen. The key has to be to accept INFERNO for what it is, if only for the effect it ultimately has on us. There is art in this madness of Argento’s but he doesn’t always make it easy on us to take it in.


I could attempt a brief synopsis of the plot, but it wouldn’t be easy. While SUSPIRIA, set in Germany, told of Mater Suspiriorium, the Mother of Sighs, INFERNO moves things to New York to focus on Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness. In New York, Rose (Irene Miracle), a young poet who after reading a book by Varelli on The Three Mothers which she purchased from a nearby antiques dealer begins to suspect that her building is actually the dwelling of the Mother of Darkness and writes to her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey), a music student in Rome, of her suspicions and fears. Both of them, as well as a number of people around them, find themselves strangely drawn to learning more about whatever is going on, leading to much carnage as one of the characters begins to become closer to the roots of this mystery.


Even less than SUSPIRIA, possibly less than any other film Argento has made, the story being told is not important. The imagery, the mood, the undeniable sense of something truly other, is. The story we expect to receive becomes delayed in starting as we follow several different characters into their own corners of the tale, leading to horrible ends that are often punctuated by fade outs which always seem reminiscent of the end of the Arbogast murder in PSYCHO. In some ways INFERNO could be looked at as a PSYCHO-type of experience if we were introduced continually to other potential lead characters after Janet Leigh who met horrible unexpected ends as well, stretching our ideas of what this narrative should be to the absolute breaking point. To say that the film makes little sense is like saying it’s also in color—an appropriate way to look at it considering how beautiful those colors are. It’s a cold, harsh film, one that barely qualifies as having any sort of sense or humanity. The logic is one of a nightmare, where a major character thinks nothing of lowering herself into some bizarre flooded ballroom in a setpiece which makes no sense in several different ways, yet is undeniably beautiful in just as many. Imagery seen throughout is left unexplained on any level but nevertheless always manages to serve as a warning that evil is definitely nearby. The lack of a real sense of place certainly ties into that. Some of the film was actually shot in New York (just like other Italian genre films from this period, usually in an interesting way) but really very little. Of course, it isn’t set in the real New York that we know (or the real Rome in those scenes, for that matter). It’s another type of reality, a world where looking for the world of the past can lead to horrible results—in some ways, the past and the supernatural could almost mean the same thing in this context and every time somebody looks for one the other gets unavoidably intertwined.


Whereas the setup and logic of SUSPIRIA could be compared to that of a fairy tale (Imagine: “Once upon a time there was a young girl who went to a strange dance school…”) INFERNO is considerably more labyrinthine in its approach (Such as, “Once upon a time there was a young woman who lived in a strange building. Oh, and she had a brother. Oh, and he…”) which muddies things a bit and taking this sort of opposite approach is a bold step that doesn’t always work (the prolonged nighttime Central Park sequence always begins to lose me a bit). Jessica Harper was such a crucially believable presence amidst all the madness of that film and the women who might possibly have had such a sensuous effect here (namely Irene Miracle and Elonora Georgi as Mark’s girlfriend in Rome) seem deliberately not given the chance to have such an effect. Instead we get Leigh McCloskey who makes next to no impression at all and it is this coldness that always makes INFERNO more of a schematic experience than anything, even as densely layered as it feels much of the time. That we have to follow him through the film means that our ultimate destination isn’t going to be completely satisfying—of course, the climax of SUSPIRIA wasn’t the strongest part of that film either but that was for different reasons(at least the lead of this film gets to actually confront somebody). INFERNO is a fascinating and, in some ways, daring work by its director but at times maybe too disjointed to entirely connect to any sort of emotional state. Still, it’s hard to deny how much the very best moments really do linger in the brain long after it concludes and at its best there is a genuine power in there.


As a way that makes it slightly frustrating, it’s also hard not to think of it as very consciously the middle chapter in a trilogy which may have been concluded at that time. There are elements (some set design, uses of color, actor Fulvio Mingozzi playing a cab driver in both films) which provide deliberate, almost subliminal echoes of SUSPIRIA, as well as tantalizing hints of what may have been yet to come of Argento had proceeded with a third entry soon after in Ania Pieroni’s brief unexplained appearance as a character listed in the credits merely as “music student” but who no doubt is supposed to be the mysterious Mother of Tears, not quite ready to take center stage. Of course, Argento finally concluded his trilogy within the past few years with MOTHER OF TEARS which I’ll admit I enjoyed more than a lot of people did but I’ll certainly admit that when compared to the first two films, coming so many years later, it just wasn’t the same.


