That Cold Day in the Park (1969)

Desperate for companionship, a lonely spinster invites a young homeless boy up to her apartment and then goes to drastic measures to make him stay. Following her Oscar-winning turn in Mike Nichols' ground-breaking drama "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?", this is the gifted Sandy Dennis' finest hour on screen. As the demented heroine, Dennis makes you feel your way into her character's dark and ultimately disturbing world. It's a blissful, strikingly effective performance, and watching it one might wonder why Dennis didn't win a second Oscar. The film is also well-directed by a supremely talented fellow by the name of Robert Altman whom you may know as the creator of such hit films as "MASH" and "NASHVILLE". Unfortunately, "THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK" bit the dust at the box-office. Like so many of Altman's films(3 Women, in particular), the movie requires a great deal of patience to fully understand its meanings, but those who sit it out will find it to be a rich, rewarding film.

In this old film by Robert Altman, we discover how solitude for a young woman is a plague on her way to happiness and satisfaction. She comes to the point where she cannot even ask anyone for the contact she desires. She lives in a completely artificial and closed world. One day she brings into her world a stranger she finds in a park and she desires him but she treats him like a canaribird in a cage : she feeds him, she bathes him, she dresses him, she provides him with all comfort, she even provides him with a woman, but he cannot escape, he is a prisoner. It is only within that frame and after a long evolution that she finally finds the courage to ask for what she wants, and yet with no promise that the cage will be reopened. In other words, after a long life with her mother after the death of her father and among people who are from her mother's world, she is totally handicapped in society and unable to navigate properly among desires and obstacles. She can only take and possess. The other is no longer a human being but a toy, a doll in a way. A very sad picture of the loneliness of the solitary young lady in the upper middle-class....

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Sandy Dennis is at her best in this film set in Vancouver in 1969. She plays a lonely woman and takes in a guy who pretends to be a mute. The most powerful aspect is what's going on in her mind..her break with reality when she realizes her vision of their relationship is an illusion. This mute guy is one evil dude. It's easy to empathize with Sandy's character. Another unique experiment in '60s revolutionary film: smashing many societal barriers.

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This early Robert Altman film is a small (if deeply unsettling) little jewel, distinguished by a superb performance by Sandy Dennis. As a sheltered, naïve, but creepily neurotic woman without a clue as to how the world of human relationships actually functions, she quietly dominates the screen. And she's well-matched by the young Michael Burns, far more cunning & manipulative than his initially mute charade suggests -but he's in over his head, horribly so, as he discovers much too late in the game.

And what is the game?

Sandy Dennis' Frances is a spinster, emotionally swaddled & smothered, yearning for human love & human contact, but utterly lost in the real world outside her apartment. When she encounters Michael Burns (simply The Boy) in the park, she takes him home, which is fine with him. It's only as the story continues that he & we begin to understand just how troubled & dangerous Frances really is ...

In some ways like "The Collector," only with the roles reversed, this film differs in that its leads aren't really that sympathetic. Altman tends to shoot them through windows & panes of glass, distancing them, creating a detached & voyeuristic atmosphere. Add to that the washed-out lighting that exposes every bit of grime & decay, and the result is both clinically & uncomfortably intimate.

The fact that it was made when movies were pushing against the last vestiges of censorship gives it a peculiar intensity. Nowadays everything can be said & shown; back then, it was genuinely daring to even try. So even though what we see is comparatively tame beside the explicitness of modern films, it possesses a genuine & powerful perversity that most modern films can't approach.

It's not for casual viewing, and not something you'd want to watch too often. But it'll stay with you, whether you want it to or not. I'm delighted to see it's finally available on DVD, as it's the first of Robert Altman's many films to fully bear his imprint, and deserves greater exposure. Darkly recommended!

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This film still runs through my mind two days after seeing it. The whole film made me so uncomfortable that I couldn't breathe normally while watching it. And I loved every minute of it.

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