User Reviews

Probably were it not for the American Film Theater, that noble project which ultimately did fail of bringing productions of classical American works to film, we might never have seen A Delicate Balance. It's like a lot of O'Neill's work, it's all in the creation of the characters.

Certainly a play which consists of six characters sitting around and talking would not be considered anything film-able today. A Delicate Balance for me seems to take off in the same directions as Edward Albee's other classic, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and also bears no small resemblance to O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Both of those films however had bigger budgets and were made more cinematic by having the players move into various locations. The one set technique just doesn't work here. This is not for instance a story as gripping as Alfred Hitchcock's Rope or Rear Window. My guess is that the budget was blown on getting the high priced stars.

Paul Scofield and Katharine Hepburn play a pair of sixty somethings married and living in a posh Connecticut suburb, the kind of place Hepburn grew up in and knew well. Living with them is Hepburn's leach of a sister Kate Reid who they keep well supplied with alcohol and who lives there at Hepburn's insistence. Otherwise Scofield would have tossed this one out with the trash years ago. But he bows to Hepburn's wishes to keep peace and order, a delicate balance if you will.

They get two intruders in their well ordered lives one day. Their neighbors and long time friends, Joseph Cotten and Betsy Blair just ring the bell and announce that something unknown has frightened them in their home and they need to move out and move in with them. Scofield offers them his daughter's room.

But then daughter announces she's moving back after failed marriage number four. Needless to say that causes the balance to go out of whack. Lee Remick is the daughter and she's a selfish and spoiled suburban princess. After this everybody grates on each other's nerves.

Short and on plot, but deep on characterization is A Delicate Balance. It explores the problems of old age and loneliness. Cotten and Blair have no children and Scofield and Hepburn take little comfort in Remick. Perhaps if there were grandchildren things might be different for both couples. There was a son who died for Hepburn and Scofield and that seems to have cast a permanent pall over both of them.

Though Remick is blood kin, Hepburn and especially Scofield have more in common with their neighbors. How it all works out is for you to see A Delicate Balance for.

The film's saving grace is the wonderful performances by the cast. The original Broadway production ran for 132 performances in 1966-1967 and starred Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in the Scofield-Hepburn roles. But certainly Kate and Paul were going to sell more tickets than either of the other two worthy players.

Not that A Delicate Balance did much business back in the day. These films were for limited release in any event and if it's making money it's now in video sales and rentals. Still we can thank the American Film Theater for its preservation with some of the best preservers around.

The film adaptation of 'A Delicate Balance' promises a good deal. Seeing Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield leading immediately attracted me, having loved them in other things. What has been seen of Tony Richardson, a lot more to see though, has been interesting. And the play is wonderful, the story is slight but the characterisation and drama are extremely rich. Again, while the characters are indeed unpleasant they are interesting in their flaws and none of it rings false. Neither do the eerily dysfunctional family dynamics.

So expectations were quite high, prior to watching 'A Delicate Balance' for those reasons. As well as loving the previous two films in the American Film Theatre series 'The Iceman Cometh' and 'The Homecoming'. Sadly, 'A Delicate Balance', while still being worth watching and above average, was a disappointment and was the start of when the series became inconsistent. Most of the following films in the series ranged between above average and good, while one was great and two were below average.

'A Delicate Balance' does have good things. The best thing about it is most of the cast, with Hepburn and Scofield being powerhouses in roles with a lot of meat to them. Especially Hepburn. Kate Reid's performance has gotten more mixed reviews here, count me in as one of those people that liked her here. She struck me as firey and intense in the role most difficult to pull off and near-impossible to nail. Joseph Cotten does understatement beautifully.

Moreover, a good deal of the photography is lovely on the eyes and elegant and the costumes and sets are nice. Edward Albee's dialogue still has wit, honesty and relevance. Parts are moving.