Unlike SUSPIRIA, INFERNO never received a real theatrical release in the U.S. by Twentieth-Century Fox and didn’t play New York until a brief engagement at the Thalia in August 1986, when it received a bemused review in The New York Times. (“shot in vivid colors, with some striking angles…but the script and acting are largely routine.” They may be ineffectual, but I don’t know if ‘routine’ is really the issue here.) But as the cult of Argento has grown over here the film has achieved its own small following, evident by the packed house at the New Beverly for the midnight show on Saturday October 17th. Helping with the special night was the appearance of star Irene Miracle, Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer who composed the film’s remarkable score (my favorite use of music in the film may me the conclusion of the Central Park sequence which, with its shots of the city skyline, comes off as some sort of perverse Gershwin moment). Also at the theater, in from Cincinnati, was Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas who is also the author of the truly astonishing Mario Bava biography All the Colors of the Dark. Bava, as it is known, was responsible for some of INFERNO’s key special effects in what turned out to be the last film he ever worked on. Despite being claimed in the past by various sources, he did not work on the famed underwater sequence, but was responsible for some of the more subtle effects of the film, such as the continuous shots of the moon, which Lucas deemed as sort of Greek Chorus to what we might perceive as the narrative. The lovely Irene Miracle, clearly enjoying herself immensely, talked about how she basically took the part for the money and that due to Argento’s health problems he wasn’t even on set at times, essentially directing by proxy. She also explained some of what might be termed the abruptness of her part’s length by saying that while she was cast thinking she had a much larger part, her own health issues at the time may have led to it being cut down. More surprisingly, she spoke of how she shot numerous scenes that did not appear in the film including “discovering a body in Central Park” which indicates that there was possibly a good deal of restructuring going on both during the shooting and the cutting (could Daria Nicolodi’s character have been expanded because of this?). Keith Emerson spoke with great enthusiasm of the process of scoring the film, including screening all of Argento’s previous films just after arriving in Rome while suffering jet lag as well as how his up tempo version of the selection from Verdi’s Nabucco that we hear during the cab ride was meant to simulate the rickety nature of riding in cabs in Rome! All three people were immensely enjoyable to listen to and afterwards most people seemed to agree that it was one of the best q&a’s that we’d ever seen at the New Beverly (You’d think it would have turned up on Youtube by now).


What we were then treated to was an absolutely gorgeous print of the film, making it clear that INFERNO is one of those films where, no matter how good the DVD looks, somehow needs to be seen in a theater, both for the dark clarity of the print, but also because it provides you with less of an escape. Even without a strong narrative, the film can be a pummeling experience, both in the immense degree of gore and in how it refuses to make it easy on how to say exactly what the hell is going to go on, if the story has already begun, if it’s ever going to begin. It feels slightly longer than it needs to be. Maybe some cutting to move a few sections along faster wouldn’t have been a terrible thing but even this feels intentional in a way to get the rhythm of the film such that it wants to stretch out certain sections to an almost agonizing degree.


The night went late, but it was a wonderful screening with the film playing just great for the packed house. As it turned out, when we emerged from the theater in what was by then close to the middle of the night a heavy fog had come down up on the city, making driving home a somewhat treacherous experience. At that late hour, you could almost believe that you would have been driving off into some strange unexpected encounter, a strange force from the past. But nothing of the sort happened and as I left that screening where I got to express my admiration to Tim Lucas for all his work over the years the power of INFERNO was undeniable. When a skeptical minor character in the film is asked what he believes he replies, “In whatever I can see and touch.” It’s a clumsy line in how it comes across and he’s off the screen soon enough, presumably as a punishment for saying it. But even though such a idea goes against what the movie ultimately tells us, the line stays with me as a reminder of such a rational belief in the face of such madness. And besides, nights like this one at the New Beverly, made so enjoyable because of the film shown as well as the people there with a tangible connection to it reveal the statement to be true.

