Chilly examination of alienated New Yorkers is difficult to find on VHS, but it's worth the search for Shirley MacLaine's performance alone. She's quite sympathetic floating through this frigid sea of lost faces and souls. The film is slow (deliberately slow) and lugubrious, but also undeniably compelling. The horrors of the modern day (circa 1971) are well-depicted in scene after scene, and the fade-out offers no pat promises (and, amusingly, no hope). In her autobiography, MacLaine scathingly dismisses the film as one that "didn't work", blaming it on script problems. I agree the 'plot', such as it is, could've been stronger overall, but--as with all unconventional stories--the people, their emotions, and things they experience are just as important as the dialogue, and all of those elements here are provocative and well-observed. What a weird one this is! **1/2 from ****
9 Reviews
Downbeat, depressing, truthful exploration of city dwellers...
Doylenf3 October 2006
Not exactly a cheerful slice of life in the big city, DESPERATE CHARACTERS does bring a certain truth to its story of two middle-aged New Yorkers who seem to be losers in a world where everyday daily life is a struggle to get through. It has nothing that hasn't been said before, particularly by writer/director Gilroy who already gave us more of the same in his THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES. And as compared to another slice of city life, like A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, it suffers in comparison.
The trouble is the script which has all of the characters giving theatrical monologues revealing themselves in dialog that doesn't sound natural coming from these people. But SHIRLEY MacLAINE stands out among the cast with one of her better serious performances in a demanding role. She seems honest and real, despite some flowery dialog.
MacLaine herself dismissed the film as a failure in her autobiography, but it does have some holding power despite its downbeat effect.
The trouble is the script which has all of the characters giving theatrical monologues revealing themselves in dialog that doesn't sound natural coming from these people. But SHIRLEY MacLAINE stands out among the cast with one of her better serious performances in a demanding role. She seems honest and real, despite some flowery dialog.
MacLaine herself dismissed the film as a failure in her autobiography, but it does have some holding power despite its downbeat effect.
New York...1971...and it's ugly...
JasparLamarCrabb3 April 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Not easy to sit through but ultimately very enlightening. Frank Gilroy's acidic view of modern (circa 1971) New Yorkers at turning points in their lives. Middle-class couple Shirley MacLaine & Kenneth Mars find themselves saddled with each other rather than married to each other. He's a conservative lawyer in the midst of a break from his liberal partner (Gerald S. O'Laughlin) and she's bored senseless. MacLaine's bleak existence isn't helped by her free-thinking friend Sada Thompson and her equally outré ex-husband Jack Somack. This film is one of several angst riddled New York-set tales released during the time (see LITTLE MURDERS, UP THE SANDBOX) and it's well handled by Gilroy. Adapting the book by Paul Fox, Gilroy's script is full of a lot of insight into why people, long sick of each other, opt to stay together. MacLaine serves up a very good, very low-key performance as does the surprisingly cast Kenneth Mars as her hopelessly optimistic husband. It's hard to believe Mars played lunatic playwright Franz Liebkind in THE PRODUCERS just three years earlier.
Frank D. Gilroy's Opera Prima
EdgarST15 April 2024
Almost everything good in this drama is due to Shirley MacLaine's very good performance (winner of the Best Actress Award at Berlin Film Festival), and the fine support of Kenneth Mars and other character actors, in spite of the monologues with no purpose that they have to recite. Although a few seem to be overacting for the microphone, probably they had to, because of one of those sound recordists who ask performers to "talk louder, I can't hear you", even when the situations are intimate, as is in this case, in almost every moment of the story. This was the first movie directed by playwright Frank D. Gilroy, and surprisingly (and thankfully) he made it short.
shirley macLaine in NYC life in 1971
ksf-27 May 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Another one of those "thinker" psychological films from the 1970s. Shirley MacLaine (Sophie) and Kenneth Mars (Otto...has a German name, but plays it without the Cherman accent in this one) are a married couple figuring things out as they go along. A whole lot of time spent on what happens when Sophie feeds a feral cat.... Keep an eye out for some familiar faces in the supporting cast; Gerald O'Laughlin (was the Lieutenant in "The Rookies" cop show) and Sada Thompson (the mom, on the series "Family"... with America's sweetheart Kristy McNichol), and Carol Kane (was "Simka" on Taxi). Shirley M has longer hair in this one, which is unusual, and done several different ways in different scenes. She usually has very short hair, and the fact that I am even mentioning this shows just how slowly the film moved. Best performances here are by Sada Thompson and Jack Somack, who play husband and wife, friends of Sophie. Thompson & Somack also worked together on "Pursuit of Happiness". They give Somack some silly lines to say, but he does a good job of delivering them. Thompson and Somack are a believable couple, although it almost turns into a Virginia Wolfe kind of marriage by the end of the scene. Glad I didn't pay $12.00 to see this film in the theater.... but was mildly interesting to watch. Mars doesn't have many lines in this one; plays a very bland character, which seems to be what the director wanted. Over the top scene at the emergency room... for such a tiny scratch.... some symbolism there ... she gets what she gets for feeding the feral cat. Rated R for some cussing here and there. Directed and produced by Frank Gilroy, looks like the first film he directed.