However, 'A Delicate Balance' also came over as very stagebound and can have a pedestrian pace. Despite some nice photography as mentioned, there is an over-reliance on claustrophobic close-ups that betrays the play's stage origins so it felt like a stage production being filmed fairly professionally. Richardson's direction has been more insightful and interesting in other films of his, it did too often come over as too clinical and not enough is done to open up the drama.

Lee Remick struggles badly in a very poorly written role, one of the very few issues that the play has, coming over as neurotic and unsure as to how to play it. Betsy Blair also overdoes it.

In summary, worth the look but could have been a lot better considering what it had going for it. 6/10.

.. a play about fear and loss among the upper middle class. I finally caught up with this filmed version starring Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield as the discontented Agnes and Tobias who wander around their expansive Connecticut house and wonder why they're not happy. Their private little world has been breached by Agnes' sister Claire (Kate Reid) who drinks too much and talks even more. But the sparring sisters are also fun compared to the others about to enter the house. Dear friends Harry and Edna (Joseph Cotton and Betsy Bair) suddenly appear and move into a bedroom, seeming with no intentions of leaving because they have given in to free-floating anxieties.

After them comes bitter daughter Julia (Lee Remick) who has separated from her 4th husband. The once spacious house is now filled with unhappy adults who all want something but seem to have no idea as to what that might be. Marvelous performances by all, although the Blair character seems truly unlikable, especially when she presumes the role of motherhood over Remick. Kate Reid pretty much steals the show as the hard-drinking Claire.

Fans of Edward Albee and Katharine Hepburn will find things to savor in this haphazard filming of the marvelous prize-winning play. But it's not always easy. Based on the slapdash direction, the piece looks as is the actors spent the requisite time rehearsing the play itself, and then the filming was done quickly and cheaply.

There are a series of generally long takes, but the staging looks more suitable for a proscenium stage than a film. And this is what separates a mediocre talent like Richardson from, say, Mike Nichols who did a far better job dealing with a (largely) confined space in the film of "Virginia Woolf." The result is that "Balance" comes off as stagy - a more inventive director could have avoided that without changing one line of the text.

"Balance" consists of a lot of mid-shots and close-ups, which doesn't serve all the actors well. This is particularly true of Kate Reid who plays the alcoholic sister Clare - Reid's performance might work well on stage, but with all her tight closeups during long speeches, she tends to overplay and make the character more gratingly tiresome than she should be.

The other casualty in the cast is Lee Remick, as the volatile, childish, much-married daughter of Hepburn and Scofield. But in her case it's Albee's writing that's the problem. This character is poorly conceived and developed - and no actress I know of has managed to make it palatable.

But Hepburn is in excellent form as the proud matriarch Agnes - perhaps a little more coarse at times than Albee intended, but very effective. Scofield as her passive-aggressive husband Tobias is marvelous until he mars his important penultimate scene with too many actorish vocal tricks.

Joseph Cotton and Betsy Blair as the old friends who come to Agnes and Tobias to escape the terror of collective loneliness are both good individually, but never seem to be a long-married couple.

Those not familiar with this play may be slightly turned off by the presentation and think the piece itself is second-rate. Not so. This film may be best for those who have seen it before or are familiar enough with Albee to take the film with a grain of salt and appreciate what's good about it.

Time has not been kind to the movies made under the umbrella of the well intentioned American Film Theater. The bulk of these works are way off the mark, failing to achieve one of the major goals of the project; the preservation of these important plays on screen. "Butley", "The Homecoming" and "A Delicate Balance" are the ones that came off best.

"A Delicate Balance" Albee in his prime; relentlessly razor sharp. Director Tony Richardson thankfully makes little effort to diminish the inherent staginess and theatricality. He allows his superb cast to milk Albee's barbs to their last drop.

Katherine Hepburn turns in a terrific performance, though those who have a distaste for the Hepburn mannerisms, will not be converted. It's a pleasure to watch both Kate Reid and Paul Scofield, consummate stage performers who fared far less well in the cinema.

While overlong and at times uneven, "A Delicate Balance" is strictly for theater lovers. They will not be disappointed.

