The Stepford Wives | |
---|---|
Directed by | Bryan Forbes |
Screenplay by | William Goldman |
Based on | The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin |
Produced by | Edgar J. Scherick |
Starring | |
Cinematography | |
Edited by | Timothy Gee |
Music by | Michael Small |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 115 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $4 million [2] [3] |
The Stepford Wives is a 1975 American satirical psychological thriller film directed by Bryan Forbes. It was written by William Goldman, who based his screenplay on Ira Levin's 1972 novel of the same name. The film stars Katharine Ross as a woman who relocates with her husband (Peter Masterson) and children from New York City to the Connecticut community of Stepford, where she comes to find that the women live lives of unwavering subservience to their husbands.
Filmed in Connecticut in 1974, The Stepford Wives premiered theatrically in February 1975. It grossed $4 million at the U.S. box office, though it received mixed reviews from critics. Reaction from feminist activists was also divided at the time of its release; Betty Friedan dismissed it as a "rip-off of the women's movement" and discouraged women from seeing it, though others such as Gael Greene and Eleanor Perry defended the film.
The Stepford Wives has grown in stature as a cult film over the years, and the term Stepford or Stepford wife has become a popular science fiction concept. Several sequels to the film were made, as well as a big-budget remake in 2004 that used the same title.
Joanna Eberhart, a young wife and aspiring photographer, moves with her husband Walter and their two daughters from Manhattan to Stepford, Connecticut. She finds that the women in town all look flawless and are obsessed with housework, but lack intellectual interests. The men all belong to the exclusionary Men's Association, which Walter joins to Joanna's dismay. Joanna is also bewildered by her neighbor Carol Van Sant's sexual submissiveness to her husband Ted, and her odd, repetitive behavior after a minor car accident.
Joanna subsequently befriends Bobbie Markowe, with whom she finds common interests and shared ideas. Along with trophy wife Charmaine Wimperis, the three organize a women's liberation meeting, but the gathering is a failure when the other wives continually divert the discussion to cleaning products. Joanna is also unimpressed by the boorish Men's Association members, including the intimidating president Dale "Diz" Coba. Stealthily, the Men's Association collects information on Joanna including her picture, her voice, and other personal details. When Charmaine returns from a weekend trip with her husband as a devoted wife who has fired her maid and destroyed her tennis court, Joanna and Bobbie start investigating, with ever-increasing concern, the reason behind the submissive and bland behavior of the other wives. Their fear reaches its pinnacle when they discover that all the women were once strong, assertive, independent, and staunch advocates of liberal social policies. Bobbie speculates that industries in or nearby Stepford are contaminating the local water to make the women submissive, which is later disproven.
Bobbie and Joanna start house hunting in other towns. Later, Joanna wins a prestigious contract with a photo gallery. When she goes to tell Bobbie, Joanna is shocked to find that the former has abruptly become another clean conformist housewife with no intention of moving. She panics and visits a psychiatrist, to whom she voices her belief that the men in the town are in a conspiracy that involves altering the psyches of the women. The psychiatrist recommends that she leave town until she feels safe. After leaving the psychiatrist's office, Joanna returns home to pick up her children only to find that they are missing and Walter is evasive about their whereabouts. The two get in a physical scuffle when she refuses her husband's demands to lie down in her bed. Joanna locks herself in the bedroom, then sneaks out to Bobbie's house after Walter leaves her alone, but grows frustrated when Bobbie refuses to engage with her in a meaningful way. Desperate and disturbed, Joanna cuts her hand before stabbing Bobbie with a kitchen knife. Bobbie does not bleed, but instead malfunctions, revealing that the real Bobbie has been replaced by a robot.
Joanna later returns home and bludgeons Walter with a fire poker, demanding to know where their children were taken. He tells Joanna that the kids are at the Men's Association, after which Walter loses consciousness. Despite sensing that she will be the latest victim, Joanna sneaks into the mansion that houses the Men's Association, in hopes of finding her children. However, she is confronted by Dale, the operation's mastermind, who says that her children are really with Charmaine. He remotely locks the front door and asks her if she desires a flawless husband, explaining that the men of Stepford replace their wives "because they can", and that it is "perfect" for both the husband and the wife. He takes the poker away from her, at which point she screams and flees, eventually coming upon her own active but unfinished robot replica. Joanna is shocked into near-paralysis when she sees its black, empty eyes. The Joanna-replica smiles as it brandishes a nylon stocking and calmly approaches Joanna to strangle her as Dale looks on, confirming that the real wives have all been murdered.
