User reviews

"The Pumpkin Eater" is the story of a bad marriage and a character study of the wife, Jo Armitage (Anne Bancroft) and a partial study of the husband, Jake (Peter Finch). Directed by Jack Clayton and with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, the film has a good deal that is unspoken; it's obtuse at times and can leave the viewer with a lot of questions. It's not a film for everyone, as it moves slowly - I can't see audiences of today going for it - it's totally character driven.

Jo is a woman whose fulfillment comes from children and pregnancy. We first see her standing in her home with a stunned look on her face and reminiscing about different facets of her life. One facet is as a happy young woman living in a barn and being introduced to fledgling screenwriter Jake by her second husband. In the next flashback, she's with Jake and discussing the upcoming marriage with her father (Cedric Hardwicke). He's blunt - she has too many kids - so he offers to pay to send the two oldest boys to boarding school, and he also leases a house for them.

The film is not entirely in flashback. It switches back and forth and finally settles in the present. Quite early on, we return to Jo today standing in the house. She goes to Harrod's and has a nervous breakdown.

Jo is in love with a man who loves her as best he can, but it's not enough for her. They have a child together, and though he loves and is good to all of the children, they get in the way of his relationship with Jo. He invites her to a film set in Morocco; she doesn't go. She becomes pregnant again; he tells her that he thought at this point, with the money they have, that they would be free to travel. Now they're back where they started. We suspect when we meet a young woman, Philpot (Maggie Smith) who stays with the family for a time because she's been put out of her flat, that Jake cheats. Jo suspects it; he denies it. Then she gets some devastating news from an odd friend (James Mason).

One is really left with a bad feeling about marriage, and as someone on this board pointed out, it's easy to see both sides of the situation. The psychiatrist Jo sees asks her, can she only justify having sex if she becomes pregnant? When the psychiatrist tells her he's going away for two weeks and can't see her, he tries to make future appointments and she says she can't make it. She evidently feels rejection very easily. Jo needs to be needed and wanted, and she loves the honeymoon -the new man, the new baby - but she can't handle much of the aftermath.

The film doesn't take sides. It's a fascinating story of what two people can do to one another and what people attract into their lives.

Anne Bancroft is one of the greatest actresses of all time and one of the most ravishingly beautiful. You'll never see her name in a list of top beauties because even with her huge, luminous eyes, her classically sculpted face, her thick hair and her gorgeous smile and her husky voice, she was never about her looks. She was always about a great, committed performance. Bancroft does more with her eyes and facial expressions here than most actresses can do with a ton of dialogue. The camera doesn't love her, it adores her, and here closeups are used to great advantage. Her performance is quietly stunning, quietly shattering, just like her face. She devastates the viewer here in a different way from her more overt performance in "The Miracle Worker," but she still devastates. What a loss to film and the theater.

Peter Finch is excellent as Jake - very handsome and sexy, warm with the children - you could really see why he was so adored by women, and I for one didn't understand why Jo wasn't on every film set with him all day, every day. He's two men, really - he's a husband who does love his wife, but he's emotionally childish as well and takes his frustrations and anger out by sleeping with other women.

"The Pumpkin Eater" is one of those films that you might not even care for while watching it. You might not even totally get what's going on all the time, but it will stay with you. You'll go over it in your head, and you won't forget it. In this way, it reminds me of two brilliant movies, "Damage" and "In the Bedroom" - like those films, "The Pumpkin Eater" is a harrowing experience.

Jo Armitage (Anne Bancroft) seems to be losing it while her husband Jake (Peter Finch) is unable or unwilling to help. In flashbacks, Jake is shown to be her third husband after having several children. She continues to have children with Jake. Jake sends Jo to a psychiatrist. He suggests that Jo wants to sanctifies sex by reproducing. While Jake is a good provider, she suspects him of improprieties. After getting pregnant, the psychiatrist and Jake suggest getting an abortion and sterilization. After the operation, things are going great and then Bob Conway (James Mason) brings evidence that Jake is cheating with his wife.

