"Oh-- another little toad" -- click text to watch scene

"A mad Bette Davis movie was lurking within [Director Herbert] Ross's dull tidiness," wrote David Thomson, "and Bancroft was the actress who might have rescued it."

And yet Bancroft does just that, slyly doing not Bette Davis but Joan Crawford, Davis's co-star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? David Denby could have been describing Crawford as Blanche Hudson when he wrote, "...Anne Bancroft is a bit much. Those penetrating eyes and drawn eyebrows; the mouth pulled down at the corners; the slight leaning forward when she speaks, all radiant attention--can anyone take Bancroft's grand manner very seriously any more?"

Some of us, though, found her not "a bit much" but, like Stephen Farber did, magnificent. In the early scenes when Bancroft's Emma reunites with Shirley MacLaine's DeeDee, there's the flicker of a slit in Bancroft's eyes and a shadow on her face. Emma and DeeDee had been not only best friends when they were starting out years ago as ballerinas-- they had been rivals for the best parts. And Bancroft suggests her manner is a cover-up for revelations to follow.

The Turning Point was one of the films of 1977 highly touted as signalling a return to great roles for women in film. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Actress nods for Bancroft and MacLaine, it won none. Wikipedia calls this a record, tied with The Color Purple. As of this writing, the DVD for the U.S. region is out-of-print and used copies are rare.