Desperate Characters
| Desperate Characters | |
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Videotape cover
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| Directed by | Frank D. Gilroy |
| Produced by | Frank D. Gilroy |
| Written by |
Frank D. Gilroy Paula Fox |
| Starring | Shirley MacLaine |
| Music by |
Ron Carter Jim Hall Lee Konitz |
| Cinematography | Urs Furrer |
| Edited by | Robert Q. Lovett |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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97 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $250,000 |
Desperate Characters is a 1971 American drama film produced, written, and directed by Frank D. Gilroy, who based his screenplay on the 1970 novel of the same name by Paula Fox.
Sophie and Otto Bentwood are a middle-aged, middle class, childless Brooklyn Heights couple trapped in a loveless marriage. He is an attorney, she is a translator of books. Their existence is affected not only by their disintegrating relationship but by the threats of urban crime and vandalism that surround them everywhere they turn, leaving them feeling paranoid, scared, and desperately helpless. The film details their fragile emotional and psychological states as they interact with each other and their friends.
Sir Lew Grade had signed Shirley MacLaine to make a TV series Shirley's World. She asked Grade to fund the film which she did for minimal payment and a share of the profits; Grade agreed. He says the budget was so low he managed to recoup his money.
In his review in the New York Times, Vincent Canby said, "I must confess that Desperate Characters left me, if not unmoved, then unenriched. It's as if its cheerlessness had been bottled straight, without the additive that transforms recognizable experience into art . . . In every respect, the screenplay is a vast improvement over Gilroy's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Subject Was Roses. Its literary style, however, is similar, and it's a style to which I . . . find it difficult to respond. His characters talk in great chunks of theatrical exchanges, and monologues, which not only deny the splendid accuracy of the situations and the settings, but also somehow make me suspicious of the integrity of the characters. This is especially true of the supporting characters, who are always telling us too much, remembering too many details out of the past, nudging us for sympathy and never letting us discover them at our own speed . . . I have a feeling that the director has perfectly served the writer. That is to say that Gilroy has realized the movie he intended to make. I wish I liked it more."
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Wikipedia