Friday, September 02, 2005

Molly Haskell

“As the prima ballerina who … is now being eased into semi-retirement, Anne Bancroft looks ravishingly taut. In some striking way she defies, in her person, the laws of aging to which her character must defer. But even within the story's framework, she is allowed to edge toward retirement with dignity, and without even a whiff of a hint that she made the wrong choice or violated a sacrosanct biological destiny. For once--and this is what makes The Turning Point a turning point in women's films--career is rated higher than happily married life. The old soap-opera philosophy … is scuttled, gracefully and summarily, in the more complex view that no one choice, no life decision, will put an end to insomniac doubts….

“The balance would be overwhelmingly in favor of the career woman were it not for Shirley MacLaine's magnificence in the role of the Oklahoma City housewife….

“…. Were Bancroft and MacLaine any less extraordinary as the two women who square off like gunfighters and collapse in healing laughter, Baryshnikov would easily have stolen the show.”

Molly Haskell
New York, November 21, 1977

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