Customer Reviews

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

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Let me add my plea for someone to release this quiet, powerful, wonderfully acted film on DVD. Like more recent films such as The Ice Storm, Affliction, and Brokeback Mountain, Marigolds shows ordinary people struggling against problems that are beyond their ability to solve, sometimes winning a little, sometimes losing a little - or a lot. The film is all the more heartbreaking because those who struggle and, perhaps, lose are young people as well as adults. But even in their defeat, they endure, and that in itself is a kind of victory.

My VHS copy, taped 20 years ago off cable TV, is about at the end of its useful life. Some studio with a heart, PLEASE obtain the rights to this and give us a DVD. Forget the cost of interactive menus, forget the cost of special features, forget the filmographies and the bios and the previews of upcoming attractions. Just get the best copy you can find, clean up the video and sound to a reasonable degree, and give us this powerful film on DVD.

"This is an adaptation of Paul Zindel's wonderful but tormented play. This play itself is compelling and has a kind of Tennessee Williams flavor; especially "The Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire". The adaptation is very successful as the production designer (Gene Callahan) manages to transfer the book's psychologically oppressive ambiance to film; "shame hangs in the air of this house" like a cloud of poison gas.

Director Paul Newman gets performances from his cast that pull together parallel stories of how a "strong, strange, and beautiful" flower can unexpectedly spring from an environmental wasteland. His most difficult task is restraining or masking Joanne Woodward's earthy likability so that we waste little sympathy on her character. But using Woodward as the mother allowed him to get a once-in-a-lifetime performance from their daughter (Nell Potts as Matilda-Tillie in the play). Potts abandoned acting after this movie but her ethereal take on Matilda is right on the money and a big reason why the film works so well.

This is really just a story about Matilda's science fair project in which marigold seeds are subjected to varying amounts of gamma ray radiation (the independent variable in her experiment). Those flowers receiving a moderate amount of radiation bloom in amazing and wonderful ways. However, those flowers subjected to additional radiation either have their growth stunted or whither and die.

Meanwhile Tillie and her older sister Ruth are living an analogous story with their mother Beatrice in an extremely emotionally abusive household. In the play it is stated that Beatrice is insane but not how or why she became this way. In the movie the viewer soon reaches this same conclusion. Older daughter Ruth (an amazing performance by Eli Wallach's daughter Roberta) maintains a fairly normal lifestyle at school, she is a majorette and popular but is very selfish and demanding of attention. Notably she is also an epileptic, which is subtly significant because it is analogous to receiving an excessive amount of radiation. Tillie is very different (analogous to receiving a moderate amount of radiation), seemingly shy and withdrawn, she is actually very independent and has found an outlet from the family in her science projects. This outlet serves as a protective niche in which she can bloom.

A truly great scene is Matilda's acceptance speech at the science fair. She explains the results of her project and really lays out the main theme of the story for the viewer. Watch as she mentions how excessive radiation causes dwarf plants, at that point they cut to a closeup of Ruth in the audience. Both the experiment and the family illustrate that while a reasonable degree of adversity can actually be beneficial, too much of the same adversity will poison life.

While this would be a good film if focused solely on Matilda, it is elevated to extraordinary because Newman chooses to also make Ruth a central part of the story. The conventional "movie-way" to tell this story would be to make it an inspirational tale of triumphing over adversity; of free-will overcoming destiny. But fortunately Newman elects to show both sides of the story, in Ruth he shows someone who never has a chance, who cannot recognize her destiny or ever hope to overcome it.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Joanne Woodward starred as Beatrice Hunsdorfer ("Betty the Loon"), a loud, vulgar, gum-chewing, beer-drinking, unattractive middle-aged woman...

Living in a dilapidated house in a rundown town, abandoned by her husband, unable to face the responsibility of raising her two teenaged daughters' she is disgusted with life... She covers her despair with sarcasm, outrageous jokes and a tough, insensitive treatment of the girls... But she's also pathetic, as she checks the classified ads for business opportunities, and dreams of opening dignified teashops, even though her house is filled with garbage and she's a frightful mess...

The film focuses on the way Beatrice's savage, cynical, often self-deprecating humor and her embittered outlook have affected her daughters. Ruth, the older girl, is a typical adolescent boy-chaser and baton-twirler, who, like Beatrice, employs a tough, sarcastic manner to hide her fears and frustration... Shattered by nightmares and epileptic fits, she sinks hopelessly into defeat...

Matilda is shy, sensitive and introverted... Although it seems that she should succumb, she overcomes her environment and emerges strongest... An extremely intelligent science student, Matilda wins a prize for her experiment on mutated flowers that gives the drama its symbolic title; and she becomes a mutant herself--a delicate flower growing out of arid waste...

The play is transformed from a lyrical mood-piece into a naturalistic slice-of-life in the tradition of the fifties television drama Newman admires... This makes the symbolism somewhat obtrusive, and the emphasis on external squalor--the filthy house, for example--is overdone and superficial...

