If "The Pumpkin Eater" has a fault it is that it's so glacial, so cocooned in its world of upper-middle class ennui it may leave you feeling a little drained. Otherwise, this is quite close to perfection. Adapted, superbly and to the extent that he makes it his own, from Penelope Mortimer's novel, by Harold Pinter it tells the story of Jo, (Anne Bancroft),a thrice married mother of several children, (by all three husbands),whose life has started to spectacularly unravel. Jo seems to be the kind of woman who can't stop having children but who doesn't seem cut out for motherhood. Inflicting her existing brood on Jake, (Peter Finch),husband No. 3, does little for their marriage. Jake is an incorrigible philanderer or maybe he just can't stand being at home with a pack of screaming, spoiled brats. Then again he's 'a screen-writer' so his profession offers both glamour and the opportunity for multiple infidelities. Things come to a head when Jo has a mental breakdown 'in Harrods of all places' to quote Jake.

Being Pinter, the film is both elliptical and chilly. It's magnificently made, (the director is Jack Clayton),but you struggle to feel anything for Jo or Jake. It's a world that Pinter and company know well but the rest of us may well feel we are being kept at a distance. But don't let that put you off; if you want your mind engaged at the expense of your emotions you will have a high old time. This is classy, intelligent stuff.

It is superbly cast and played. Some performances don't amount to more than cameos, (Cedric Hardwicke and Alan Webb as Jo and Jake's fathers, Maggie Smith smilingly stealing Jo's husband right from under her nose and best of all, Yootha Joyce as the vindictive and unstable woman in the hairdressers). At the centre there is Bancroft and Finch as the couple struggling through their marriage and they are both marvelous. Finch, in particular, gives Jake an air of likability that may be absent from the script and Bancroft gets Jo's vulnerability spot on. As the husband of Jake's most recent conquest, James Mason is magnificently venomous and his scenes with Bancroft at the zoo and his final scene with Finch, ('You made me wet'),are master-classes in the art of acting.

The movie came out in 1964 and quickly disappeared. Watching it recently with a friend he described it as 'a miserable film' and while I think it a superb film, a near-masterpiece, I know exactly what he means. It is a film distinctly lacking in 'nice' characters and it generates very little warmth. Audiences who, back in the sixties might have admired the film, were unlikely to feel anything towards it and consequently it is seldom revived. A pity because, cold as it is, it is also one of the finest films of its decade.

While she had been around on stage and screen for well over a decade, the gorgeous Anne Bancroft hadn't made much of an impression, that is until she won the Oscar for her intense performance in "The Miracle Worker". Becoming known for her strong, determined women, she rarely played anyone fragile. However, in this British art house film, she played a delicate flower who turns into a Venus flytrap when pushed to the edge.

Newly married to the alternately tender and brutal Peter Finch, she's unaware at first of his resentment of her previous marriages and the children from those relationships. She discovers through very subtle hints how much he secretly both adores her and hates her, that his infidelities have been pretty much right under her nose, and that they have been with women she felt she considered friends. In short, he is the one with the serious psychiatric issues, and like Charles Boyer to Ingrid Bergman, he has been gaslighting their entire relationship.

This is one of those complicated adult dramas that explores the best and worst of adult relationships, showing humanity at its most vile. A key early scene has Bancroft meeting the troubled Maggie Smith who bolts in and out of her life at a huge speed, leaving behind chaos as details come forward about what was going on between Smith and Finch. Then there's a cameo by Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Bancroft's imperious father, reminding me of the father and daughter relationship in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street".

A scene with Bancroft having a breakdown while shopping and another one with Bancroft in a hair dressers shop (being badgered by an obvious troubled man hating customer) are key in showing Bancroft's desperation and fragile nature. James Mason comes on as an associate of Finch's in a party scene, showing more issues behind the marriage, especially when he makes a very strange call to Bancroft while she's visited by a stranger claiming to be the new king kg Israel. Alternately strange and troubling, this is often perplexing, but as a Bergman themed drama of the complex human condition, it will leave the viewer thinking. It's also ironic how much Bancroft resembles Joan Crawford at times, considering that just the year before, Crawford accepted Bancroft's Oscar for her and that Bancroft was offered the leading role in "Mommie Dearest".

Jack Clayton directed this adaptation of Penelope Mortimer's novel (the screenplay written by no less a literary figurehead than Harold Pinter!),and it's apparent right from the gauzy, solemn opening that you're in for a double-dose of heavy dramatic cinema. Anne Bancroft plays a thrice-married woman who shuts down emotionally after discovering husband number three has been unfaithful. Clayton and cinematographer Oswald Morris give this marital attack a formidable black-and-white look, with nimble (though occasionally exasperating) editing taking the action back and forth from the present to the past. The lofty picture is rather highfalutin, with stony characters one must examine hard in order to grasp completely. Although overrated by most professional critics, the film was certainly ahead of its time, setting the stage for marital blow-outs like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Shoot the Moon". However, even with fine actors in the cast, it's awfully dreary and unreachable. ** from ****