Re-Watching “The Group”
One of the pleasures of watching a movie several times over the years is the opportunity to re-evaluate performances. In Sidney Lumet‘s 1966 “The Group,” based on the best-seller by Mary McCarthy, Jessica Walter has the showy role and Candice Bergen (shown in the clip above with Larry Hagman) has the infamous lesbian one. But watching the movie again last night on TCM, it was Shirley Knight who impressed me. The others seem to be playing caricatures of themselves. Knight creates a real human being. One other thing I noticed this go-round: the second half of the movie becomes progressively tedious, as the less interesting characters come to the foreground.
