The Sterile Cuckoo Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

The Sterile Cuckoo Blu-ray Movie Review

Cuckoo? Definitely. Sterile? Maybe not so much.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 28, 2012

There are some performers who are so intimately associated with one role that their entire careers seem to be summed up by that one characterization. Such is probably the case for Liza Minnelli, at least for those who only know her from her film work. Despite at least a duo (some would argue a trio) of really interesting performances early in her career, Liza will forever “be” Sally Bowles of Cabaret fame to most casual observers. Bob Fosse’s rather radical reinterpretation of the original Broadway version of the Kander and Ebb tuner put Minnelli on the public consciousness map in a way few actresses have ever experienced, and once she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for that role, it seemed like she was poised to become a major box office sensation, much as her mother Judy Garland was decades earlier. That didn’t happen for any number of reasons, including perhaps Minnelli’s less than traditionally glamorous appearance (something which her mother rather ironically had worried about with regard to herself back in the thirties and forties, when she was on the Metro lot with such sirens as Lana Turner), her quirky performing style and some dubious choices in follow up material. But Minnelli’s pre-Cabaret films are all quite unique and appealing in their own way. All three of the films show Minnelli at her vulnerable, doe eyed best. In Charlie Bubbles, a 1967 opus co-starring (and directed by) Albert Finney and written by Shelagh Delaney (A Taste of Honey), Minnelli plays an innocent young secretary swept off her feet by a bored ultra-famous writer. In Otto Preminger’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, Minnelli portrays the title character, a valiant young woman who has been horribly scarred in a domestic violence attack and who ends up cohabitating with two other outcasts from society. Sandwiched between these two films came The Sterile Cuckoo, a sweet if occasionally annoying affair positing Minnelli as idiosyncratic Pookie Adams, a young teenager leaving home for her first year in college. As she waits for the bus which will whisk her away from her small town which Pookie insists is full of “weirdos”, she meets uptight young biology student Jerry Payne (Wendell Burton) and immediately latches on to the hapless boy as her lifeline away from home. The film continues to explore their developing relationship in a sort of bittersweet and melancholic way, so redolent of late sixties and early seventies character based films.

Alan J. Pakula had a fascinating career in Hollywood as both a producer and a director. His long association with Robert Mulligan resulted in such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird and perhaps slightly lesser if still very well regarded films like Up the Down Staircase and Inside Daisy Clover (in all three of these films, Pakula produced and Mulligan directed). While Pakula’s later directing work is defined by such classics (or near classics) as Sophie’s Choice and All the President's Men, some of his earliest pieces as helmsman reveal a quieter, gentler ethos, and The Sterile Cuckoo, the first film in fact that Pakula both produced and directed is perhaps the best example of this more introspective style. There’s a wistful quality running through this film that is perfectly evoked by Fred Karlin’s haunting recorder-filled score, which includes the lovely Oscar nominated “Come Saturday Morning”, featuring The Sandpipers with their trademark unison vocalizing. (That year’s Oscar race for Best Song was truly amazing, one of the last years where at least four of the five nominees achieved standard status in the intervening years since their nominations: “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” the eventual winner, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” from The Happy Ending; “Jean” from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; “Come Saturday Morning” from this film; and “True Grit”, the one song that hasn't gone on to much of a post-awards shelf life, from the John Wayne version of that outing.)

Minnelli is the unabashed highlight of this film, and she in fact received her only other Academy Award nomination (aside from Cabaret for this film. (She gave a very funny interview several years later which I remember reading. She had evidently been injured in some sort of accident—I want to say it was a motorcycle crash, but I may be misremembering—and was evidently stoned out of her mind on pain killers—this is according to her, mind you—at the Oscar ceremony and apparently gave Maggie Smith a standing ovation when she won for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.) Her Pookie is a sort of manic depressive character, one who verges on attention deficit disorder. Pookie can’t stop talking, she’s about as “in your face” as you can get, but there’s also an undeniable sweetness and fragility about her which Minnelli conveys with near pitch perfection.

In what is essentially a three character drama, Wendell Burton is superb as Jerry (despite which his big screen career never really took off after this debut performance). He does very well with Jerry’s incipient embarrassment at having to deal with Pookie, an embarrassment that slowly changes at least to lust if not outright love. Also very good is Tim McIntire as Jerry’s kind of typical frat boy loutish roommate.

The Sterile Cuckoo is an unapologetically “small” film, one built out of character beats instead of any huge plot machinations (a pregnancy scare midway through aside). It’s the kind of film that emerged from the major studios with the influx of the independent spirit that began making itself a marketable commodity as the sixties gave way to the seventies. That said, the characters here are resolutely old fashioned, hardly the student radicals that were then holding campuses hostage in sit-ins and similar sociopolitical tantrums. However, there’s a simplicity to this film that is quite refreshing, an honesty of emotion that doesn’t resort to histrionics (at least for the most part) but instead tugs gently at the heartstrings as it explores two awkward teens attempting to find their footing in an increasingly complex adult world, ultimately coming to the conclusion that need doesn't necessarily translate into true love. It’s a life journey most of us have traversed ourselves, and The Sterile Cuckoo is like leafing through a scrapbook of perhaps slightly unsettling and uncomfortable memories.

The Sterile Cuckoo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Sterile Cuckoo is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The elements here are in generally good shape, although there are a fair number of minor issues on display, including some scratches, flecks and even the random hair in the gate from time to time. The film has a rather soft appearance, which my hunch is mimics the original theatrical exhibition. Colors seems to have perhaps just slightly faded, which is most noticeable in some of the location outdoor footage, where greens don't really pop extremely well. All of that said, close ups still offer very good fine object detail, contrast is generally quite strong and clarity is well above average.

The Sterile Cuckoo Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Sterile Cuckoo lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track nicely recreates the fairly unambitious sound design of the film. The best part of this soundtrack from a purely sonic standpoint is the charming Fred Karlin score (which I must state some find incredibly syrupy). Dialogue is very cleanly and clearly presented, and all frequency ranges are reproduced with very good fidelity. This is a pretty quiet little film, with only a few noisier moments, so dynamic range is somewhat limited, but there is no major damage of any kind to report on this appealing lossless track.

The Sterile Cuckoo Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray disc.

The Sterile Cuckoo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Sterile Cuckoo is a very sweet, mild mannered film that offers Minnelli in one of her best early performances (which is not to say that some aren't going to find her neurotic characterization extremely annoying). The two guys in the film are also very, very good and the entire film, was perhaps "inconsequential" in terms of big dramatic arcs, makes some nicely nuanced points about coming to terms with growing up and taking off one's rose colored glasses, especially about romance. Pakula directs Alvin Sargent's heartfelt script pretty much flawlessly, though the film does delve into late sixties tropes of soft focus musical interludes and other indulgences at times. Still, this is a generally extremely charming film which looks good and sounds great on Blu-ray. Recommended.