What You Cannot See Is Truth

You can read whatever you want into a film, but the validity of what you see can always be open to question. Sitting in the theater viewing Dario Argento’s MOTHER OF TEARS it was tempting to read a great deal into every shot, every line, looking for things that connect to his long career. There’s the wish to proclaim it as some grand artistic summation by the director and yes, certain elements do lend themselves to that theory. But while it does tie in with those other films a great deal, ultimately I got the feeling that Argento just wanted to go out to make a movie with people he knows very well and simply have a nasty good time. There are things I could say about what’s wrong with MOTHER OF TEARS—the expected dreamlike quality feels absent, a lack of appropriate payoff, the expected screwy logic—but I couldn’t help but sit there and enjoy myself thoroughly with a big smile on my face.


Just to make it clear, MOTHER OF TEARS: THE THIRD MOTHER (as it is called on screen) represents the long, long, long-awaited final chapter in the “Three Mothers” trilogy, which began with SUSPIRIA (1977) and INFERNO (1980). The three mothers actually a trio of sisters who are witches, each film focuses on one of them and where they reside and each film demonstrates a variety of the director’s strengths (mood, imagery, gore) and weaknesses (plot, story, which becomes beside the point anyway). SUSPIRIA is sometimes viewed as his masterpiece (it’s not my favorite, but it is the one most people seem to know), INFERNO has some extremely effective passages but seems to resist becoming a fully-fledged storyline right up to the end. So in other words, this is his PHANTOM MENACE, his CRYSTAL SKULL, or maybe most appropriately, his GODFATHER PART III. To have him return to the series and complete it after so long, after so many people had no doubt asked him when he would, it was open to question whether he would attempt to revert to the director he was all those years ago or simply just go full throttle and make what has become, in recent years, a Dario Argento film. He went with the latter but not without some blatant nods to his past. There are definitely moments sprinkled throughout which recall what has come before (not just in the first two films but from throughout his filmography) and there are actors who appear because of what their presence represents than almost any other reason. The film seems determined to not lock itself into its own history, but the past is always there. In some ways, that’s what the film is about as well.


When an ancient urn is discovered in a cemetery outside Rome it is sent by a priest, who seems to suspect what is inside, to the Museum of Ancient Art for study. Once there it is opened by the inquisitive assistant curator Giselle Mares (the beguiling Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) and art restorer Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento, of course). Giselle cuts her finger on the urn while opening it (never a good sign in one of these movies) and after a brief examination of the contents Giselle is rewarded for her curiosity when several mysterious figures (and a monkey) suddenly emerge from the shadows and brutally slaughter her. Sarah escapes, but the opening of the urn has brought the Mother of Tears, Mater Lachrimarum, “the most beautiful of the Three Mothers” back to power. As a wave of witches begin to arrive in Rome from all around the world to celebrate her return, a wave of violence and suicide begins to sweep the city. Meanwhile, Sarah begins to investigate the history of the urn with her boyfriend, museum curator Michael Pierce (Adam James) but as she finds herself being pursued by the diabolical forces Sarah begins to realize that she may be the only one with the power to stop the legendary Mother of Tears.


It’s somewhat surprising that the basic plot doesn’t make an attempt at being more similar to the other two films, such as how they were mostly set in the homes that the witches resided in. Here, that location turns out to be a key to solving the mystery and much of it is set in and around Rome with more of a straight-ahead plot than might have been expected. There are the usual hard-to-swallow beats expected from the director—my favorite is probably how Sarah at one point throws her cell phone away so the witches can’t use it to find her. Putting aside how they’re witches and may not need to trace her phone, the fact that Sarah immediately chooses to go home after doing this, seems to defeat the purpose. And yes, the movie sometimes feels like it needs a slightly bigger budget, such as the montages of chaos in Rome looking too small-scale or the long backstory told using drawings. But the honest truth for me is that the movie has enough moments which sent a charge through me of the sort that I want from an Argento film. All through the film there are moments which could have come from few other directors—Sarah Mandy’s visit to “renowned thinker” Guglielmo De Witt, for one, or an amazing long steadicam shot near the end. One particular section in a bookstore when Sarah is being chased is so absurd, yet at the same time so skillfully done, that it defies stating how good or bad it really is. Ultimately, it’s kind of mesmerizing. The violence goes perhaps farther than even Argento has ever gone—I’m used to this stuff and even I had to shield my eyes a few times. But even where the film seems to step over that line in one scene (those who have seen it will know what I’m talking about) it’s hard to ignore how in that moment the film provides us with one of its most effective grace moments as we get the most chilling impression of the title character the film ever gives us.