Of course, "A Delicate Balance" can not be spoken of without referring to some way to Albee's other masterpiece, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" I think the Pulitzer that "A Delicate Balance" won was supposed to be shared by "Woolf," which was rejected at the time for being too vulgar.

Not to say that "A Delicate Balance" is not a worthy dramatic work. It's an incredibly intelligent script; Albee makes broad statements about love and aging here that might be missed in a first viewing. Yet "Woolf" shows a much smoother weaving of absurdism into matters than "Balance." I was far more convinced by George and Martha's "son" than I was by Harry and Edna's "terror." As far as transitioning from stage to screen, I thought "Woolf" was also much better, but mostly because of Mike Nichols and Haskell Wexler, the cinematographer.

The cinematography here, I felt, was meant to look as much like a stage play as possible. And at times, I liked it. And the acting is so good in this movie (for the most part) that I was still hooked. But the whole time, I was thinking, "What if Mike Nichols directed this?" Alas, because there is no music either (it would have been nice), we're left only with the acting. And what a fine cast. Katherine Hepburn has a difficult role to pull off with Agnes; she is both the "fulcrum" of this family and, admittedly, part of its defeat. And she does it so well. There is this agony in her eyes towards the latter half of the film that you just can't look away from. And I like her mannerisms, the way she toys with words, the voices she does. Sure, sometimes a few words are lost, but it seemed fitting to the character. Agnes makes speeches (Claire and Tobias have a nice dialogue about this after Agnes's first exit), and I think she makes them for herself as much as she does anybody else. And Hepburn makes it all intriguing. She holds her ground as arguably the finest actress of American cinema.

Paul Scofield ultimately disappointed me. Yes, he is bland and ineffectual, and despite the strength in his eyes, the confidence of his body language, he never quite makes a difference. He pulls all of that off well. And he does have one fantastic moment where Agnes says, "I'm not an old woman, am I?" and, perhaps inspired by Claire and her accordion and drunkenness, grabs her chin and playfully says, "Well, you're my old lady!"--the most life we've seen in him the entire film--and Hepburn just rejects him. The way he pulls back and returns to his shell is painfully uncomfortable. But then, there is what Albee calls in the script an "aria" at the end, in the scene he has with Harry. This is Tobias's moment; the moment I waited for the entire film. I felt that Scofield botched it. He sits through almost all of it. He says only one or two of the lines with any real power, the kind of power Tobias should be storing up the entire movie. And at the end, when he cries--much too late, in my opinion--it is pathetic and almost ignored by anyone else in the room. (As the women do enter halfway through.) Anyway, I was really let down by this, and I think it's the biggest mistake this adaptation made.

Meanwhile, Kate Reid practically steals the film when Hepburn isn't looking. She's absolutely fantastic as Claire. What I really loved was how Reid managed to find the sympathy in Claire. Claire was once played by Elaine Stritch--can you imagine? How terrifying. But while Reid manages to reach those levels of darkness that Stritch probably could, she also turns her twisted past into something that makes her sympathetic of others. She knows pain. And by god, if she doesn't sound EXACTLY like Elizabeth Taylor in "Woolf." It's eerie, but for fans of Albee, incredibly comforting in its familiarity. As if, "This is the way to portray an Albee woman." And she also creates a unique chemistry with each character. I loved the relationship between Claire and Tobias, and the way every "act" of this movie (except for the ending) closed with the two of them. They have a bond that Agnes is wary of. Also, notice the strange way she interacts with Harry. It's rather terrific, and never truly highlighted.

Lee Remick was on and off here, but as one of the other reviewers pointed out, it's not a fully-realized role. Imagine: a woman of thirty-six divorced four times already. Where is the sense of failure, the constant rejection, the bitterness? Julia goes from being rather calm, smoking casually and turning her nose up at her mother, to a level of hysteria that would make Tennessee Williams wipe the sweat from his brow, with no clean transition. A confusing role.

