The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

A woman (Anne Bancroft) who has five children leaves her second husband (Richard Johnson) to marry a struggling screenwriter (Peter Finch). After having a sixth child by him, their marriage begins to unravel, in part, due to his infidelities. Based on the novel by Penelope Mortimer (Harold Pinter adapted it for the screen) and directed by Jack Clayton (ROOM AT THE TOP). This is an incisive character study of a woman obsessed with having children which may have more to do with a distaste for sex and using children as the justification for it rather than a passion for motherhood. After her third marriage, she sends two of her oldest boys to boarding school and seems to forget about them. Bancroft is sensational here in what may be her best performance (she won the Cannes film festival best actress award). A character who seems to have no direction in life other than being wrapped up in her husband and breeding children isn't very interesting yet whether wound up or passive, Bancroft inhabits this complicated woman with all her nuances and contradictions. It's a fierce performance although I felt betrayed by the innocuous ending which just seems to stop because it has nowhere else to go. The delicate score is by Georges Delerue. The excellent supporting cast includes James Mason (superb as always), Maggie Smith, Cedric Hardwicke, Janine Gray and Yootha Joyce in an unsettling portrait of a woman undone.