Film version of Chayefsky's TV play emerges as slightly overwrought (thanks partly to the script and partly to a very sincere cast) but a strong piece of drama. About how a small family deals with marrying off its only girl (Reynolds, showing more restraint than usual, thus enabling exhuberant Davis and Bornine to stomp all over her, in terms of showboat acting). It ends up being about the couple, and how they deal with seeing their children leaving, feeling how little they have left. The drama strikes home because it is about very real problems, but Borgnine in particular has let the cart go before the horse by putting his characterizations (outbursts of anger, twitching face, etc.) exceed the pacing of the story and the other actors, so that by the time they might have been effective he's already worn out many of his best tricks. One good scene, though, where Bette Davis is sobbing on her bed, forces Borgnine to act with his shoulders and the back of his head because that's all the director lets us see. Maybe he was getting sick of Borgnine's facial contortions too!
Review of The Catered Affair