Finally, Joseph Cotten and Betsy Blair. Once again, not fully-developed characters. Joseph Cotten played the role as I expected him to, and that's not a bad thing. He's a terrific actor. He doesn't necessarily make any mistakes here. Betsy Blair was on and off for me, and this I felt was her acting. There was a tentativeness in her voice, a resistance to really attacking the role of Edna and making her, honestly, as unwelcome as she was in this house. She is interesting in that she begins to take over for Agnes the longer she stays (there is a shot of Hepburn realizing this, and the look of horror on her face is absolutely brilliant), but I felt that Blair could have gone further with it.

I think "A Delicate Balance" is, as others have noted, a movie for Albee/theatre fans only. It's not cinematic ally engaging, but if you are familiar with the script, you may enjoy seeing an interpretation of it, particularly with Hepburn and Reid.

There is no music in this superb autumn melody. The words in the mouths of the characters are by Edward Albee and that is music enough. Katharine Hepburn plays Agatha, a close relative of the actress if I ever saw one, Paul Scofield is amazing playing the mild volcano of a husband promising eruptions that when they come they are so civilized that, irrigate rather than decimate. Kate Reid, took over from the extraordinary Kim Stanley and as sensational as Miss Reid is I can't help wondering what Stanley would have done with "a" alcoholic like Claire. Lee Remick is the perfect offspring for Hepburn and Scofield. Selfish, tenuous, childish, rich failure. Joseph Cotten and Betsy Blair are the catalysts, they and their fear, their plague coming to contaminate the contaminated. For film and stage gourmets this is an unmissable treat.

The scene is an upper class house in Connecticut. The residents are an old married couple who've had a mostly sexless marriage, an alcoholic sister, a much married daughter and a pair of irksome neighbors who've had a major anxiety attack and move in with their friends. The text is very witty and insightful, but it does not contain a single original idea. It was not original when first presented, but had I seen it in 1973 I would have given it a kinder review. We get wiser and more honest as we get older. The cast is excellent, save for Katharine Hepburn, who can only play herself. I have seen every film she ever made and have come to the conclusion that the secret of her success lay in always having been cast as a character whose personality was very close to hers. Paul Scofield, Joseph Cotten, Kate Reid, Betsy Blair and Lee Remick were true to the spirit of the text and executed their roles very well. Edward Albee's interview is an important part of the DVD. I very much enjoyed his penetrating comments about casting and the choice of Mike Nichols as director.

What a tremendous production! I had avoided seeing it because I thought it might be too brutal. It is certainly merciless in the dialogue between hateful sisters, but there is much more to the film than that. The writing is so very many-splendoured; some of the lines (Katharine Hepburn has the best ones) sound like Shakespeare and Albee even makes a self-referential joke about that after one of Claire's declarations.The cinematography contributes greatly to the liveliness of this stage drama; it is never dull or boring. Mesmerizing performances all around; terrifically complex and deep questioning of life's meaning and the value of love, loyalty, friendship, family. An unqualified 10 for me. The DVD has very interesting contemporary interviews with Albee and the cinematographer, and text from a very helpful review.

After seeing this I tried to figure out why it is considered at all above the ordinary. The characters are: a domineering wife, a docile husband, an alcoholic sister, a daughter working on her fourth divorce, friends in a crisis of anxiety. I suppose this exaggerated mix is interesting to a playwright, but maybe not to an audience, at least to this member of the audience. My interest flagged while spending over two hours watching these unhappy people work through their long-standing problems.

Katharine Hepburn as Agnes, the wife, is, well, Katharine Hepburn. That is good as far as it goes, but her performance here seemed overly rehearsed--every body movement and spoken line struck me as anything but spontaneous. If I had not known that it was Paul Schofield as Tobias, the husband, I would not have found his performance all that remarkable. Kate Reid's performance as Claire, Agnes' alcoholic sister, might play well on stage, but here it struck me as embarrassingly overacted, perhaps exaggerated by the extreme close-ups and silly script elements like the accordion playing. Lee Remick did add some spark as Julia, the much-divorced daughter. Betsy Blair, as Edna, a supposed friend, gave little indication why Agnes and Tobias should find her of value (not sure if this was a result of her performance or the script). Joseph Cotton, as Harry, Edna's husband, turned in the most sincere performance, making me think that he has been under-appreciated as an actor.

