Product Details

• Actors: George Segal, Susan Anspach, Kris Kristofferson, Marsha Mason, Shelley Winters
• Directors: Paul Mazursky
• Writers: Paul Mazursky
• Producers: Paul Mazursky, Anthony Ray
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: October 15, 1997
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630026873X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #315,752 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Blume in Love is writer-director Paul Mazursky's best movie, featuring George Segal's best performance, and the sweetest film distillation of what made the 1970s a charmed and exasperating time. Yes, sweetest--though it's only fair to serve notice of a third-act transgression, and its aftermath, that will have some viewers hitting the Stop button. So be it. This comedy about a privileged manchild (Segal)--a Beverly Hills divorce lawyer--falling ever more deeply in love with his ex-wife (Susan Anspach) is clear-eyed and endlessly forgiving toward all its imperfect, achingly human characters. A milestone of the '70s "American film renaissance," Blume has only grown wittier and wiser with time.

Segal and Anspach are perfectly cast as the California couple whose courtship, marriage, breakup, and postmarital relationship are recalled in scrambled chronology from Blume's vantage in Venice's Plaza San Marco, site of their honeymoon years earlier. The stars' quirky attractiveness, as opposed to conventional movie-star looks, suits the characters' glib, SoCal liberalism and sexual gamesmanship. (The couple meet at a radical-chic fundraiser for César Chávez and frug to a curly-locks band playing "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man"--a zeitgeist moment to bring fond tears to the eye.) Kris Kristofferson is delightful as an out-of-work musician named Elmo who takes up with the ex-wife, then--to her bemusement--bonds warmly with Blume. There are also priceless dialogues with the psychoanalyst the couple shares (Donald F. Muhich, Mazursky's own analyst previously seen in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), and Shelley Winters has a hilarious extended cameo as an on-again, off-again client of Blume's. Nor should we neglect Marsha Mason, exuding great-gal warmth and carnality as the ex-best friend of the exes; it was her first film role of consequence, and just watching her in it made Neil Simon fall in love. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I adore this movie and hope you will, too, January 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Blume in Love [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I just watched "Blume in Love" again after a long lapse, and it's held up beautifully. It's about an attorney (George Segal) who still loves his ex-wife (Susan Anspach) even though she no longer loves him and is living with a musician (Kris Kristofferson in his first role). There's so much to savor that I'll just record a few random impressions for you:

The closing shot, which is perfectly symmetrical with the opening shot, is one of the most satisfying I've ever seen. It gives me the same kind of transcendent joy I got at the fadeout of "Annie Hall" and "Field of Dreams."

There's a rape in the plot that troubles some people, and yet given the era this movie was made and the way the characters themselves deal with the situation in that period, I don't have a problem with it.

The visual riffs on "Death in Venice" are very funny and sweet.

The idea of a shared cold (very early in the movie and never spoken of, just shown) expresses intimacy as well as anything could.

Kristofferson is hilariously laid back and sweet here, and his song about Chester the goat will stay with you a while.

If you've never been to Venice, and if after "Don't Look Now" you swore you'd never go, this movie might just change your mind.

I hope you see this movie if you haven't.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps not for everyone, but for those who have experienced, August 13, 2000

By 

A. Silverman "BooksDealer eselling stuff sinc... (Fresno, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blume in Love [VHS] (VHS Tape)

some of life and love's ups and downs, inside and outs, a wistful comedy about a shmuck who destroys his marriage with a casual affair and thereby liberates his ex-wife into becoming an independent woman who go on with her life, while he tries to regain that which he had had and lost; Segal, Anspach, and Kristofferson perfect in their roles in this period piece (70's) but with lasting appeal. A woman's movie that appeals to consciousness-raised men as well, with love winning in the end, but between which parties? Ah, there's the rub. Enjoy SHALOM Alex

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A bitttersweet 1970's Los Angeles romance for adults, February 18, 2007

By 

Stephen H. Wood "Film scholar and vintage mov... (South San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blume in Love (DVD)

When I was a college student in 1970's Los Angeles, I fell in love with Paul Mazursky's bittersweet BLUME IN LOVE (1973). It is now on DVD, and I recommend it to all romantics of the world. Beverly Hills divorce lawyer Stephen Blume (George Segal in a career-best performance) finds himself getting divorced from wife Nina (Susan Anspach) when he stupidly cheats on her with his secretary. Blume befriends a sweet woman named Arlene (Marsha Mason), but still loves Nina. But she now has a hippie boyfriend named Elmo (Kris Kristofferson, who made PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID the same year). Nina met Elmo in a Los Angeles welfare office, where she works. Blume befriends Elmo to try and get to Nina. She keeps telling Blume to get lost, but secretly misses him also.

This is an extraordinarily insightful and superbly acted movie about human relationships and divorce. The dialogue is wonderful. ("I've seen GONE WITH THE WIND eleven times because I know it will be good." "I raped my ex-wife, and her boyfriend beat me up.") Writer/director Mazursky gives it an interesting structure, beginning and ending in Venice (Italy) with a bearded Blume sipping expresso in an open plaza and watching people around him. They are in love, and he misses Nina. In flashback, we learn how the two met and married in Venice, moved to Los Angeles, then several years later how they got divorced in Las Vegas. And we learn how Blume meets Arlene, who kind of resents having him always talking and thinking about Nina during sex. On the other hand, Nina claims she never thinks of Blume after the divorce. That's not true, as the last couple of reels reveal. I personally find the last scene optimistic, but still true-to-life.

Watching a wonderful Sidney Poitier drama called TO SIR, WITH LOVE (1967), I told myself it could only take place in 1967 London because of the character relationships, the dialogue, and the city. Watching BLUME IN LOVE, which was photographed by Bruce Surtees and designed by Pato Guzman, I told myself it is a time capsule of my college heyday in 1973 Los Angeles. I was 22. If it was released in Spring, I was graduating from UCLA; if it was a Fall release, I was just starting at USC's School of Cinema. The characters bed one another freely without condoms in a pre-AIDS age and say "the f--- word" often enough to get an "R" rating; and they smoke pot and use the expression "my old lady" for girl friends.

BLUME IN LOVE is definitely a 1970's movie, one of the finest. I gets 1973 Los Angeles just right, down to the details. I highly recommend it to adult moviegoers.