DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE
May 5th, 2009 by RobFrank Perry’s masterpiece has a rare screening Thursday at Doc Films, and I’d like to write a little bit more about why I believe that it’s one of most unjustly neglected films of the 1970s.
Her husband Jonathan is a partner in a successful law firm. They live with their two young daughters in a luxurious highrise just off the park. So why is Tina so lifeless and exhausted? Well, for starters, her husband (Richard Benjamin, exquisitely obnoxious) is an egocentric nag who only seems interested in climbing the next rung on the social ladder. And her children are goggle-eyed aliens who constantly whine, when they’re not being openly hostile towards her. At a party, Tina happens to meet George, a celebrity writer with a streak of narcissism a mile wide. He propositions her. Eventually, she gives in. And that’s when the story really takes off.
But this is no angst-ridden drama of infidelity. DIARY’s brilliance, for me, is that it treats this stuff as black comedy, not as tragedy. DIARY has more in common with Paddy Chayefsky’s satires THE HOSPITAL and NETWORK than you might think. All three are equally stylized, and their stylization is key to their effectiveness. For example, we all know that newscasters really don’t talk like Howard Beale in NETWORK. We only wish they did. It’s a fantasy; or one might say, taking things to their logical conclusions. DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE is not called ANATOMY OF A MARRIAGE for the very reason that the film is not a balanced look at relationships. It’s all from Carrie Snodgress’ point of view (as borne out by the “punchline” ending). The lack of so-called “realistic behavior” in Richard Benjamin’s character that enrages so many critics should not be troubling. (Think of George C. Scott in DR.STRANGELOVE for example.) I believe that his character is exactly meant to be “a hypothetical nebula of every bad hetero-male trait.” In fact, were his character Jonathan to be portrayed in a fair, balanced way, akin to Michael Murphy’s character in AN UNMARRIED WOMAN (which, by the way, serves as a useful reference point since Mazursky’s movie is like an inverse of DIARY), I’d go so far as to suggest the movie would then be pointless. It’s because he’s so “grating, demanding, anal, immature,” so completely over the top, that the movie has its zing.
DIARY was a very ahead-of-the-curve attempt to address the broken promises and corroded idealism of the 60s. Remember, it came out in 1970! What other mainstream American filmmakers were ready to call the 60s a failure in 1970? The film is basically saying, “You know peace and love and flower power? All those 60s dreams? It was all a sham. And it was doubly a sham for women, who are just as trapped as they ever were. All that so-called freedom they thought was right around the corner was just an illusion. And it was largely perpetrated by the men themselves.”
At the the end of the film, during his monologue, Jonathan reminisces about how he met Tina during a political campaign, and says, “You remember how fired up we were about what was happening in Washington? We were so young and hopeful. It sounds corny. But we were idealistic. Weren’t we, Teen? And then, suddenly it was all over. Gone. I used to wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning, crying, because it wasn’t there anymore.” The angst of a generation torn between increasingly meaningless tradition (what is modern marriage? does it even involve love anymore, or is it just about materialism and the family unit?) and a social mobility that seemed even more vapid (Jonathan’s whole “kick” is social mobility; not content with a luxurious high rise apartment and his law form partnership, he restlessly seeks out the personal affirmation that he thinks will come from from hobnobbing with celebrities, even though they only use him.) Jonathan is far from from being merely a one-dimensional stand-in for the typical MCP. He causes his own humiliation, even as Tina is just a glutton for punishment, moving from one egocentric creep to another.
Yet the film is not misanthropic. Perry films the action in a cool, clean style, capturing the daily rhythms of Tina’s routine: housework, shopping, sneaking a quick belt of vodka while fixing dinner. Between the drudgery and the male chauvinism, it’s no wonder she’s “mad.” His film shows how our habits are at first forced upon us by Western society–before we eagerly, wistfully embrace them. These obligations both restrain us and coddle us; we feel trapped by them even as we come to rely on them more and more to tell us how to relate to one another. In 2009, how have things changed?
