Pumpkin Eater

Jo has eight children, a beautiful home and a successful husband as a screenwriter. Behind the facade of a prosperous life, however, is a growing identity crisis — it is increasingly difficult for the heroine to find herself in the roles of wife, mother, and finally herself. “The Pumpkin Eater”, based on the 1962 novel by Penelope Mortimer, is about sexuality, motherhood, reproductive rights, patriarchal restrictions and the loss of control over one's own life. Jack Clayton presents this sultry and poignant story through episodic narration, recurring memories and images that capture Jo's emotional shake-up. “This is a dazzling film with a refined form — fragmentary yet fluid,” wrote critic Pauline Kael just after the premiere of “The Pumpkin Eater.” Instead of the social realism associated with British cinema of the early 1960s, we have a work closer to the cinematic modernism of Michelangelo Antonioni.

Although Anne Bancroft made her mark in pop culture primarily as the seductive Mrs. Robinson of The Graduate (1967), it was in “The Pumpkin Eater”, three years earlier, that she played the most complex role of her career. Jo is also a kind of reverse of the iconic Mrs. Robinson, a woman equally entangled in unfulfilled desires, but devoid of erotic confidence and ironic distance. With extraordinary subtlety and at the same time poignant authenticity, Bancroft captures the psyche of a seemingly fulfilled, privileged wife who, in a desperate attempt to fill the void in life, falls apart before our eyes. This creation brought the actress an award at the Cannes festival, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA award and an Oscar nomination.

Original title: The Pumpkin Eater
Country of manufacture: United Kingdom
Year of manufacture: 1964
Directed by: Jack Clayton
Cast: Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason, Cedric Hardwicke, Rosalind Atkinson
Duration: 110 min.

Hall: Stolica
Lecture - Kamil Kalbarczyk
Projection from 35 mm tape | English subtitles

The appearance of an actor on the screen is never innocent. Subsequent roles accumulate in the memory of viewers, evoking echoes of previous characters, gestures and emotions.Over time, they form an emploi, that is, a network of associations through which the star begins to be identified witha certain type of hero, film genre or way of being. Especially in classical cinema, such consistency was quite desirable and was one of the foundations of the star system.

At the same time, the history of cinema is full of roles that evade this order. Sometimes these are spectacular breaks with the previous image, when the star consciously rebuilds his own emploi. Sometimes a subtle shift in the genre, emotional tone, or character psychology is enough for a well-known persona to reveal new meanings. The opposite also happens — a rich and diverse filmography is reduced by the memory of the viewers to one or two iconic creations that obscure everything that came before and after them.

In the series “Icons of cinema. Non-obvious roles” we offer a look at the legendary actresses from an unusual perspective. We are interested in roles played against the established image, surprising genre and characterological turns, and films that remain in the shadow of the most famous titles — both those created before the birth of the legend and the late stage repertoire choices.

We will see, among others: the comedic Ingrid Bergman outside the canon of sublime heroines of melodrama and historical cinema, Anne Bancroft from before the myth of the seduction of Mrs. Robinson, Jadwiga Smosarska escaping the image of the immaculate lady of pre-war cinema, Monica Vitti outside the melancholy world of Antonioni, Audrey Hepburn far from the fairy romantic comedies, Bette Davisin a more lyrical and subtle incarnation or Sophia Loren challenging the stereotype of the Italian sex bomb.

We invite you to travel through the lesser-known corners of the filmography of outstanding actresses. It's an opportunity to discover creations overlooked, forgotten or surprisingly different from the roles that built their fame. They will show how complex and ambiguous on-screen personas can be, and how easily collective memory simplifies even the most diverse careers. Sometimes it is the less obvious films that allow you to most fully see the acting talent and understand that the iconic image never exhausts the whole story.

Each monthly screening at the Iluzjon Cinema in Warsaw will be preceded by a lecture presenting the context of a given actress's on-screen image: its sources, transformations, cracks and non-obvious areas that will reveal the films we have selected.