kijii 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.

bkoganbing 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.

mnfried 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.

graham clarke 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.