I liked the question raised of when love for friends equals, or even trumps, inherent family bonds. This play gives credence to Robert Frost's quote, "Home is the place, when you have to go there, they have to take you in," and submits that this quote is not as nearly a given when applied to friends.

I found some character behaviors unfathomable. Consider Julia's reaction to Harry and Edna's taking over her bedroom. She was insulted by this from the beginning, but about midway through the play she went ballistic and finally flew upstairs in a rage. Later Harry reported that Julia had become hysterical and was blocking a doorway with her arms outstretched. I fully expected that in subsequent scenes Julia would be carted off to the nut house, but no, the next morning she was calm and collected. When Harry and Edna came in to the house uninvited, with the intention of moving in, they appeared to be disconnected from reality. But then overnight they became rational.

Spending time with these people would be something that I would not look forward too, but neither did I want to spend two hours with them in this movie, being confined to a house with nothing to entertain but conversation. On the other hand, I would not want to spend time with George and Martha of, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" either, but I found that movie spellbinding.

Rather than the filming of a stage play, this movie is an adaptation. No matter how director Richardson tries to break up the monotony by mixing close-ups and two shots and using different vantage points for the camera, he cannot overcome the essential staginess, particularly given Albee's stricture that his text was not to be changed. I think that the filming of a stage production of this might have been preferable, since there is no pretense there of a realistic setting. It was a delicate balance for the family in this play to stay together but the movie fails to achieve the delicate balance of turning a stage play into an engrossing movie.

I think only those who appreciate stage productions will truly appreciate this movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed this as a piece of filmed theatre and was never bored. The actors are all very good, and the lines are so rich it is tempting to rewatch it just to hear them. I liked the central premise of the 'fear' that drives the best friends to seek shelter with the upper class New England family on display. Perhaps the daughter's breakdown and recovery - mostly off-screen - don't quite convince, and it could be claustrophobic for some. But the characters' revelations about their own failures to go beyond their own skin and really love anyone else, as well as their fear of approaching old age and death, are all too relevant to be casually dismissed. The surface coldness and very lack of a real dramatic climax is the climax and the tragedy here. All the actors excellent, and Joseph Cotton was particularly good to see in a small but memorable role.

I've seen the great Edward Albee play twice, and I've read it twice. This adaptation is agonizingly slow. The camera seems to be about 6 inches from the actors' faces, and I wanted to escape. I walked out of the theater after 45 minutes, before Lee Remick, Betsy Blair and Joseph Cotten showed up. See it at your own risk.

Director Tony Richardson's presentation of "A Delicate Balance" could be dismissed for it's lack of edginess and it's gentrified (albeit screwed up) characters. It is also what critics would call a "stagy" film. Yet it is redeemed from this dour damnation because of Albee's wonderful way with words, the rich cinematography, and exceptional acting, exceptionally well cast: Katherine Hepburn, Paul Scofield, Lee Remick, Joseph Cotton.

For those looking for a violent film -- not in the form of bullets or explosions -- but of verbal surgical strikes, this is it. Edward Albee's dialogue provides all the female (yes, this would be considered a "woman's movie") protagonists and antagonists (one wonders at times which is which) a laser like aim against their primary targets: other women. And it is done under a guise of "civility"; sometimes, with a smile.

The stand-out among these veteran actors is Kate Reid, who plays Claire, the alcoholic in-law who at times gives the most voice to the story, set amid a dysfunctional Connecticut family. But even her performance can't out weigh the constant barrage of verbal cross-fire from her friends and in-laws. Yet the twist here is that the aggressors are the women, while the men attempt to keep the peace as best they can -- only firing back if attacked by the females.