Somehow fitting for a movie with the word ‘Mother’ in the title, it is the women who seem continually at the forefront. For all the talk bandied about of how Argento’s films are misogynist I get the impression possibly more than ever before that it’s the women in the film where his main interest lies. The male characters feel little more than functional in the narrative and frankly, I get the feeling that he is more interested in the briefly-seen woman on a bridge who does something horrible to her baby, in an already notorious scene, than he does in a few of the men who actually have substantial roles. As good as Asia Argento is as Sarah Mandy, everything we know about her means that it’s a bit of a reach to buy her as an art restorer who is unaware of her special powers—it’s not too far off from trying to buy Arnold Schwarzenegger as a mere construction worker in TOTAL RECALL. Even so, I can’t imagine anyone else playing the role and while it’s tempting to say that she is allowed few of her expected quirks while on the run through much of the film, but we do get her barking “WHAT??!!” at a curious bystander at one point. As the much-discussed Mater Lachrymarum, Moran Atias certainly look impressive and she does have that one moment I mentioned, but whenever she speaks it all goes out the window. It’s not a voice of power, it’s the voice of a supermodel who wants to know where her latte is. Much more impressive is Jun Ichikawa as another witch whose very screen presence alone is responsible for a few of the most effective moments. Especially interesting is the actress Valeria Cavalli as psychic Marta Colussi who brings an unusual empathic sensuality to her role. Even when given a fairly gratuitous lesbian scene to play, it is at least refreshing to have an actress of that age being presented as a sexual creature. (As for what eventually happens to her, well…) Udo Kier, the one male who really gets to make an impression, comes off as a lunatic in his role as a priest but it’s hard not to get a kick out it considering that he, as another character, provided much of the exposition in SUSPIRIA. Here does a little of the same, with a particularly nice moment when he mentions the name of Suzy Banyon. Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni’s association with Argento goes all the way back to the eighties so it feels important that she is once again being brutally killed off here, and it is an amazing death scene, even if it is a small role. But for me the film which has a large enough role for Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni has yet to be made.


The film is a work of madness and there’s a degree to which it’s hard to take much of any of it seriously. But for me there’s something there, an embracing of that madness for now and all time which is most obvious in the final shot, a closer which recalls the end of SUSPIRIA and seems just right considering everything we’ve just seen. Argento is who he is and maybe what that ending tells us is that we’re just going to have to learn to live with it. In SUSPIRIA the key line was “Magic is all around us.” Here, after the heroine insists at the beginning, “We’re supposed to believe in what we see,” we are later told, “What you see does not exist. What you cannot see is truth.” The lead character goes from believing in what she knows to accepting what she is. Somewhere in that truth and madness is what MOTHER OF TEARS is about and I couldn’t help but get a great deal of demented enjoyment from it. Sometimes that type of delirium is exactly what is needed in the movies we love.

As Far As You Can

Until shortly before I wrote about it some years back, I’m not sure I’d even heard of Claudia Weill’s GIRLFRIENDS but the cult seems to have grown since that time which likely comes from airings on TCM which is where I first saw it, rep screenings at places like the New Beverly in L.A. and Metrograph in New York, a Criterion Blu-ray loaded with special features as well as every time someone on Film Twitter discovers Stanley Kubrick was a big fan. This newfound rep is well deserved, since GIRLFRIENDS is a wonderfully insightful look at female friendship and having to sometimes keep going on your own that still feels relatable forty-five years after it was released. See it if you haven’t. So far there hasn’t been the same level of appreciation for IT’S MY TURN, the one and only other feature directed by Claudia Weill which followed in 1980 and is probably now best known for giving the world the adult contemporary staple that is the Diana Ross song of the same name. In the years following, Weill continued to work in television and theater along with teaching at various universities but there haven’t been any other features, which seems at least partly due to a horrible experience with producer Ray Stark on this film, as discussed by her in the 2021 Vanity Fair article “Promising Young Women”. This of course is unfortunate for all sorts of reasons, not the least that it would have been nice to get more films along the lines of GIRLFRIENDS if on a larger scale and while IT’S MY TURN never becomes as effective as that debut, it does display its own kind of potential in a lightly enjoyable way that now plays as an early version of the sort of thing the likes of Nicole Holofcener would go on to do. The difference is this one was made by a big studio and produced by people who would maybe be more at home with, say, a plot driven script of the sort someone like Ray Stark was probably used to. As a result, the film that came out of this feels like it’s fighting against any semblance of high concept in the story line and maybe plays as most comfortable when it’s in no rush whatsoever. Running only about ninety minutes, the film never quite surpasses the feeling of being a little too slight but is still quietly satisfying in a modest, hopeful way.

