THE PUMPKIN EATER (1964) B/W widescreen 118m dir: Jack Clayton

w/Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason, Janine Gray, Cedric Hardwicke, Rosalind Atkinson, Alan Webb, Richard Johnson, Maggie Smith, Eric Porter

From The Movie Guide: "Bancroft, in an Oscar nominated performance, plays a twice-married mother of six. She divorces her second husband (Johnson) and takes up with Finch, a highly successful screenwriter. The two marry; it seems like a perfect marriage until Bancroft realizes her philandering husband will never buckle down to her notions of marital fidelity. She gives birth to her seventh child and suffers a nervous breakdown. This, along with an encounter with an unbalanced woman at her hairdresser's, sends Bancroft to a psychiatrist (Porter). He is not much help. Bancroft's father dies, and she discovers that she is once more expecting a baby. She refuses to accompany Finch to a film location in Morocco but agrees to his arguments for sterilization. Later, she runs into Mason, a man who once made a pass at her. Mason reveals that Finch has been having an affair with his wife (Gray), who is now expecting a child. ... This is a fine film, encompassing the joys and tragedies of life: birth and death, marriage and divorce, love and hate. The leads give their characters life. They seem to be real people on the screen, not actors in a drama. Bancroft lends her role real depth, switching moods with eerie and wonderful believability. Mason, in a small supporting role, is nothing short of excellent. The script, by noted playwright [Harold] Pinter [from the novel by Penelope Mortimer], is complex and painful but often exhibits a good sense of the comic as well. The direction, slow and even-handed, allows the story to develop its own pace, gradually building in speed as the story's intensity grows. This is a fine and sensitive work, a truthful portrait of human foibles and complexities. The film was charismatic character-actor Hardwicke's final one; he died the year of its release."