| Interiors | |
| Director: | Woody Allen |
| Producer: | Charles H. Joffe |
| Cinematography: | Gordon Willis |
| Editing: | Ralph Rosenblum |
| Studio: | Jack Rollins–Charles H. Joffe Productions |
| Distributor: | United Artists |
| Runtime: | 92 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $3.1 million[1] |
| Gross: | $10.4 million |
Interiors is a 1978 American drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. It stars Kristin Griffith, Mary Beth Hurt, Richard Jordan, Diane Keaton, E. G. Marshall, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton, and Sam Waterston.
Allen's first full-fledged film in the drama genre, it was met with acclaim from critics. It received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (both for Allen), Best Actress (Page), and Best Supporting Actress (Stapleton). Page also won the BAFTA Film Award for Best Supporting Actress.[2]
Arthur, a corporate attorney, and Eve, an interior decorator, are the parents of three adult daughters. Renata, the eldest daughter, is a poet whose husband Frederick, a struggling writer, feels eclipsed by her success. Flyn, the youngest daughter, is an actress who is away most of the time filming; the low quality of her films is an object of ridicule behind her back. The middle daughter, Joey, who is in a relationship with Mike, cannot settle on a career, and resents her mother for favoring Renata, while Renata resents their father's concern over Joey's lack of direction.
One morning, Arthur unexpectedly announces that he wants a separation from his wife and would like to live alone. Eve, who is clinically depressed, attempts suicide in her new Manhattan apartment. The shock of these two events causes a rift among the sisters. Arthur returns from a trip to Greece with Pearl, a high-spirited and more "normal" woman, whom he intends to marry. His daughters are disturbed that Arthur would disregard Eve's suicide attempt and find another woman, to whom Joey refers as a "vulgarian".
Arthur and Pearl marry at the family's Long Island beach house, with Renata, Joey, and Flyn in attendance. Later in the evening, Joey lashes out at Pearl when Pearl accidentally breaks one of Eve's vases. In the middle of the night, Frederick drunkenly attempts to rape Flyn in the garage, but she manages to escape. Meanwhile, Joey finds Eve in the house, and sadly explains how much she has given up for her mother, and how disdainfully she is treated. Eve walks out onto the beach and into the surf. Joey unsuccessfully attempts to save Eve, but nearly drowns in the process. Mike rescues Joey, pulling her to shore, so that Pearl resuscitates the drowned victim by tilting Joey's head back, clearing the airway, and pinching the nose, to administer rescue breaths into her lungs via mouth-to-mouth.
The family attends Eve's funeral, each placing a single white rose, Eve's favorite flower and a symbol of hope to her, on Eve's wooden coffin, after which the three sisters look out at the sea from their former family beach house and comment on the peacefulness of the sea.
Interiors grossed $10.4 million in the United States and Canada.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 78% based 18 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10.[3] weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[4]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "beautiful" and complimented Gordon Willis on his "use of cool colors that suggest civilization's precarious control of natural forces", but noted:[5]
Richard Schickel of Time wrote that the film's "desperate sobriety ... robs it of energy and passion"; Allen's "style is Bergmanesque, but his material is Mankiewiczian, and the discontinuity is fatal. Doubtless this was a necessary movie for Allen, but it is both unnecessary and a minor embarrassment for his well-wishers."[6]
Roger Ebert gave the film four stars and praised it highly, writing, "Here we have a Woody Allen film, and we're talking about O'Neill and Bergman and traditions and influences? Yes, and correctly. Allen, whose comedies have been among the cheerful tonics of recent years, is astonishingly assured in his first drama."[7]
Gene Siskel awarded three stars out of four and wrote:
Charles Champlin called the film "somber, intense and stunning", concluding, "Like Cries and Whispers, Allen's Interiors is, for all the somberness of the material, in the end an affirmation of life and a transcendent piece of art. The film lovers will love it if joke-seekers do not.[8]
Penelope Gilliatt of The New Yorker wrote: "This droll piece of work is [Allen's] most majestic so far. The theme its characters express is very Chekhovian. It is pinned to the idea that the hardest, and most admirable thing to do is to act properly through a whole life."[9]
James Monaco, in his 1979 book American Film Now, described Interiors as "the most pretentious film by a major American filmmaker in the last thirty years" alongside Mickey One (1965).[10]
In 2016, Interiors was listed as Allen's 11th best film in an article by The Daily Telegraph critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey, who wrote that "the emotional effort being expended is cumulatively hard to shrug off" and praised Stapleton's performance.[11]
Allen's own fears about the film's reception are recounted in a 1991 biography of Allen by Eric Lax, where he quotes Ralph Rosenblum, the film's editor:[12]
Later, while watching the film with an acquaintance, Allen reportedly said, "It's always been my fear. I think I'm writing Long Day's Journey into Night and it turns into Edge of Night."
Looking back on the film in 1982, Allen said:
The plot and characters of Interiors are alluded to in the Death Cab for Cutie song "Death of an Interior Decorator", taken from the 2003 album Transatlanticism.[14]