Newman's attempts to open up the play are largely successful--scenes of Matilda's science teacher explaining the mysteries of the universe, Ruth's accurate imitation of Beatrice in a school skit, and a teenaged mad scientist explaining with sadistic relish how she skinned a cat, are especially memorable...

As in "Sometimes a Great Notion," there's a real feeling for family life, although the emphasis is reversed: here it's a world of women in which men play a marginal role... Newman expertly handles the shifts from vigorous burlesque to black humor to terror to pathos... And as before, he uses the camera functionally, bringing it close to his actresses to achieve intimacy and character revelation...

Woodward again displays remarkable range... As the shrewish, noisy woman, she's at once horrifying and humorous, but her suggestion of underlying vulnerability arouses our compassion... There's even the familiar inner radiance, indicating a beautiful woman beneath the flamboyance... As Ruth, Roberta Wallach is a perfect amalgam of the tough, shallow teenager and the pathetic, defenseless baby...

The standout performance is by Nell Potts, the Newmans' thirteen-year-old, who played Rachel as a child, and here plays a Rachel-like character... As Matilda, she's a model of understatement, with her soft, fragile voice, subtle expressions of nervousness, and luminous blue eyes that, like her father's, seem to be quietly assimilating everything--sometimes disapproving but more often understanding...

The film did reconfirm Newman's stature as a director... In his three features he has shown an ability to work with a wide range of material, and if he lacks an original style, he does have a feeling for constructing powerful images and scenes... Above all, he was one of today's finest directors of performers, which has become almost a lost art...

Being a grade schooler is the 1970's, I vividly recall this film making a profound impact on me. So much so that to this day I long to see it again. I find it hard to beleive that such a spellbinding movie remains unavailable to the subsequent generations that have come since. Whoever holds this copyright, please get this one on the market for us all to see either for the first time, or again if forunate enough to see it some 30 years ago!

I just saw this movie on television. I was just blown away by Joanne Woodward's portrayal of the mother. Her character is so believeable and real. The two girls in the film are just stand-outs. It's a complicated plot with complicated characters, a real actor's movie. I want to purchase the DVD just as soon as it's released. If anyone is a Joanne Woodward fan or likes a good story with good acting, this is it.

I have not seen this movie since the early 80's and would love to own it on dvd. The before mentioned quote has stuck with me all these years!!!

I originally saw this film broadcast on television in the 70's...it's one of the reasons that, as a child, I came to appreciate good acting, filmmaking and the ability for a film to make an emotional imprint on a person. All these years later I still search for this film. My 16 year old son (who shares my love and appreciation of great performances) needs to see this as do all the people of this generation. While the "Adam Sandler's and Cameron Diaz's" of this world have a place in the entertainment industry, people need to see the brilliance of Woodward, Newman and the children in this film. Talent like this is RARE and must be celebrated. The story is just amazing and is so very well delivered in this work of art. For the love of all that is holy, PLEASE put this on DVD...

The non-availability of this wonderful film on DVD is incomprehensible. May I add my voice to the others here who wish it were made available for new audiences - and old. The memory of Joanne Woodward's performance lives on - but I wish, oh I wish, it could be refreshed.

I first saw this movie on cable TV back in the early 90s, and had taped it sometime later. It is one of my favorites, and this must be out on DVD soon. There is no excuse whatsoever for it to not be out!!! Joanne Woodward shines as Mrs. Beatrice Hunsdorfer, a woman who is unhappy about a lot of things. Her husband dies in a war, and she is on her own to raise her two daughters. She is also unhappy about the issues that the kids are facing: her eldest daughter suffers from epileptic seizures and her younger daughter is growing some marigolds that were exposed to radioactivity. She is obviously unhappy about other things, but this list could go on and on. Mrs. Hunsdorfer has no job outside the home, so her only source of income is taking in elderly people who are sick in her home (which is so filthy from top to bottom). The movie is a drama, but if you ask me, there is also some comedy blended in as well. Any person who loves this movie as well as I do would love to see it come out on DVD. To whoever is out there putting these great films out on DVD: put it in widescreen, make the clarity of the video and audio the way it should be on DVD--sharp and clear (remastered would be excellent!!!); never mind about the special features. The only feature along with this movie should be a standard menu for play, chapter selections, and English subtitles. We're tired of having to rely on VHS versions that are on the verge of going kaput. GET THIS MOVIE OUT ON DVD RIGHT AWAY!!!!!

This film has real staying power. I saw it when it was released, and I've never forgotten the story, nor the powerful performances given by the cast. I thought it was a very "heavy" film, but there were also several moments of hilarity. To be fair, I believe that "the human condition" should be rendered in all of its complicated forms, both sunny and tragic, and this film really "imitates life".

Both heartbreaking and heroic, only a handful of other films have succeeded in touching me in the profound way that this cinematic experience did. "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", What's Eating Gilbert Grape", and "Inside Moves" all come to mind as vividly and personally as this film did. I was also very impressed with the fact that Paul Neuman, directing his own wife and daughter, could achieve such stunning performances, without familial emotions muddling the final product. I've been waiting for years to catch this movie on late night TV, since it does not seem to have been released for resale!