This isn't a film for everyone; it's definitely the stuff of classic drawing room (psycho) drama. But for those who can appreciate consummate acting armed with deft dialogue, make yourself a nice cup of tea -- spiked with a shot or two of brandy -- and check this out.

This Edward Albee play was directed for film by Tony Richardson and has an all-star cast headed up by Oscar winners, Katherine Hepburn, and Paul Scofield as a late middle-age couple living a "delicate balance" in their up-scale New England home.

The balance is disrupted when their best friends (Betsy Blair and Joseph Cotton) arrive to stay with them because they feel "an indescribable sense of terror" in their OWN house.

After these friends are given their married daughter's room, she (Lee Remick), returns "home" to re-take residence in her old room, announcing that she is on the verge of yet another of her several divorces. Added to this is the fact that Kate Reid (who plays Hepburn's sister) has never left the home in the first place.

The drama plays out as each of these characters try to confront their situations without knowing how to broach it except through drinking, worrying, and trying to talk it through.

A film with that name simply has to deal with a marriage. Most especially if it's from the 1970s and stars Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield. This drama concerns the most fragile relationship we could imagine, a sharp edge of lost youth and icy pain tinging the whole narrative from the very beginning. It's an Edward Albee play and it won a Pulitzer, so the writing is effective, the relationship mechanisms are intricate and run deep, the characters introduced into to the realm of the sad couple are perfectly cast, and alcohol has a strong presence. I found myself fascinated by how the delivery and contents of the conversations made me cringe uncomfortably.

Let's compare it to John Cleese, but let's skip the humor

I suspectthat A Delicate Balance would not quite be recommended by today's media-happy cinema, it would simply be acknowledged as a masterpiece, albeit a depressing one. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the film:

"They say we dream to let the mind go raving mad."

"There's nothing here but rust and bones."

"Such silent sad disgusting love…"

The following dialogue snippet plays the control and submission game well:

Agnes (Hepburn): You are NOT young now, and you do NOT live at home.

Tobias (Scofield): Where do I live?

Hepburn: In the deep dark place…

So, there is quite a bit of malice and strange ticks that come from years of not speaking about what needs attention, and instead dealing with only the perceived pleasant, which eventually becomes unpleasant and slowly rots. In the end, some marriages end up this way- if you decide to rent this movie, be warned that some of the tactics of subliminal knife-throwing are dangerously poignant and we can recognize them, if not in ourselves, but in the couple next door, or that guy that we know, or the newlyweds bickering in the grocery store.

Love is attainable- be assured. There is effort to life, however, and we can only get better if we continue to strive towards enlightenment, and it starts at home and with our close ones.

This film came out in 1973, which is my favorite time of cinema, perhaps because that decade was my first, and I know that I was influenced by all types of signs of the times at the time- music, literature, cinema, news, clothing. There was a stoic way of looking psychotherapy in the eye and not being afraid of getting a little depressed or depressing, embracing the dull and dysfunctional, if you will: like the storyline of the Ice Storm, or Bergman's Cries and Whispers. (As I understand, even Bergman declined to direct the movie version of A Delicate Balance- perhaps he was in a bad marriage himself?) Hollywood of the 1970s was more about truth than the bottom line, making it an excellent time for Albee and his keen sense of the psycho-drama.

Watch it: A Delicate Balance. It will leave you dumbfounded and with a metallic taste in your mouth, as if something unwanted but ever-present entered your soul to remind you about the perils of lost youth and unspoken love.

In Edward Albee's play, Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield star as a married couple whose house is descended upon by Kate's sister, Kate Reid, their neighbors, Joseph Cotten and Betsy Blair, and their daughter, Lee Remick. They must find "a delicate balance" between everyone's problems and temperaments, as they hash out deep seeded resentments. In reality, the audience will need to find "a delicate balance" in order to keep their sanity while the movie is running.

