Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Pumpkin Eater Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson January 17, 2020

The Pumpkin Eater (1964) is being released as part of Shout Select's eight-disc box set, The Anne Bancroft Collection.

It was with some sorrow after I watched his great film The Pumpkin Eater that I learned Jack Clayton had directed only eight films, beginning with the Oscar-nominated short, The Bespoke Overcoat (1955). Clayton was a member of the British New Wave along with his filmmaking colleagues Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and John Schlesinger. Clayton wasn't as prolific as his contemporaries but with the ghost story The Innocents (1961) and this picture, he demonstrated his range in showing different class sects of British society aside from the realist-based "kitchen sink dramas," which often portrayed the plights of young working-class rebels.

Anne Bancroft read Penelope Mortimer's autobiographical 1962 novel The Pumpkin Eater and envisioned herself on screen as Mortimer's alter-ego, whose unnamed in the book. Bancroft got in touch with British producer James Woolf and through him lobbied hard to Jack Clayton for the main lead. Bancroft and Clayton hadn't yet met but he had seen her Oscar-winning performance as Helen Keller's teacher in The Miracle Worker (1962). Even that didn't convince Clayton that she was right for the role of a British divorcee so Bancroft hired London voice coach Cecily Berry to giver her dialect lessons. Adolph J. Stern of the Courier (PA) Post reported that Bancroft arrived in London five weeks before filming began to study the “hot potato” English accent. Berry apparently taught many Americans how to speak British English and after five weeks, she passed Bancroft with "full honors." The Pumpkin Eater has a rather melancholic story about a woman dealing with depression and nothing gave Bancroft a bigger boost than having her new husband, Mel Brooks, make a Transatlantic flight to see her at Shepperton Studios. At a fall 1964 luncheon with the Daily (NY) News columnist Kate Cameron, Bancroft confided that Brooks's visit "raised my spirits, satisfied my feminine ego and made the separation and hard work en­durable.”

E. M. Forster wrote the epigraph "Only connect!" in his 1910 novel Howards End. The direct opposite occurs between Jo (Anne Bancroft), her latest husband Jake Armitage (Peter Finch), and other characters in The Pumpkin Eater. The movie is centrally about disconnect at the level of society, family, and basic human relationships. Jo spends much or her time staring out the window, in the mirror, or in space with a seemingly blank stare. Why does she appear so depressed and what is she really thinking in her interior? Her psychiatrist (Eric Porter) reasons that Jo's happiness is predicated on the number of children she can bear and she's already had six or seven children with her first two or three husbands. (The movie isn't definitive if Jake is her third or fourth spouse.) Jo seems to want to fullfill her role as the traditional matriarch and mother but her prior marriages and relationships have run their course. She's now on to Jake but he's turning into a fledgling Hollywood screenwriter and wants to write and travel to film shoots. Jo has depression and hysteria. There's a void in her life with Jake and the kids. He's a good stepfather to them but as a couple, they don't seem to have enough in common and want to live their own lives. Rumors of infidelity arise when Jake's slimy acquaintance Conway (James Mason) informs Jo that her beau has been sleeping with various women, including his own wife. Jake is like an unreliable narrator because he both confirms and denies the same allegations. Jo and Jake have several different moments of disconnect (e.g., they frequently don't look at each other while conversing). A later scene shows Jo arriving impromptu at a cemetery and Jake pretends that she's not there. Similar alienation happens when Conway approaches Jake in a bar and the latter would rather pour beer over the former's foot than engage in meaningful conversation.

The Pumpkin Eater received many outstanding reviews during its theatrical release but it also received several mixed and confused critiques. The Ottawa Citizen's Gordon Stoneham lauded it: "Every thing about it is smart and glossy and calculated, with smooth photography, shrewd editing and consider­able technical resourcefulness." Clayton and his editor James Clark employ a slow and off-paced flash-back/flash-forward structure that I think threw audiences and critics off. Helen W. Younge of the Arizona Daily Star complained that "[Clayton's] jumpy cutting is distracting and often confusing." The Star (MN) Tribune's Will Jones commented that Clayton's tech­nique "has outpaced the viewer’s ability to absorb it." He wasn't referring specifically to the editing but was preparing himself for a more standard Hollywood melodrama with Joan Crawford. Clayton and James Clark ingeniously employ long dissolves, match-on actions, and abrupt cutaways to demarcate the film's time and space.

