The Group

For the past several years, TCM has taken one night in December to honor some people who died over the past year but who weren't big enough to merit a regular programming tribute. One of those honorees for 2021 was Jessica Walter, who was part of the large ensemble cast of The Group. I hadn't seen it before, so I recorded it and recently got around to watching it.

The movie starts off in 1933 with commencement at Vassar (or maybe a Vassar-like women-only college), and eight young women who became friends over their four years in college graduating together. Over the course of the next 150 minutes or so, the movie will look at the life of the group, as well as the lives of the individuals in it, up until about the spring of 1940 when Hitler's army overran France. The movie's opening credits introduces the eight women in the group alphabetically by surname of the actress playing each woman, so that's how I'll do a brief one- or two-line synopsis introducing each of the women:

Candice Bergen plays Lakey, who studied art history and leaves for Europe not long after graduating, studying art in Vienna until coming home just in time to escape the Nazis and the start of World War II in Europe. She's got a surprise for everyone when she comes home.
Joan Hackett is Dottie, who is also out of a good portion of the movie, as she marries a wealthy businessman out in Arizona and moves west as well as spending time in Bermuda. She does return for the ending, however.
Elizabeth Hartman is Priss, who at the start of the movie is an ardent supporter of the New Deal and works in Washington before marrying a doctor (James Congdon) who wants her to have children, and then insists she breastfeed when she finally does have a child.
Shirley Knight plays Polly, who studied chemistry with a view to becoming a doctor, only becoming a hospital nurse/lab tech instead. However, she too winds up with a doctor, a psychiatrist (James Broderick) who is able to help her take care of her manic father (Robert Emhardt).
Joanna Pettet is Kay, who apparently came from a bit more modest means, only to marry right out of college as she weds never-quite-successful playwright Harald (Larry Hagman), who drinks way too much and has affairs with other women, which plays havoc with Kay's mental health.
Mary-Robin Redd plays Pokey, who seems to keep having twins, much to the other women's shock.
Jessica Walter is Libby, the gossip of the group, who hopes to become a published author but doesn't seem to succeed. Walter, however, gets to be extremely catty in the role.
Finally, there's Helena (Kathleen Widdoes), an artist who writes the group newsletter.

As you can see, with eight "main" characters, it's hard to come up with a movie that doesn't really underuse some of them. Kay, Priss, and Polly get a disproportionate amount of the screen time, with Polly's story probably being the best because the three main characters in it (her, her husband, and her father) are all more likable.

In fact, I found myself thinking that a film, even one at 150 minutes, wasn't the right format for this story, which was based on a novel by Mary McCarthy (sister of Kevin from Invasion of the Body Snatchers who got in a lawsuit with Lillian Hellman over the movie Julia; as McCarthy said of Hellman, "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'.") who herself graduated from Vassar. I haven't read the book, but as I was watching the movie I thought that it would probably work better as a 70s/80s-style miniseries (not that TV was doing this back in the day), or as one of today's "limited" series that's only intended to run for one season.

As things stand in the movie, it's confusing for long stretches of the beginning of the movie to keep track of who is who, and who is having an affair with whom, since someone like the publisher played by Hal Holbrook is a major part of two character's story lines. It's also difficult to like a lot of these characters, who seem about as vapid and selfish as the characters in The Women.

Some people will definitely be interested in seeing some of these stars early in their careers, but be warned that the movie is not without some serious flaws.