The title refers to the nursery rhyme Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater. Jo is a perplexing character. She is struggling but she is not crazy. It is an interesting character but I am of two minds about it. It allows Bancroft to do some good acting but it is also hard to fully invest in her. There is an attempt at surrealism with the cigarette smoke going backwards. Maybe more of that surrealism would allow the audience to feel her troubled mind.

I've never seen a film with so many great talents giving technically good performances with a script that offers virtually no insight into the characters or their motivations.

Great movies remain great movies some of them, like "The Pumpkin Eater" acquire an extra something with the passing of time. Harold Pinter does really extravagant things with Penelope Mortimer's novel and the extraordinary Jack Clayton gives it just the right mixture of human drama and sharp satire. Anne Bancroft is indescribable moving, beautiful, powerful, frightening. Peter Finch is also superb as is James Mason. I particularly enjoyed the brief moments with Yootha Joyce, Maggie Smith and Cederic Hardwicke. I advise all movie lovers in the Los Angeles area to check the American Cinematheque listings. I saw "The Pumpkin Eater" there, a beautifully restored print and reminded me when one went to the movies to see adult themes treated by intelligent adult artist with enormous regard for their audiences. Oh, those were the days.

Anne Bancroft stars as a British housewife, suffering from depression, seemingly addicted to having children, and betrayed by her philandering husband (Peter Finch). The script is by Harold Pinter, adapted from a novel which, via a first-person narrative, takes the woman's point of view, and the dialogue is nicely 'Pinteresque' – people repeating lines back at each other, awkward pauses, unanswered questions, veiled insults, etc. The performances are all good, and there are visually arresting edits, deep focus shots, and extreme close ups of faces. The vaguely jazzy music is wistful and stately, coming as it does from George Delerue, who scored the roughly contemporary 'Jules et Jim' (which, in its combination of slow pacing, emotional dramatics and smooth black and white surface, perhaps shares some similarities with this picture.) But the film as a whole ends up seeing like an ultimately rather insubstantial British upper-middle class version of Antonioni's 'L'Avventura', full of unpleasant or just selfishly uninteresting characters wearing nice clothes in fashionable London houses and country retreats. Hence the review in Time Out magazine that sees the scene of Bancroft's breakdown in Harrods as a kind of parodic summation of the movie: the chic-swathed angst of the wealthy. The slightly soapy plot is treated for the most part as serious drama, but does have its satirical aspect (probably due to Pinter's script), though this never really makes itself fully apparent. I guess 'The Pumpkin Eater' needs to be placed in the context of the British New Wave – dramas about 'real people', frankly discussing controversial topics such as abortion and infidelity, as opposed to films with generic, historical or fantastical subjects. And it does, though not that explicitly, deal with certain feminist issues in a way that was probably quite unusual at the time.The main problem is that the privileged lifestyles of the characters makes it all feel like an in-depth, expertly crafted examination of the selfishly introspective psychological diversions of the nouveau riche (nothing much is made of the one intrusion from outside this social world, the strange moment when Bancroft is visited by a ragged door-to-door 'prophet', who seems to preach a 'gospel' of sexual liberation); and one ultimately wonders whether the subject deserves such close attention.

There are scenes from this movie that have been burned into my memory for years-- Anne Bancroft being accosted a crazed and lonely housewife while in a beauty parlor, her nervous breakdown in the middle of Harrod's in London, James Mason revealing her husband's infidelity to her cruelly while having tea at the zoo-- The Pumpkin Eater is one of my favorite movies. Anne Bancroft never gave a better performance-- she is startlingly good-- plus the excellent Harold Pinter screenplay and the brilliant direction of Jack Clayton-- this film is an eloquent essay on isolation and emptiness among other things. I recommend this film to all serious students of acting, writing, and directing. What a brilliant performance by the great Anne Bancroft. She won many awards for inc,, and should have won the Oscar Award also.

This is my absolute favorite film of all time, and Anne Bancroft's performance is her best. Made in 1964 and set in London, this film tells the story of a woman who is in the middle of her third marriage, to a screenwriter, played by Peter Finch. Her character, Jo Armitage, is a woman who truly seems to find her self-worth and happiness only when she is pregnant and raising children. Once her children become even only slightly older, she seems to lose her sense of purpose, and allows herself to become quite isolated in the world. Her current husband, the screenwriter, doesn't make matters any better for her either.