Some time later, the robot Joanna placidly peruses the local supermarket among the other glamorously dressed wives. As they make their way through the store, they each vacantly greet one another. Nearby, a couple argues with each other about their recent move to Stepford. It is implied that the wife will be the next target of the Men's Association conspiracy. In the last scene, the robot copies of Joanna and Bobbie dully converse about their families. The robot Joanna smiles at Bobbie then placidly walks away. The camera zooms in her finished eyes signifying that the android now has the eyes of her human counterpart.
During the end credits, photographs show a smiling Walter driving the family car and picking up his new "Stepford wife" from the supermarket with their children in the back seat.
Film scholar John Kenneth Muir interprets The Stepford Wives as "a film essay about what it means to be part of an unspoken 'underclass.'" [4]
Producer Edgar Scherick recruited English director Bryan Forbes to direct the film. [5] Brian De Palma was initially going to direct [6] but William Goldman didn’t want him to. [7]
For the lead role of Joanna Eberhart, Forbes initially met with Diane Keaton, who he said turned it down because her analyst did not like the script. [8] Jean Seberg declined the part; [5] Tuesday Weld initially accepted but cancelled before filming began. [9] The part eventually went to Katharine Ross.
Joanna Cassidy was cast as Joanna's friend and ally Bobbie [10] but was fired after a few weeks of production and replaced by Paula Prentiss. [10] [11]
Mary Stuart Masterson (daughter of star Peter Masterson), Dee Wallace and Franklin Cover appear in very small supporting roles. Tina Louise was cast as another doomed wife. For the role of Carol Van Sant, Forbes cast his own wife, Nanette Newman.
Scheduling difficulties delayed the filming from 1973 until 1974. [12]
No exterior sets were built for the film, which was shot on location in several Connecticut towns. The climax was filmed at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in Norwalk. [13] Forbes purposefully chose white and bright colors, attempting to make a "thriller in sunlight". With the exception of the stormy night finale, it is almost over-saturated to emphasize bright lights and cheerful-looking settings.
Tension developed between Forbes and screenwriter Goldman over the casting of Nanette Newman (Forbes's wife) as one of the wives. Goldman felt that the 40-year-old Newman's appearance did not match the young provocatively-dressed model-like women he'd scripted for. Forbes responded by instituting contemporary prairie-style dress, complete with frilly aprons, for all the wives. Goldman was also unhappy with re-writes by Forbes - in particular, the ending [14] - which Nanette Newman claimed Forbes had deliberately filmed "in an unreal way, so they were almost like a ballet moving in and out, up and down the aisle." [15] Additional stresses were caused when actor Peter Masterson secretly called his friend Goldman for input on scenes. Goldman later claimed the film "could have been very strong, but it was rewritten and altered, and I don't think happily." [16]
The Stepford Wives premiered theatrically in the United States on February 12, 1975. [10] The film grossed approximately $4 million in North America. [2] [3]
The Stepford Wives has a rating of 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 38 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's consensus states: "The Stepford Wives's inherent satire is ill-served by Bryan Forbes' stately direction, but William Goldman's script excels as a damning critique of a misogynistic society." [17] Some critics deride its leisurely pace. Most applaud the "quiet, domestic" thrills the film delivers in the final third and earlier sections as "clever, witty, and delightfully offbeat". [18] As for the satire in the film, Roger Ebert wrote that the actresses "have absorbed enough TV, or have such an instinctive feeling for those phony, perfect women in the ads, that they manage all by themselves to bring a certain comic edge to their cooking, their cleaning, their gossiping and their living deaths." [19]
The film has a Metacritic rating of 54 based on nine reviews.
