Review of A Doll's House

Director Joseph Losey and screenwriter David Mercer's adaptation of Ibsen's symbolism-heavy play was an independent co-production between the UK and France. "A Doll's House" premiered in the US at the New York Film Festival in October 1973, but a month later was already making its debut on American television. One can see right away why no one was duly impressed: squarely-filmed on-location in Roros, Norway, it's a pasty-looking enterprise, enervating and unevenly performed. The story of marriage, morals and money matters in 1890s Norway is an interesting one, but here the central character doesn't come off. As Nora, the bank manager's wife who secretly owes money to another man, Jane Fonda is fluttery-dull and one-dimensional (this was during her "box office poison" years following her protest of the Vietnam War, and Fonda just phones it in). Feminists of the time gravitated towards Nora because of her third-act decision to leave her husband and children in order to find herself; however, when Fonda gives her big speech at the end, she doesn't sound assured, coming off instead as muddled and wifey-foolish. Stage actresses for decades have longed for a part like Nora, but Fonda does nothing special with her. In support, dying doctor Trevor Howard seems chilled by the location's climate (he's always bundled up and walking woodenly), while David Warner is way over-the-top as Nora's spouse (he bellows, capitulates, and then falls into a condescending whisper). Delphine Seyrig upstages all three of the "star names" playing Nora's widowed girlfriend (consequently, the bank manager's put-down of her in private sounds particularly ugly). The film is a personal disaster for Losey, who tries disguising the material's stage origins by giving us intermittent shots of the snowy streets and bustling crowds, yet the whole thing looks tatty and rings false. Losey was beaten to the punch, anyway, by a competing British production starring Claire Bloom, which opened four months prior, garnering positive reviews. *1/2 from ****