This is definitely Anne Bancroft's film all the way, and she is breathtakingly beautiful in it as well. Her portrayal of Jo Armitage paints a very lonely, depressed, lost, and in many ways pathetic character...but it is also strangely my favorite performance of Bancroft. Look also for wonderful supporting performances by James Mason and Maggie Smith. This film weaves a disturbing yet very realistic portrait of a bad marriage (some might just say "marriage"), and it should be studied for its acting and its writing. In addition, Georges Delerue's musical score is superb, and I am always searching for the film's soundtrack, but have had no luck. Thanks to beautiful art direction by Edward Marshall, their home interior is also gorgeous...'60's chic. I've seen this film at least 60 times, and never tire of it. It's a quiet little masterpiece.

"The Pumpkin Eater" is a pretty desultory movie that Anne Bancroft's Academy Award nominated performance can't single-handedly make more compelling, valiantly though she tries.

It's a good thing that movies at the time started to explore the problems of women and positioned them as something to take seriously. But "The Pumpkin Eater" is an example of why everyone now is saying that stories should be told by the people who best understand them. Written and directed by white men, "The Pumpkin Eater" defines its central character's emotional turmoil completely in context of the men in her life. It's a shame, because while we should feel compassion and empathy for Bancroft's character, the movie instead makes her come off as a nagging shrew half the time. There could have been a lot to unpack in this particular story, so it's too bad that it instead gets reduced to a tedious marathon of bickering by a married couple about whether or not the husband is having an affair.

Grade: B-

The Pumpkin Eater, which for many years was my favorite movie, is a neglected masterpiece of the British New Wave. I'm not sure whether its lack of recognition is attributable more to its misanthropic point of view or to Jack Clayton's sparse filmography (he never developed the immediately recognizable personal style required for elevation to the auteur pantheon). It didn't help that initial reviewers badly misunderstood the film -- Dwight Macdonald thought it was a typical "women's film", meant to provide erotic titillation! On the other hand, feminist critics probably weren't eager to defend a film that could be interpreted as anti-abortion propaganda (also a misreading). Perhaps a more mature feminism will reclaim this film.

Admittedly, the movie is difficult to understand on a first viewing -- both because of its intricate flashback structure and its complexities of tone and attitude. It took me several viewings to fully sort out the plot, and several more to realize what I was actually seeing -- a very, very black comedy. In this respect it's worth placing with the darkest works of Evelyn Waugh or Henry Green.

The film catches its participants at the top of their form: Pinter never wrote a better screenplay, Anne Bancroft (arguably) never gave a better performance, Peter Finch certainly didn't, and Maggie Smith and James Mason are deliciously evil in supporting roles. There are too many marvelous moments to list them all, but watch especially for the zoo scene between Bancroft and Mason (who are clearly having a great time) and for the slyly-written scene where Finch learns that his wife is pregnant -- again.

So why is it no longer my favorite movie? My admiration for its technique is unabated, but as I get older I find the film's nasty tone harder and harder to take. There's not an admirable human being in the whole movie -- they're all foolish, duplicitous, or vindictive. I can't live with these people, much as I've enjoyed eavesdropping on them over the years.

Fantastic acting by Anne Bancroft in the lead role (and, as usual, fantastic support by James Mason in the far too few scenes in which he appears) but otherwise quite a haul as the central character descends yet again into a trough of misery and depression (once "in Harrods, of all places!") in the course of two hours (which only seem like ten for the viewer). Good job she had such a good nanny to look after the horde of kiddies and wealthy hubbies busily converting old barns and windmills to please her, otherwise things could really have looked bleak! Well up for a Monty Python-style spoof as the years have passed (not least in terms of the HATS which British ladies were still wearing in the mid ("Swinging" (ha!)) Sixties!)(One aspect of Maggie Thatcher's rule which did leave a lasting positive benefit as she killed off such head coverings for good after looking a complete ------- on television while she still wore them). Worth seeing (once) for Bancroft's great acting or to do some social historical research on Britain in the mid-1960s, but you are not going to emerge from watching this one with a smile on your face, I imagine.