Jerry Oster of the New York Daily News awarded the film a middling two out of four stars, describing the screenplay as a "tedious" and "padded" adaptation of the source material. [20]
Variety summarized the film as "a quietly freaky suspense-horror story" and praised Ross's performance as "excellent and assured." [21] John Seymour of the Santa Maria Times also gave the film a favorable review, deeming it an "epic nightmare" boasting "gripping drama." [22]
Devan Coggan of Entertainment Weekly wrote that the finale was "deeply divisive" and the actress for Joanna stated retrospectively that if she was to revise the ending she would have Joanna "fight harder". [15]
Initial reaction to the film by feminist groups was not favorable, [5] with one studio screening for feminist activists being met with "hisses, groans, and guffaws." [5] Cast and crew disagreed with the perceived anti-woman interpretations, with Newman recalling "Bryan [Forbes] always used to say, 'If anything, it's anti-men!'" [5] Despite Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique being a major influence on the original novel upon which the film was based, Friedan's response to the film was highly critical, calling it "a rip-off of the women's movement." [23] Friedan commented that women should boycott the film and attempt to diminish any publicity for it. [24]
Writer Gael Greene, however, lauded the film, commenting: "I loved it—those men were like a lot of men I've known in my life." [24] Feminist screenwriter Eleanor Perry came to the film's defense, stating that it "presses buttons that make you furious—the fact that all the Stepford men wanted were big breasts, big bottoms, a clean house, fresh-perked coffee and sex." [24]
Year | Institute | Category | Recipient | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1975 | Saturn Awards | Best Actress | Katharine Ross | Won | |
Best Science Fiction Film | The Stepford Wives | Nominated | |||
2001 | American Film Institute | 100 Years...100 Thrills | Nominated | [25] | |
2008 | Top 10 Top 10 (Science Fiction) | Nominated | [26] | ||
Anchor Bay Entertainment issued The Stepford Wives on VHS on March 10, 1997; [27] they subsequently released a non-anamorphic DVD edition on December 3, 1997. [28] In 2001, Anchor Bay reissued the film in a "Silver Anniversary" edition, featuring an anamorphic transfer as well as bonus interviews with cast and crew. [29] In 2004, Paramount Home Entertainment re-released the "Silver Anniversary" edition, which featured the same bonus materials and screen menus. [29]
As of 2024 [update] , the film has not received a Blu-ray release, and remains under the ownership of pharmaceutical conglomerate Bristol Myers Squibb, who were stakeholders in its production company, Palomar Pictures, which went defunct after the film's release. [30] Several other Palomar-produced films, including The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and Sleuth (also 1972), are also owned by the company. [30]
Film scholar John Kenneth Muir considers The Stepford Wives one of the best horror films of the 1970s. [31] In a writer's roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, Jordan Peele listed the film as one of the inspirations behind his directorial debut Get Out . [32]
A line delivered by Paula Prentiss, as Bobbie Markowe, after becoming a Stepford Wife; "Yes.. this.. it's wonderful!", was legally sampled on the song, "Hey Music Lover", by British dance act, S-Express, becoming a big international hit in 1989. [33]
The film influenced the development of the character Bree Van de Kamp in the successful series, Desperate Housewives (2004–12), played by Marcia Cross. The character was often referred to as a "Stepford Wife" by other characters, due to her somewhat uptight personality, immaculately presented home, beautifully pruned red roses, and her love of baking cakes. She also dressed in a Midwestern, traditional style, echoing, but modernizing, the look of the original "Stepford Wives", as seen in the film.[ citation needed ]
Betty Friedan was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men.”
The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical "feminist horror" novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer, wife, and young mother who suspects that something in the town of Stepford is changing the wives from free-thinking, intelligent women into compliant wives dedicated solely to homemaking. As her friends slowly transform, Joanna realizes the horrific truth.
Equality feminism is a subset of the overall feminism movement and more specifically of the liberal feminist tradition that focuses on the basic similarities between men and women, and whose ultimate goal is the equality of both genders in all domains. This includes economic and political equality, equal access within the workplace, freedom from oppressive gender stereotyping, and an androgynous worldview.
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred throughout the Western world and aimed to increase women's equality by building on the feminist gains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Mary Stuart Masterson is an American actress and director. After making her acting debut as a child in The Stepford Wives (1975), Masterson took a ten-year hiatus to focus on her education. Her early film roles include Heaven Help Us (1985), At Close Range (1986), Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), and Chances Are (1989). Her performance in the film Immediate Family (1989) won her the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress, and she earned additional praise for her roles in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and Benny & Joon (1993).
The Stepford Wives is a 2004 American science fiction black comedy film directed by Frank Oz from a screenplay by Paul Rudnick and starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Faith Hill, and Glenn Close. The second feature-length adaptation of Ira Levin's 1972 novel of the same name following the 1975 film of the same name, it received generally negative reviews from critics and was a box office failure, grossing $103 million worldwide on a $90–100 million budget.
