Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973)

“I thought I was having a heart attack. ” – Mrs. Pritchard

Number of Times Seen – 1 (9 May 2019)

Brief Synopsis – A middle aged women suffers a mid life crisis as things begin to fall apart in her life and marriage.

My Take on it – This is another film that I had never heard of before coming across it while trying to watch all films featuring Oscar nominated performances in them.

This film has an interesting concept that just doesn’t work at all.

The story is presented in a really boring way that makes it quite difficult to care about any of the characters or anything that they do because it is paced so slowly.

The characters aren’t very sympathetic and that hurts this film so much along the way since it’s quite important to care about characters going through the things that these characters face.

Both Joanne Woodward and Sylvia Sidney were nominated for Oscars for their performances here as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Respectively.

Of the characters in the movie, the most sympathetic is played by Martin Balsam who plays Woodward’s husband.

He has a few scenes that show how reflecting on his days fighting during World War II still affect him even after 30 years.

The rest of the film is quite slow moving and boring and is quite uninteresting throughout.

The various story lines where they discuss their grown up children feels incomplete which also leaves things a bit too open ended which also is quite strange.

Bottom Line – Interesting idea that just doesn’t work at all. The story is presented in a pretty boring fashion and it’s so hard to care about any of the characters as the story moves along.  None of them are shown as being sympathetic and that hurts things a lot here. Woodward was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress and Sidney was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.  The most sympathetic character is played by Balsam as Woodward’s husband who has a few very impressive scenes dealing with his life during the war 3 decades earlier, but the rest is much too slow and uninteresting.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Features Sylvia Sidney’s only Oscar nominated performance. (From IMDB)

Rating – Razzie Worthy (4/10)

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