Jack Clayton directed this adaptation of Penelope Mortimer's novel (the screenplay written by no less a literary figurehead than Harold Pinter!), and it's apparent right from the gauzy, solemn opening that you're in for a double-dose of heavy dramatic cinema. Anne Bancroft plays a thrice-married woman who shuts down emotionally after discovering husband number three has been unfaithful. Clayton and cinematographer Oswald Morris give this marital attack a formidable black-and-white look, with nimble (though occasionally exasperating) editing taking the action back and forth from the present to the past. The lofty picture is rather highfalutin, with stony characters one must examine hard in order to grasp completely. Although overrated by most professional critics, the film was certainly ahead of its time, setting the stage for marital blow-outs like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Shoot the Moon". However, even with fine actors in the cast, it's awfully dreary and unreachable. ** from ****

If "The Pumpkin Eater" has a fault it is that it's so glacial, so cocooned in its world of upper-middle class ennui it may leave you feeling a little drained. Otherwise, this is quite close to perfection. Adapted, superbly and to the extent that he makes it his own, from Penelope Mortimer's novel, by Harold Pinter it tells the story of Jo, (Anne Bancroft), a thrice married mother of several children, (by all three husbands), whose life has started to spectacularly unravel. Jo seems to be the kind of woman who can't stop having children but who doesn't seem cut out for motherhood. Inflicting her existing brood on Jake, (Peter Finch), husband No. 3, does little for their marriage. Jake is an incorrigible philanderer or maybe he just can't stand being at home with a pack of screaming, spoiled brats. Then again he's 'a screen-writer' so his profession offers both glamour and the opportunity for multiple infidelities. Things come to a head when Jo has a mental breakdown 'in Harrods of all places' to quote Jake.

Being Pinter, the film is both elliptical and chilly. It's magnificently made, (the director is Jack Clayton), but you struggle to feel anything for Jo or Jake. It's a world that Pinter and company know well but the rest of us may well feel we are being kept at a distance. But don't let that put you off; if you want your mind engaged at the expense of your emotions you will have a high old time. This is classy, intelligent stuff.

It is superbly cast and played. Some performances don't amount to more than cameos, (Cedric Hardwicke and Alan Webb as Jo and Jake's fathers, Maggie Smith smilingly stealing Jo's husband right from under her nose and best of all, Yootha Joyce as the vindictive and unstable woman in the hairdressers). At the centre there is Bancroft and Finch as the couple struggling through their marriage and they are both marvelous. Finch, in particular, gives Jake an air of likability that may be absent from the script and Bancroft gets Jo's vulnerability spot on. As the husband of Jake's most recent conquest, James Mason is magnificently venomous and his scenes with Bancroft at the zoo and his final scene with Finch, ('You made me wet'), are master-classes in the art of acting.

The movie came out in 1964 and quickly disappeared. Watching it recently with a friend he described it as 'a miserable film' and while I think it a superb film, a near-masterpiece, I know exactly what he means. It is a film distinctly lacking in 'nice' characters and it generates very little warmth. Audiences who, back in the sixties might have admired the film, were unlikely to feel anything towards it and consequently it is seldom revived. A pity because, cold as it is, it is also one of the finest films of its decade.

Anne Bancroft's character is like a mirror here, reflecting the maddening truths about the times. She loves kids, saying "they don't do you any harm," and even though we see a large number of them tearing through the house now and then, they don't cause the stress in her life. The main source of that is her husband (Peter Finch), a scriptwriter who starts off accepting her kids from previous marriages, but gradually resents not having his wife's attention, and is a serial adulterer, something she suspects but doesn't fully realize until years have gone by.

In a more general sense, though, what keeps her from being happy is not having control over her life. Men are constantly telling what to do - assuring her that the final decision rests with her, mind you - but acting so forcefully and without taking her feelings into account that she goes along with them. Her father sends her two oldest boys off to boarding school over her meek objections, and the next we see them, there is incredible emotional distance and formality between them. Her husband has her see a psychologist, who questions whether she finds sex without the prospective of conception disgusting, and not listening to her denial. Her husband gets angry with her for getting pregnant again, as if she had gotten that way on her own, and then along with a doctor pressure into not only an abortion, but sterilization. Even her mother gets in on the act by chastising her for having so many kids, thinking more of her son-in-law's happiness than her daughter's.