The Feminine Mystique is a book by American author Betty Friedan, widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. First published by W. W. Norton on February 19, 1963, The Feminine Mystique became a bestseller, initially selling over a million copies. Friedan used the book to challenge the widely shared belief that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949—the housewife-mother."
Bryan Forbes CBE was an English film director, screenwriter, film producer, actor and novelist described as a "Renaissance man" and "one of the most important figures in the British film industry".
Paula Prentiss is an American actress. She is best known for her film roles in Where the Boys Are (1960), Man's Favorite Sport? (1964), What's New Pussycat? (1965), Catch-22 (1970), The Parallax View (1974), and The Stepford Wives (1975).
Season of the Witch is a 1972 American drama film written and directed by George A. Romero, and starring Jan White, Raymond Laine, and Anne Muffly. The film follows a housewife in suburban Pittsburgh who becomes involved in witchcraft after meeting a local witch.
Nanette Newman is an English actress and author. She appeared in nine films directed by her husband Bryan Forbes, including Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), The Whisperers (1967), Deadfall (1968), The Stepford Wives (1975) and International Velvet (1978), for which she won the Evening Standard Film Award for Best Actress. She was also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for another Forbes-directed film, The Raging Moon (1971).
Peter Masterson was an American actor, director, producer, and writer. He made his Broadway debut in November 1967 in The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, playing the title character. Although he got good notices, the play closed after nine performances.
In one scholarly conception, the history of feminism in Poland can be divided into seven periods, beginning with 19th-century first-wave feminism. The first four early periods coincided with the foreign partitions of Poland, which resulted in an eclipse of a sovereign Poland for 123 years.
No, No, Nanette is a 1930 American pre-Code musical comedy film with Technicolor sequences that was directed by Clarence G. Badger and released by First National Pictures. It was adapted from the play of the same title by Otto A. Harbach and Frank Mandel. No, No, Nanette was a popular show on Broadway, running for 321 performances, and was produced and directed by Harry Frazee.
The Stepford Children is a 1987 American made-for-television horror science fiction thriller film inspired by the Ira Levin novel The Stepford Wives. It was directed by Alan J. Levi with a screenplay by Bill Bleich and starring Barbara Eden, Don Murray, Tammy Lauren, Randall Batinkoff and Pat Corley. It is the second in a series of sequels inspired by the 1972 novel and the original 1975 film The Stepford Wives.
The Stepford Husbands is a 1996 American made-for-television thriller-drama film inspired by the Ira Levin novel The Stepford Wives. It was directed by Fred Walton with a screenplay by brothers Ken Wheat and Jim Wheat and starring Donna Mills, Michael Ontkean, Cindy Williams, Sarah Douglas and Louise Fletcher. It is the third in a series of sequels inspired by the 1972 novel and the original 1975 film The Stepford Wives.
Revenge of the Stepford Wives is a 1980 American made-for-television science-fiction thriller film inspired by the Ira Levin novel The Stepford Wives. It was directed by Robert Fuest with a screenplay by David Wiltse and starring Sharon Gless, Julie Kavner, Don Johnson, Arthur Hill, and Audra Lindley. It is the first in a series of sequels inspired by the 1972 novel and the original 1975 film The Stepford Wives.
The Women's Strike for Equality was a strike which took place in the United States on August 26, 1970. It celebrated the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, which effectively gave American women the right to vote. The rally was sponsored by the National Organization for Women (NOW). Estimates ranged as high as 50,000 women at the protest in New York City and more protested throughout the country. At this time, the gathering was the largest on behalf of women in the United States. The strike, spearheaded by Betty Friedan, self-stated three primary goals: free abortion on demand, equal opportunity in the workforce, and free childcare. The strike also advocated for other second wave feminist goals more generally, such as political rights for women, and social equality in relationships such as marriage.
Jacqueline "Jacqui" Michot Ceballos is an American feminist and activist. Ceballos is the former president of New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women and founder of the Veteran Feminists of America organization which documents the history of Second wave feminism and pioneer feminists. Ceballos' 1971 debate on sexual politics with Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer is recorded in the 1979 film Town Bloody Hall. Ceballos is also featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry.
Melissa Newman is an American actress who, as a teen, made her Hollywood film debut in The Undefeated (1969) starring John Wayne, Rock Hudson, Lee Meriweather, and Merlin Olsen, among others.