Jim Hutton has married young, beautiful, voluptuous Jane Fonda, but they don't get along, so at Christmas, they visit "war buddy" Tony Franciosa, who is also not getting along with his wife, Lois Nettleton. Jim confesses that he likes "little girls" because you don't have to "prove anything" and that what he really wants is to run off with Tony, so they can start a cattle ranch and "live like men." The homosexual subtext is bursting at the seams and the rank misogyny suggests that any man who marries without a chair and a whip is a fool. Williams always exhibited a strong talent for the tragic (see "The Fugitive KInd") but this is a comedy that is more uncomfortable than funny, in part because in the 1950s, it was a challenge to be truthful, a challenge unmet here. At least, Tom Williams knew what game he was playing. Of the play, he wrote: "The theatre has made its greatest artistic advance through the unlocking and lighting up and ventilation of the closets, basements and attics of human behavior and experience." If this movie is made again, I hope it is frank about the men and refrains from mocking and patronizing the women. Kudos to the actors, who try valiantly to foist this trash on an unsuspecting audience.
Review of Period of Adjustment
