Summer Under the Stars 2011 -- Day Sixteen Review: The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Movies adapted from plays are often at a disadvantage because their source material is necessarily less mobile than an average film script. Plays tend to have fewer scene changes and far fewer set changes than films because the logistics of changing sets during a live production are much more difficult than one in which all you have to do is turn off the camera and wheel it over to a different portion of the sound stage, which is why the theatrical world often puts more emphasis on acting and writing than on the purely visual aspects of their presentations. Plays and films are similar but not identical artistic mediums, and just as it would be impossible to put an action-heavy movie like Titanic on the stage, putting a dialogue-heavy play on the screen requires a director with the skill to create his own visual style to accompany the script; otherwise, you end up with a disconcertingly claustrophobic, sometimes even motionless film. (This is one reason I hate the screen adaptation of Arsenic and Old Lace, which takes place almost entirely in one room; the other reason is Cary Grant's manic performance.)

In this respect, at least, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a successful film, because despite its theatrical origins it feels neither static nor claustrophobic, even as it follows a woman living an extremely static, claustrophobic life. Starring Joanne Woodward and directed by Woodward's husband Paul Newman, Gamma Rays tells the story of a bitter, resentful widow named Beatrice Hunsdorfer, raising her two daughters in 1970s Connecticut, her only sources of income being her job as a telemarketer and the room she rents to an elderly tenant whose own family no longer wants to take care of her. Roberta Wallach plays Beatrice's older daughter Ruth, a loudmouthed brat favored by her mother, though possibly only because of her undiagnosed epilepsy; Nell Potts, the real-life daughter of Newman and Woodward, plays Beatrice's younger daughter Matilda, an intelligent, timid girl who bears the brunt of her mother's wrath. The three women, plus the elderly tenant, live together in a dilapidated house where much of the story takes place, but we also see the characters in other settings -- Matilda at school; Beatrice shopping for wigs; Ruth on a date with a boy she likes -- which helps give some scene variation and allows the script to feel equally natural as a film. Unlike in the play, we also get to see and hear from some of the other people in the characters' lives, such as Matilda's science teacher Mr. Goodman, who mentors her and for whose class she devises the project from which the play derives its name, an experiment in which marigolds are exposed to differing levels of radiation.

Where the film stumbles is in its presentation of Beatrice's character. Woodward gives a bravura performance in the role, which is a real departure from her work in films like The Long, Hot Summer and even her Oscar-winning role in The Three Faces of Eve, but as horrible and oppressive as Beatrice is, I got the feeling that the very last piece of her character, the one that takes her from being just awful to truly abusive, somehow got neutered in the transition from stage to screen. Because Woodward is the star of the film and the character with whom we spend most of our time, we end up feeling more sympathetic toward her than we might if we saw most of the film from Matilda's point of view -- ironically, Woodward's powerhouse performance almost ends up winning us over, even as we recognize that she's a bad mother and the film ends with her killing Matilda's pet rabbit. It doesn't help that some of the worst aspects of Beatrice's character in the play don't even make it into the film; she's an occasional alcoholic in the film, but not a drug addict, and we never see her physically abusing the girls, although we do see her cradling her eldest daughter during one of Ruth's epileptic attacks.

As portrayed by Woodward, Beatrice is not a nice woman in any way, shape or form -- and Woodward has since said that playing such a spiteful character, especially in the presence of her real-life husband and daughter, put undue stress on all of them -- but I do wish Newman had shifted the focus of the film a bit more toward Matilda's character so that we might see the full effect of Beatrice's cruelty. Nell Potts strikes the perfect balance between shyness and self-reliance in portraying Matilda, and while I think having Woodward be the star of Gamma Rays was the right decision, both Potts and Roberta Wallach take the film to a new level by fully demonstrating the differing results of living with a radioactive mother.

Grade: B+