Mathematics professor Kate Gunzinger (Jill Clayburgh) has reached a crossroads in her life, with a stable but not exactly passionate relationship with divorcee Homer (Charles Grodin) but when she travels to New York for a weekend for a job interview and to attend the wedding of her father she meets the son of his new wife, ex-ball player Ben Lewin (Michael Douglas). The two of them hit it off immediately but with so much of each of their own lives in flux Kate has to quickly decide if leaving the unrewarding stability of Homer is worth trying to make something with Ben work.

IT'S MY TURN is uneven, not to mention uneventful, a little too much of the time with a tone that never becomes consistent enough to settle down in but it’s always pleasant with a performance by Jill Clayburgh that holds much of it together by sheer force. The screenplay is by Eleanor Bergstein who later went on to write DIRTY DANCING which makes it easy to wonder how much autobiography can be found in both to pair them together. It’s a film loaded with character beats and dialogue that always seems to be searching for layers but the most effective and comfortable moments that come out of Weill’s direction seem to be when it simply breathes, just willing to linger on a close-up of Jill Clayburgh and do nothing else. Her innate relatability always has just the right effect and the actress was phenomenal at infusing tangible life into deceptively small character moments although when she has to go for more broadly comical bits here of the stumbling in her heels variety it can look like she’s trying too hard, causing the film to seem uncertain about its own tone as well. “Why are your clothes so dumb?” Michael Douglas asks her in one scene out of nowhere, referring to all those scarves she drops even in the opening shot and you can see in her eyes how upset this makes her as well as getting her to wonder why she makes things like that more complicated than she needs to. The film has a casual approach and it makes the people around her believable but it doesn’t always keep them complete fleshed out beyond those moments where they suddenly make sense, leading to dialogue that sometimes feels straining for the answer of what the scene is supposed to be about. The right elements are there and it maintains a lightly enjoyable, springtime vibe but still feels like an idea that isn’t completely formed yet.

In spite of such drawbacks, the film is so modest that it hardly seems like the sort of thing worth getting upset over but some of the critical response when it was released in October 1980 comes off as a little too nasty for something so small and sincere. The Razzie nomination for Worst Screenplay barely even seems worth acknowledging while Roger Ebert just seems mildly annoyed by the whole thing in his two star review and he’s not even wrong about everything he says but there is the feeling of going slightly overboard with the criticisms. All this aside, IT’S MY TURN plays like a charmingly low-key character piece that wants to be a commercial romantic comedy but the plot doesn’t quite have to juice to get it there. It’s a light piece of work, with a bouncy score by Patrick Williams (many film & TV credits, including for USED CARS and HERO AT LARGE around this period) that feels like it would be right at home as the theme to an MTM sitcom of the time but in this context feels like it’s straining a little too hard for a certain tone. There’s potential in the setup that maybe lacks a real narrative spine to go with the character approach and feminist thematic focus, so while there’s always a believably honest sense of inner life to the main character it still feels like something is missing.

Still, it has Jill Clayburgh so maybe not much more is needed. At the very least it’s always her movie, letting the actress own the screen as someone you want to follow while hoping Kate makes the right choice. Michael Douglas, during the period when he was still getting his movie star sea legs by playing supporting to female leads in films like this, THE CHINA SYNDROME, COMA and even ROMANCING THE STONE, matches up well with her playing someone equally at sea in his own life—we don't know the full extent until near the end—looking for something that makes him feel as good as when he played ball. He brings a welcome energy and you can always feel Douglas trying to make the scenes work, as if trying to needle Clayburgh in character to add chemistry to their relationship. This is especially spotlighted during a stretch of the film that goes on for roughly ten minutes with the two of them in her hotel room, doing little more than flirting, kissing, talking, bickering, then agreeing to table things and the patience the film displays at times is admirable with a flow to how these moments are just allowed to happen. If it had kept this going for much of the running time, maybe even turning that one night into the entire film like the Richard Linklater BEFORE series did much later on, instead of getting bogged down in side issues and characters who get introduced then disappear, it might have been something really special. Some of those scenes end practically before they’ve even begun, abruptly cut short before there can be any real emotional effect, making one wonder why the film bothered with them at all unless it was simply to get the movie to feature length. It’s the inner workings of the chemistry between Clayburgh and Douglas that the movie feels like it wants to explore, one which is worth exploring with a tension to it all as he challenges her but it still feels effortless and could likely support the entire movie if it wanted to spend that much time with them.

