... in spite of all of that navel gazing! This film was a good effort among a string of mainly made for TV films made from 1967 until about 1973 in which middle class people opined and whined about how unhaaappy (yes I know that is a misspell) and unfulfilled they were. These people were usually too old to be boomers and too young to be the greatest generation, having been born during the Depression but not having many memories of hardship. Thus their earliest childhood memories were of WWII, so they did not contribute to that effort, and up until the 70s they had plenty of material comfort that sprang from that effort and the 25 year postwar boom that came with it. During the late stage of this material comfort, these kinds of films came along.
So Carrie Miller (Lee Grant) is a very pretty very bored 30 something California housewife married to a dentist who is equally bored and has discreet affairs with his nurses to cope. Carrie copes by taking off on unannounced adventures across country. The night she leaves with her daughter -apparently she takes Paula with her with no regard for her schooling - her husband is awake and knows she is going. He just lies in bed. He is OK with it if it diffuses the tension for awhile.
Both mother and daughter have their car break down at a desert gas station/lunch counter run by a gruff ruffian known only as "Jones". At first, stranded there, nobody gets along with anybody. But Paula breaks down Jones' defenses, because underneath the explosive temper and the hermit demeanor is a guy who seems to want a family, but that never came his way. Played by Gig Young, this is the kind of part that Robert Ryan would have excelled at in his day. You wonder just who is this guy? And you never get a complete answer to that question.
Paula plays the kind of kid you find in so many 70s films - she is thirteen going on a thousand as she is much more together than any of the adults. She actually wonders "What will mom do when the money runs out?" Meanwhile mom is happy to sit in the sun in a semi comatose state and sing "Hallelujah". The neon ceiling in the title? It is a ceiling in the desert diner full of antique neon signs that Jones has wired together into a Reddy Kilowatt kind of spectacle. It seems to be the only thing in his life that gives him pride.
The finale is very open ended, and you see lots of things in this film you would never see today. No mom would trust her daughter alone with ruffian hermit strangers today. In 1970 this still seems like a non threatening thing. To me the actual story is about a 6, but as an example of the changing culture of the time it is an 8. I average the two to give it a 7/10 rating.
So Carrie Miller (Lee Grant) is a very pretty very bored 30 something California housewife married to a dentist who is equally bored and has discreet affairs with his nurses to cope. Carrie copes by taking off on unannounced adventures across country. The night she leaves with her daughter -apparently she takes Paula with her with no regard for her schooling - her husband is awake and knows she is going. He just lies in bed. He is OK with it if it diffuses the tension for awhile.
Both mother and daughter have their car break down at a desert gas station/lunch counter run by a gruff ruffian known only as "Jones". At first, stranded there, nobody gets along with anybody. But Paula breaks down Jones' defenses, because underneath the explosive temper and the hermit demeanor is a guy who seems to want a family, but that never came his way. Played by Gig Young, this is the kind of part that Robert Ryan would have excelled at in his day. You wonder just who is this guy? And you never get a complete answer to that question.
Paula plays the kind of kid you find in so many 70s films - she is thirteen going on a thousand as she is much more together than any of the adults. She actually wonders "What will mom do when the money runs out?" Meanwhile mom is happy to sit in the sun in a semi comatose state and sing "Hallelujah". The neon ceiling in the title? It is a ceiling in the desert diner full of antique neon signs that Jones has wired together into a Reddy Kilowatt kind of spectacle. It seems to be the only thing in his life that gives him pride.
The finale is very open ended, and you see lots of things in this film you would never see today. No mom would trust her daughter alone with ruffian hermit strangers today. In 1970 this still seems like a non threatening thing. To me the actual story is about a 6, but as an example of the changing culture of the time it is an 8. I average the two to give it a 7/10 rating.