Bancroft is as lovely as always and her character is sympathetic, but I have to say that I thought she lacked a certain spark, even though she does lash out occasionally at her husband. Maybe this was simply the character though, and how I wish she had responded to assert herself.

Aside from the window into the times and critique of the patriarchy, there are a couple of marvelous scenes. One of them is at the beauty salon, where the woman (Yootha Joyce) next to her strikes up a conversation that spirals into a very uncomfortable attack. Joyce is absolutely brilliant, and it's the best performance in the film. The other is when a friend (James Mason) tells her that he has evidence that her husband is cheating on her with his wife. He does so by first making a pass at her, and then by venting his rage by saying a string of foul things, all while director Jack Clayton puts a tight shot on his mouth.

Overall, the film is a little frustrating though. I thought it was too sympathetic to the husband, which culminated in an ending that I absolutely hated. I thought about knocking down my review score a bit because of it, but there's enough here to make it worthwhile.

I love Mortimer's book and Pinter's script follows it closely. Bancroft has always been my favorite actress and I think this is her greatest performance. I'm glad she flew to England and convinced Jack Clayton to hire her. It is no wonder her talent has been compared to Magnani! Finch and Mason are flawless but it is definitely Bancroft's film. She is so convincing it is as though you can read her character's every thought through her facial expressions. She was robbed of the Academy Award. Yootha Joyce is excellent in a bit part during a beauty parlor scene. The actors in this film are all so good that I feel like I am peering into the lives of real people. Anyone who has been in a relationship with someone who has been unfaithful can relate to this film. I love Clayton's use of flashback to tell Jo's story. I think he was an underrated director. The score by Georges Delerue is beautiful and I wish it were available in his cd catalog.

I came upon this movie on late night t.v. a few years back. I really love Anne Bancroft and I think that she is, not underrated, but more correctly, overlooked as a great actress. This film is a wonderful study of a marriage in trouble and Ms. Bancroft and the great Peter Finch are so believable as lovers and as a married couple that I wondered why I had never even heard of the film before. I felt their pain - wait, sorry . . . I think someone else named Clinton coined that phrase. But seriously, Anne Bancroft is able to really convey heartbreaking loneliness that you just want to cry or help her in some way. I love movies that engage you thoroughly. If you enjoy movies that make you think and also have a viewpoint about human relations, please try to find this film. An added bonus is a wonderful appearance in a small role by Maggie Smith - certainly a very early one in her career. I really like finding gems like this!

First half tricked me this is good. But the events that took place during the second half were so ridiculous that it was almost unintentionally hilarious. I couldn't believe what i was watching anymore, it was like the director and the writer made fun out of the audiences. Maybe this is a dark comedy and i didn't get it. I couldn't take seriously Regrave's character that wanted to give birth to 50 children, neither Finch's character that had no problem raising 8 children that were not his children but when she wanted just another one, he couldn't stand it. In any case, these leading characters were dumb, unlikeable and boring and i couldn't care any less for them, especially during the last 30 minutute. They were not human beings anymore but caricatures.

6 stars because acting is great and because first half was interesting.

As a mother of 5 at the time, I saw this film and never forgot the opening scene of Ann Bancroft in a department store--Harrod's?--having the best nervous breakdown I've ever seen. Believe me , identification doesn't say enough about my feelings. I adored this film and wondered if I would ever see it again. Delighted to find it on your web-site though the one Video available is pretty pricey--any other possibilities for purchase? Also surprised to see that Maggie Smith has a part as Phillpot but I don't recall that character. Certainly Peter Finch was gorgeous and also sensitive, but it was here that I first discovered Ann Bancroft and followed her career for many years. It is a great pleasure to find it again and that others are so fond of it also. I thought the title referred to the child's nursery rhyme "Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her" great title also, very moving all the way through. James Mason was the "other" I believe. That's all i can manage after so many years.