In a nutshell, Kate Hepburn is condescending and biting, Kate Reid is border-line insane and voices her fantasies about everyone in the house being killed, Joe and Betsy are scared and emotional for no apparent reason, Lee is a problem-child and hates her mother, and Paul just endures everyone with very little dialogue. It's a typical example of a boring, wordy, depressive play from a famous playwright that no one will actually enjoy seeing but theatre-goers will feel compelled to sit through lest they miss out on what their friends are talking about.

I couldn't get through this horrendously boring play in any longer than ten-minute increments. If you're in the mood to torture yourself, you can give it a try, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Upper middle class couple Katherine Hepburn and Paul Scofield's carefully calculated / balanced life becomes subject to closer examination when their best friends played by Joseph Cotton and Betsy Blair announce they are fleeing a great, nameless terror and are moving in. Compounded by the arrival of their hysterical daughter (Lee Remick) who has just left her fourth husband and the presence of Hepburn's loud and opinionated alcoholic sister, Kate Reid, the fireworks are going to fly.

There are very few concessions to anything cinematic in this adaptation of Albee's award winning play and the main reason to watch it, is to see such distinguished thesps perform the great playwright's words, which of course no-one would ever really speak, so professionally. It's fascinating to see where it will go, but in truth very little happens, it just explores a dysfunctional family rather eloquently. If the play appeals, you'll probably like it, for most it's to be admired rather than enjoyed.

Scenes from the life of an argumentative middle-class family: a strong-willed wife and a resigning husband are confronted with her alcoholic sister, their continuously marrying daughter, and their friend couple who are afraid of being alone.

Completely uncinematic, downbeat and very static photographed play, from a Pulitzer prize-winning Albee material, with all the psychological soul-killings expected from the author. A pretty valuable record of a theatrical performance: brilliant dialogue and acting are the best it can offer - and it does so.

Unless a play is already filled with action and zaniness, such as in "Arsenic and Old Lace", it's very, very difficult to take a successful play and make a successful movie unless significant changes are made to the script. This is because audiences at plays expect a lot of talking and little action because of the confines of an auditorium...but not with a movie. So, while "A Delicate Balance" was a successful play, the movie version is simply difficult, if not impossible, to watch. This is especially sad because the cast is rather amazing...with Katharine Hepburn, Paul Scofield and Joseph Cotten starring in the film. They try their best but with no action and nothing but talking the story just goes nowhere. I felt bored and couldn't even finish the movie...something I almost never do. But I mention this for two reasons. First, I mention this just to be honest about my viewing experience. Second, you, too, may find yourself watching the movie and baling as well. A tough film to enjoy due to its endless talk and staginess.

By the way, I do think this was essentially a filmed play. A couple times Scofield and Hepburn flubbed lines...and yet they weren't edited out of the movie.

In Connecticut, Agnes and Tobias (Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield) are an upper-class married couple whose relationship has been uneasy for many years, since at least the time their son died; but they've managed to find a certain comfortable pattern of uneasiness. Agnes's sister, Claire (Kate Reid), lives with them and insists that her perpetual drinking is not alcoholism but willfulness. Their daughter, Julia (Lee Remick), poised to have her fourth divorce, has come back home. Unexpectedly, her room has been taken over by Harry and Edna (Joseph Cotten and Betsy Blair), best friends of Tobias and Agnes. Seized by a nameless terror that propelled them out of their own house, Harry and Edna have decided to stay.

The slightly elliptical nature of this material is more annoying than fascinating, but there's still plenty of interest and plenty of opportunity for a team of terrific actors to do their thing. Yet another great Katharine Hepburn performance preserved on film is yet another reason for us to be grateful, but Paul Scofield and Kate Reid have left fewer of their performances for posterity; and so it's nice we have this film, which gives each a fully realized character to play.

"A Delicate Balance" is a play by Edward Albee, produced by the American Film Theatre with no alterations and no foolish attempts to open it up. Alfred Hitchcock proved several times that a limited space can be an asset to a movie; and while the film making here is not at his level, Tony Richardson does a nice job at directing our eye and staying out of the play's way.