Bancroft is wonderfully understated and subtle in what might be the crowning achievement of her career on screen. Finch deftly balances a duplicitous role which, on one hand, renders him as a good stepfather to Jo's kids but an adulterous narcissist on the other. James Mason nearly steals the show as the Armitages' gossipy and unrefined friend.

*Note: the novel and film's title is derived from the old nursery rhyme, "Peter, Peter pumpkin eater, Had a wife but couldn't keep her, Put her in a pumpkin shell..."

The Pumpkin Eater Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Pumpkin Eater makes its US debut on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout Select on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. The four-time BAFTA winner premiered on high-def in 2017 in the UK as a Powerhouse Films Limited Edition. The Indicator Series title derives from a Sony HD master that I can't confirm is a 2K or 4K scan (likely the former). As you'll see from the screen captures below, the Powerhouse appears in the film's native 1.85:1 ratio while the Shout has been reformatted to the 16x9-friendly 1.78:1. It hasn't been cropped or zoomed in, however. I don't know why Shout couldn't have just displayed it in 1.85:1. There's some dirt but this print looks very clear and textured. Some grain is scattered in spots but there are no image stability problems. Detail is excellent. Authoring and compression are slightly in favor of the Shout, which has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 36000 kbps.

Screenshot #s 1-15, 17, 19, 21, 23, & 25 = Shout Select 2019 BD-50
Screenshot #s 16, 18, 20, 22, & 24 = Powerhouse Films 2017 BD-50

The Pumpkin Eater Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout supplies the original monaural sound track, which is rendered here as a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1566 kbps, 24-bit). Powerhouse delivers an LPCM Audio Single Mono mix (1152 kbps, 24-bit). I've listened to both tracks and prefer Shout's in terms of pitch and fidelity. There is no noticeable hiss, pops, crackles, or dropouts on either mix. Dialogue delivered by the mostly British cast is pretty crisp.

Composer Georges Delerue enjoyed an amiable collaboration with director Jack Clayton on multiple films. His light jazz score here has warm and romantic undertones. Its comprised mainly of flute, other woodwinds, a harpsichord, and strings. Delerue captures Jo's morose state of mind during her walk through Harrods, underscoring her mood with a sad-sounding flute. The score is only available as a compilation album for music Delerue scored for Clayton's movies (long OOP) and I hope it's re-released or appears in an expanded edition.

The Shout and Powerhouse each come with optional English SDH and I believe each label did its own subtitling track.

The Pumpkin Eater Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Powerhouse's still in-print LE has a "selected scenes" commentary (over fifty minutes from the movie) with author and film historian Neil Sinyard, a four-minute featurette with camera operator Brian West, a trailer, image galleries, and a exclusive 40-page booklet. Shout licensed three interviews that also appear on the UK disc:

• Jeremy Mortimer on Penelope Mortimer (32:01, 1080p) - a wonderful interview with the son of novelist Penelope Mortimer. Jeremy gives an oral biography (in over a half hour) of his mum that's accompanied by vintage photos. In English, not subtitled.

• Dinah and Fergus (12:04, 1080p) - Frances White played Anne Bancroft's oldest daughter while Fergus McClelland portrayed her oldest son. In these fairly recent interviews, the actors are interviewed separately. They recall filming with the principals and Jack Clayton, who was infamous for requesting additional re-takes. In English, not subtitled.

The Pumpkin Eater Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Pumpkin Eater is an oddball masterpiece about marriage, child-bearing, philandering, and much more. Film commentators often compare it with the alienated social worlds adult females inhabit in Antonioni's oeuvre but I'm also reminded of the cinematic milieus and characters from the films of Resnais, Bergman, and Dreyer. I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Harold Pinter's witty and snappy script along with Oswald Morris's widescreen photography, which has very precise framings and multiplane compositions. Technical specs on this Shout Select edition are very good. There are some small differences between the transfer and audio presentation compared to Powerhouse's but the latter has more bonus materials. You should get the Bancroft box set or the UK package. The movie comes HUGELY RECOMMENDED. One of the best British films of the 1960s.