I owe this movie a disclaimer before giving it a scathing review: I turned it off. I didn't see The Pumpkin Eater all the way through, so I have no idea if the second half or the end redeems the terrible beginning.

Anne Bancroft was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars for her role as a depressed, repressed housewife in this dark, slow, drama. She's married to Peter Finch, and while he continually cheats on her, she's in therapy to try and figure out why she's so unhappy. By the time I turned it off, she'd started discussing her aversion to sex and her unfulfillment in her marriage. I'd expected more from this critically-acclaimed movie than just "I don't like sex so my husband had to sleep with another woman," so I turned it off. Despite the supporting cast of James Mason, Maggie Smith, Cedric Hardwicke, and Janine Gray, I wasn't even remotely tempted to keep watching.

As a side note, I also turned off The Happy Ending, a film starring Jean Simmons who tries to figure out why she's chronically unhappy in her marriage. These types of movies are not my favorite. If you like them, feel free to disregard my opinion.

Anne Bancroft shines in this movie as an isolated woman with 5 children trying to cope with lonliness and an unfaithful husband. Her acting in The pumpkin Eater is second to none. You can feel her depression in her every facial expression.

Peter Finch is also superb as the misunderstood husband who in his own way also feels isolated and lonely. He just feels his wife is a baby machine who cares more for bearing children than she doe's for him. But alas the both of them just accept their lot and try to get on with it in their own way. With disastrous results.

A movie spectacular without any fancy special effects or gore. The Pumpkin Eater is just old fashioned movie making at its best. You could not watch this film without feeling profoundly affected by it.

What a masterpiece.

Last night in London (11/7/06) The Pumpkin Eater was screened for an invited audience including Harold Pinter, screenwriter, and Jack Clayton's widow.

What a wonderful film. Last month in London the American Academy held a celebration of Pinter's work in film (17 of his screenplays have been filmed). David Hare presented a selection of extended clips, and interviewed Pinter on stage afterwards. Of all the films shown and mentioned during the evening, it was The Pumpkin Eater that had people buzzing at the reception afterwards. Many younger people like myself (44) had never seen it. and more senior attendees couldn't recall the last time it had been shown. It is never shown on TV in the UK.

This omission is simply inexplicable. Other contributor's have rightly praised Anne Bancroft's performance, Pinter's masterful adaptation, George Delerue's melancholy, soulful, jazz-tinged score, and Clayton's bold vision. But the depth of artistic collaborative spirit that pervades the picture has created a crystalline cinematic work of art in all aspects. Hopefully those with influence present at last night's event will push for a DVD release, or even a cinema re-issue.

Anne Bancroft gives a brilliant performance in this undeservedly little known movie. It is a triumph of collaboration. Director Jack Clayton directs a uniformly superb cast. Harold Pinter crafted a superb screenplay based on a Penelope Mortimer story. The cinematography is breathtaking. And if one is going to be troubled, as the Bancroft character is, o! To be troubled with an accompaniment of music written for one by Georges Delerue! Bancroft is depressed, verbally abused, highly sensual. Sometimes she is got up like Audrey Hepburn and looks chic indeed. At other times she lets her hair down, figuratively and literally as well, and is very erotic. A scene between her and her husband, beautifully played by Peter Finch, is one of the most plausibly erotic scenes I've ever seen.

The sound editor gets high praise too: Bancroft's problem is, on the surface, her desire to have one child after another and to surround herself with children. Particularly in the earlier scenes, when kids are running around the house, their voices are not distinguished individually. All blend in as a din that would indeed be maddening.

James Mason's character is slightly overdone and he's filmed in extreme close-up in a way pioneered by David Lean in "Brief Encounter." He is one of the great actors in movie history, though; so his presence is welcome.

The supporting cast is uniformly excellent. Maggie Smith is -- well, not yet the Maggie Smith we know but just right in an integral role. And Yootha Joyce is properly shocking as a woman sitting beside Bancroft at the beauty parlor who suddenly begins to harangue her.

This is a woman's story. Not being a woman, I can't say fore certain. But Pinter and Clayton have provided Bancroft with the tools to live out this woman's story for us in the most intimate detail.