Eclipse Series 24: THE ACTUALITY DRAMAS OF ALLAN KING: KING, Allan: A Married Couple (1969)

KING, Allan (Canada)
A Married Couple [1969]
Eclipse Series 24
DVD

Billy and Antoinette Edwards let it all hang out for Allan King and his crew in this jaw-dropping examination of a marriage in trouble, which "makes John Cassavetes's Faces look like early Doris Day" (Time). Intense and hectic, frightening and funny, A Married Couple is ultimately a film about the eternal power struggle in romantic relationships, as well as a document of the moment when once entrenched gender roles began to crumble.

96 minutes

Color

Monaural

1:33:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2010

Director

Allan King was 39 when he directed A Married Couple.

Other King films in the Collection:

Eclipse Series 24: Warrrendale (1967)
Eclipse Series 24: Come On Children (1972)
Eclipse Series 24: Dying At Grace (2003)
Eclipse Series 24: Memory For Max, Claire, Ida And Company (2005)

The Film

“[This examination of.a marriage in trouble] makes John Cassavete’s Faces [(1968) {Spine #252}] look like early Doris Day” — Time Magazine

With the proceeds from the Cannes success (and Jean Renoir’s praise) of Warrendale, King had the means to film this actuality drama in color, with a full crew, including two composers!

In the early scenes, the couple (Billy and Antoinette Edwards) do appear to be playing to the camera. She wants a harpsichord, and the adamant husband’s refusal seems calm enough.

They dance (to A Day in the Life! — beautifully filmed through reflective glass), they flirt self-consciously before the cameras, they attend to their toddler son, Bogart.

Antoinette — her thick New York accent betrays her origins — seems to aspire to become the princess-queen of her tragic namesake. Having not procured the harpsichord, she is later shown shopping for a piano.

[It is too bad King didn’t delve into her affinity for music — in an intense later scene, as the marriage begins to dissolve — she lustily cries into her husband’s arms at a party where an aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute is playing. Perhaps she had had more than just one or two piano lessons.]

Reality as raw material — with no real editorial involvement — is interesting enough. But just a few years later, Bergman would show a disintegrating marriage played by actual actors (the magnificent Scenes from a Marriage (1973) {Spine #0000A/#229}, something several planes above King’s docu- — sorry, actuality drama.

Michael Koresky’s liner notes (the only supplementary material on this Eclipse release) tell us that the couple had another child, then divorced in 1972.

86

By Director
By Spine #