The Death of an Interior Decorator...

"Interiors" was Woody Allen's first serious drama, released on year after the biggest success of his career, "Annie Hall". Prior to his artistic turning point with "Annie Hall", Allen dealt in screwball comedies. Understandably, critics and movie goers were skeptical in 1978 when they learned that Woody would be releasing a serious film. Many doubted that he could pull it off. Imagine everyone's surprise when "Interiors" was revealed to be superb, and now it certainly ranks among Woody's most finely crafted films. It's up there with "Annie Hall", "Hannah And Her Sisters", "The Purple Rose of Cairo", "Sweet and Lowdown", and "Manhattan".

"Interiors" tells the story of a WASPy Long Island family headed by the matriarch, an interior decorator named Eve played by Geraldine Page. The family is sent reeling by the sudden announcment from Eve's husband that he wants a divorce. Eve is described as a "fragile creature" whose job as an interior decorator is used as a means to channel her compulsion for perfection and absolute control of her surroundings. Or as her husband puts it ,"She built ice castles for us". Her three daughters are Flyn, Joey, and Renata. Flyn (Kristin Griffith) is a Hollywood actress with a cocaine habit, Joey (Mary Beth Hurt) is a frustrated woman with artistic dreams but no talent with which to channel her creative urges, and Renata (Diane Keaton) is a famous poet who is married to a flash in the pan novelist and Hemingway wannabe played by Richard Jordan. Joey's husband is a filmmaker played by Sam Waterston, who has little patience for his mother-in-law's delicate mental state and perfectionism.

At the time, much was made of the films homages to Ingmar Bergman. Some considered it an homage to "Persona", but the static shots in flashbacks and the themes of familial and sisterly discord have more in common with "Cries and Whispers". The greatest influence on the film comes not from Bergman, however, but from Eugene O'Neill's play "A Long Day's Journey Into Night", which Allen admittedly based his screenplay off of. And yet even with this eclectic set of influences and homages and given Allen's previous track record of working strictly with comedy, "Interiors" is a film that is incredibly confident in its own ideas. The dialogue is wonderful, and the exchanges among the sisters and other family members illustrate the layers that exist in human speech, and how sometimes its better to say what we mean by saying what we don't mean. In such a repressed, intellectual family, honesty and forthrightness of speech is considered especially scandalous. I was especially in awe of the costuming and the cinematography; just look at the clothing that the family wear. All combinations of icy grey and muted beige, as if they are simply extentensions of the churning sea and cold sand of the Long Island beach. When the father of the household brings in his new girlfriend named Pearl (Maureen Stapleton), her bright red gowns practically pop of the screen. The intellectual family takes an instant dislike to her frank, down to earth nature, and because she's the only one among them with any vitality she is labeled "a vulgarian" by Joey.

Every scene in "Interiors" is masterfully crafted. The actors all hit the perfect notes with their dialogue, and from start to finish we're riveted by an ominous feeling that we are watching a family quietly implode. Woody would go on to make several dramas over the course of his career, but "Interiors" was his first and his best.