It does make sense that the main character in a film who is a math professor would be meant to represent some sort of metaphor for how all those complex equations related to how screwed up their life is, that no matter how expert they are in mapping these things out they’re still going to be groping in the dark like everyone else when it comes to actual life. An early shot of Clayburgh traversing an overly complicated garage layout just to get home to the loft she shares with Homer work perfectly as a symbol for how much she’s making her life a little more complicated than they need to be, just like how much mater on she keeps offering more suggestions on how she and Douglas can rearrange their flights home, always looking for the logic and numbers more than anything that emotionally makes sense. All of this feels like it’s trying to tie into the questions of how can a woman have it all in the feminist discussions of the time, the inherent awkwardness in these relationships, especially when she brings up the question of how many people are really in the bed she’s sharing with Douglas. When the film is willing to stay with them, in no rush to get anywhere else, it has a life. The lack of effort apparent in their chemistry matches up nicely with the scenes she shares with Charles Grodin, playing it charming but charming in the style of someone on cruise control, who doesn’t need to try any harder beyond making the unwanted jokes before going back to his own stuff, never wanting things to get too serious since that would cause everything to change, all coming out of the realization that a lot of space in a relationship isn’t the most fulfilling thing.

Among the prominent New York locations that appear (Marshall Brickman’s SIMON can be spotted playing at Cinema II across the street from Bloomingdale’s) is an extended sequence set at Yankee Stadium where Ben takes Kate to what turns out to be an Old Timer’s Day featuring the likes of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford among many others which would likely be a treat for any longtime New Yorker/Yankee/baseball fan--according to imdb, filmed at the actual old-timers day on June 21, 1980 when I was likely across town being taken to see the Broadway musical BARNUM for my birthday. The ex-ballplayer played by Michael Douglas is right there alongside them, of course still looking pretty young and trim (a shoulder injury ended Ben’s career, so we’re told). Kate asks someone how old you have to be to be an Old Timer and she’s told, “Not old. Just finished,” which is a little on the nose but still a reminder of how you have to decide if you want to be finished or not. The sequence goes on much longer than necessary since it doesn’t really serve any real purpose past a certain point—again, it feels like stretching things out to get to the 90-minute mark—but it does tie into the overall theme of Ben being someone who was forced to give up his career but still has to live the rest of his life. It all doesn’t necessarily have to be etched in stone for Kate who still has the power to change things. What’s missing is a way to somehow firm down the concept beyond various scenes that serve as little more than casual get-togethers and dinners where people get acquainted. In spite of what the basic logline sounds like it might be it never becomes a movie centered around a wedding or even the weirdness of two kids of an older married couple falling for each other. “I love you, sis,” is a pretty good line that goes by fast so the whole thing is basically a nonissue and even when the actual ceremony comes the sequence is over with pretty quick. The film is more about the chemistry that quickly develops and the question of whether their lives will allow it to keep going. Through all this, moments of sensitivity stick out even if they don’t feel quite connected to the whole, like Steven Hill and Beverly Garland excusing themselves from their wedding when she sees he’s feeling tired, a small moment where something goes unspoken that becomes much more effective than all the conversations whether it’s not entirely clear what dialogue is specifically referring to and what we’re supposed to take from it.

