Paradise Lost (1974) (TV)

User Rating:

8.5/10   

Director:

Glenn Jordan

Writer:

Clifford Odets (play)

Release Date:

6 March 1974 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot Keywords:

Filmed Play | 1930s | Based On Play

Cast

George Bartenieff
MacIntyre Dixon
Jay Garner	...	May
Cliff Gorman	...	Kewpie
Howard Green
Rose Gregorio
John Grima	...	Rogo
Sam Groom	...	Ben
Fred Gwynne	...	Pike
David Hurst	...	Schnable
Dorrie Kavanaugh	...	Pearl
Mike Kellin	...	Sam
Ric Mancini
Biff McGuire	...	Foley
Bernadette Peters	...	Libby
Sam Schacht	...	Julie
James Sloyan
Jo Van Fleet	...	Clara
George Voskovec	...	Gus
Eli Wallach	...	Leo
Marian Winters	...	Bertha

Runtime:

160 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

Superb drama by Odets deals with timeless issues.

I can't commend this highly enough. I saw it on the local Public Television station here in Chicago when it was first broadcast in the early 1970s, and it made a tremendous impact on me. This play, and the very similar "Awake and Sing," are depression era dramas written by Clifford Odets and originally produced for the stage in the mid 1930s, when they were the cutting edge of contemporary theatre and dealt with contemporary issues. The new DVDs contain television productions done with top-notch casts in the early 1970s. I found them unforgettable, and am delighted to be able to savor them again after 30-plus years. They're just as good as I remember.

They tell their stories from a rather specific perspective, i.e., that of educated middle- or upper-middle class Jewish families living in New York, and falling on hard times during the depression. These people have pretensions of gentility and high culture, but quickly-encroaching poverty is grinding at that façade and leaving them without much more than primal survival instincts. The main themes they deal with, as I read it, are familial love (and how it sometimes mutates into betrayal or hate under pressure of poverty), what we owe to our fellow humans and vise versa, grace or the lack of it under extreme pressure, and the wisdom or folly of optimism for the future. I expect there are themes, subtleties, and symbolisms that I overlook, but they're extremely rich brews of ideas that can keep you pondering long after having seen them. What they are most emphatically NOT is light entertainment. Dark and somewhat depressing, they explore how severe economic pressures degrade the quality of life, and poison relationships with our families, friends, co-workers, neighbors, community and government. In this, they are not the least bit dated, and show that while individual issues may vary with time, human nature doesn't.

All of the above may make Odets' plays sound a bit ponderous or academic, but they're really gripping dramas, done here by superb players. Eli Wallach's impassioned, desperately optimistic speech at the end of "Paradise Lost" always gets me a bit teary-eyed.

The fact that there are no other comments here thus far suggests that people are passing these up. It's really great stuff. Don't miss it.