"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-
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-