So, in the end, what does IT’S MY TURN have? It has Jill Clayburgh, during that brief moment in time when ‘Jill Clayburgh movie’ qualified as a subgenre and her inherent likability is what carries it, the vulnerability she displays is what makes us root for her. It also offers a glimpse at the potential Claudia Weill displayed as the ‘70s turned into the ‘80s but there wasn’t going to be much of a place for this kind of movie for the next few years but she always seems focused on bringing a sensitivity to things, one series of silent looks between various characters displaying more sensitivity than all of those longer dialogue scenes. It even gives us a look at more relaxed versions of Michael Douglas and Charles Grodin than they got to do at other points through the years. The result may be too vague to fully connect so IT’S MY TURN feels mild and maybe a little small in the end, one of those films where just as it feels like things are beginning to build so they can pay off, that’s when the end credits roll. But it does contain an earnestness in the way it explores someone facing the need for change in their lives even when they don’t realize that’s what they need, the way Charles Grodin’s Homer is perfectly happy to remain in a cruise control status. People in your life are going to make changes, even if you’re not ready. And, by the way, you should too especially if you feel like you’ve been settling. Through all this it’s hard not to have the feeling that this film is compromised in a way that at least diluted the intended effect; in the Vanity Fair article Weill talks about a shadow cut being prepared at the same time without her knowledge during the editing process so it’s hard to know how compromised the release version might be. Of course, it’s always possible that the script wasn’t strong enough or Weill’s lack of experience working on a studio film was a factor but the lack of consistency makes it easier to believe in the possibility of things being messed with, whether by Ray Stark or the studio. Having said this, all we can really go on is the final film which has more than enough to defend it at least partway. It’s about that point in your life where you suddenly find yourself asking, “Is it over? Am I done? Is anything else going to happen to me or is it all set? Can I still do something to change things?” That’s one thing you realize. People in your life are going to make changes, even if you’re not ready and, by the way, you should too. Especially if it feels like you’ve been settling.

The material may not be there in the way it was for Jill Clayburgh in some of her best films like AN UNMARRIED WOMAN and STARTING OVER but even during moments where the plot seems to be straining to explain her feels she always feels so relatable that it elevates things closer to where it needs to be. Even when a scene doesn’t quite click what’s always most important is that sense of yearning in her eyes. Some of Michael Douglas’ character almost is played between the lines or in asides meant to explain him a little too easily, how he is looking for something to care about now since baseball is no longer there, while Charles Grodin in a more relaxed mode than he often is paints a fleshed out portrayal of someone who simply wants to be comfortable. The always dependable Steven Hill and Beverly Garland aren’t quite around as much as you’d expect them to be but they bring some added gravitas to the family relations. There’s also early appearances by Daniel Stern (like in the previous year’s STARTING OVER, playing a student in a classroom) and the recently departed Charles Kimborough (also briefly in, what do you know, STARTING OVER) plus Dianne (spelled Diane) Weist in her first film, introduced as a close friend and is allowed to make a nice impression but not much more than that, really one moment where she offers some boilerplate advice then that’s about it.

Based on the two movies we got it’s hard not to wonder what other films made by Weill might have been, something that combined the best of GIRLFRIENDS with the slicker production values of the second film and seeing that she placed PHANTOM THREAD on her recent top ten Sight & Sound list makes me wish even more that we’d gotten a streak of romantic comedies from her through the years. Plus according to Wikipedia she’s from Scarsdale so that makes me even more willing to defend her. To get back to the Ray Stark angle, in his recent book CINEMA SPECULATION Quentin Tarantino refers to him as “one of the town’s biggest bullies, and he was responsible for mangling more films than an El Paso drive-in movie projector” so one assumes he’s heard a few stories about the producer who died in 2004. Maybe some of them were even about this movie. Tarantino also refers to GIRLFRIENDS briefly in his book as part of a list of key titles of the era’s ‘New York low-budget aesthetic’ he would encounter during his formative years and a Claudia Weill double bill was part of the schedule at the New Beverly Cinema a few years back during a month devoted to female directors with IT’S MY TURN shown in 16mm, apparently the only print that was available. I was there that night and so was, among others, a certain Oscar nominated writer-director of a popular mystery franchise. The film doesn’t even seem to have done all that bad at the 1980 box office (taking in more than STARDUST MEMORIES, less than OH, GOD! BOOK II) but only that song has really survived in pop culture which makes sense considering how tough it is to get it out of your head. More recently the film has turned up on Tubi where a lot of buried and forgotten Columbia titles can be found. In the end, what IT’S MY TURN has along with the lead performance and sheer display of potential is that small glimmer of hope that can be found it those odd weekends when someone unexpectedly appears. Sometimes the answer is simpler than you realize. And that’s when the real work begins, if you’re lucky. Which doesn’t always happen. Hopefully it does. These days I'm trying to remember that.