Not a ray of sunshine
brinkus-218 December 1999
This is one of the most depressing films I have ever seen and I loved every moment of it. It follows a couple through a somewhat ordinary but also traumatic day in their lives. They are staying together because they are used to each other, not because they really still love each other. Shirley MacLaine and Kenneth Mars give great performances!
'Desperate Characters' is a mesmerically morbid treat!
Weirdling_Wolf17 October 2021
Supremely gifted actors Shirley MacLaine and Kenneth Mars do excellent work in masterful director Frank D. Gilroy's black-hued, acerbic drama about a moribund middle-class couple Sophie (Shirley MacLaine) and her cynical husband Otto (Kenneth Mars) whose increasingly glacial relationship has eased uncomfortably into mutual diffidence, vividly leavened with blithe bouts of deliciously acid sniping! There is a stark, bitter quality to the text, and the mostly middle-aged characters seem terminally dispossessed, angry, frequently addressing one another tersely in a cold, epigrammatic manner, the unvarnished, downbeat dialogue, while sublimely eloquent, has an obsidian dark, pessimistically Pinter-esque quality, and Sophie's existential despair becomes quite acute by the time the beleaguered couple take their ill-fated trip to their rather ostentatious-looking country house. Immaculate performances, and an unsually rich text make 'Desperate Characters' a mesmerically morbid treat!
Painfully real 50 years later.
mark.waltz3 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
The performances of Shirley MacLaine and Kenneth Mars are far too realistic with the script by Frank D. Gilroy so true to life, and not taking place on the sunny side of the street. This Brooklyn based couple, only hearing from each other what they want to hear, probably still love each other but their life is so routine and with their home as their castle which locks them in from the outside world, they truly can't stand to look at each other sometimes.
If life inside their apartment isn't all sunshine and roses, it's worse than fertilizer outside. Friends and acquaintances are obviously just as (or more) unhappy, and even a trip to an antique shop leads to words between MacLaine and the clerk (over the clerk's nosy observations and inability to hear what MacLaine is telling her) and later a visit to the hospital over the cat bite that MacLaine has been avoiding having treated. With screaming kids and other unhappy patients in earshot of the nurses harping at MacLaine, it's no wonder she gets upset.
What this film exposes is not just the loneliness of people in a big city but the way they feel separated from a humanity will they don't feel really cares to listen, and is too busy trying to come up with advice to give on a situation they don't have all the information on. The story seems simple, but presented in a very complex manner that digs into a lot of important issues still relevant. Sada Thompson and Jack Somack have an important lengthy scene as friends MacLaine visits who are just as troubled. This is without a doubt one of the most surprisingly touching performances of MacLaine's career, and you just want someone to come up and tell her that everything is going to be okay, even though you know it won't be.
If life inside their apartment isn't all sunshine and roses, it's worse than fertilizer outside. Friends and acquaintances are obviously just as (or more) unhappy, and even a trip to an antique shop leads to words between MacLaine and the clerk (over the clerk's nosy observations and inability to hear what MacLaine is telling her) and later a visit to the hospital over the cat bite that MacLaine has been avoiding having treated. With screaming kids and other unhappy patients in earshot of the nurses harping at MacLaine, it's no wonder she gets upset.
What this film exposes is not just the loneliness of people in a big city but the way they feel separated from a humanity will they don't feel really cares to listen, and is too busy trying to come up with advice to give on a situation they don't have all the information on. The story seems simple, but presented in a very complex manner that digs into a lot of important issues still relevant. Sada Thompson and Jack Somack have an important lengthy scene as friends MacLaine visits who are just as troubled. This is without a doubt one of the most surprisingly touching performances of MacLaine's career, and you just want someone to come up and tell her that everything is going to be okay, even though you know it won't be.
Scene from a Marriage
richardchatten2 April 2021
Based on a novel by Paula Fox and and sadly never released in Britain, this plays like a grimly comic variant on 'The Pumpkin Eater' or 'Bleak Moments' transposed to New York. Very little actually happens, but it remains engrossing throughout.
Shirley MacLaine was never better (or looked better; one of the other characters actually tells her how elegant she looks) as she and co-star Kenneth Mars take a holiday from the eccentrics they're usually cast as by playing an ordinary couple maintaining their cool as The Big Apple (Bergmanesquely rendered by cameraman Urs Furrer) throws such annoyances at them as a ferocious cat and destructive burglars.
Shirley MacLaine was never better (or looked better; one of the other characters actually tells her how elegant she looks) as she and co-star Kenneth Mars take a holiday from the eccentrics they're usually cast as by playing an ordinary couple maintaining their cool as The Big Apple (Bergmanesquely rendered by cameraman Urs Furrer) throws such annoyances at them as a ferocious cat and destructive burglars.
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