Day Ninety-Eight: Cactus Flower

CACTUS FLOWER

Starring:
-Walter Matthau
-Ingrid Bergman
-Goldie Hawn

Directed by: Gene Saks

Screenplay Credits: I. A. L. Diamond

MPAA Rating: PG (of course, at its release in 1969, it was rated M for mature audiences only- how times have changed!)


Walter Matthau stars as Julian Winston, a dentist who’s found a pretty sweet set up. He’s convinced his girlfriend Toni (Hawn) that he’s a married man with three children (a blatant lie) so he can avoid her nagging him about furthering the relationship. Toni is desperately in love with him, and is troubled by the idea that he spends so much time with his “wife” (other women). When he cancels one of their dates, Toni writes him a letter telling him she’s going to kill herself, goes home, turns on the gas, and lies on the sofa with her arms folded, ready for death.

Lucky for Toni, her neighbor Igor Sullivan (burgeoning playwright) smells the gas, breaks into her apartment and rescues her. Toni decides not to commit suicide after all and asks Igor to phone Julian’s office in the morning and tell him she’s not dead.

He does, but it’s too late. Julian has already discovered Toni’s letter and his on her way to his apartment. Julian’s secretary, Miss Stephanie Dickinson (Ingrid Bergman) receives the call seconds after he leaves.

Toni’s willingness to kill herself over him tells Julian that this is the woman he wants to marry. There’s just one problem: he’s convinced her he’s already married, and she is absolutely phobic about men who lie. Julian has no choice but to tell her that he’s leaving his wife.

He expects this news to put Toni over the moon, but instead she worries about being a “housebreaker.” She insists that she will not marry Julian unless she can meet his wife and see for herself that the woman does indeed want to divorce her husband.

With no other options, Julian turns to the only woman who’ll do anything for him, his longsuffering secretary of ten years who (as is evident to the audience) is madly and secretly in love with him. Stephanie agrees to play the part of “Mrs. Winston” for the man that she loves, which of course gets all of them into a whole heap of trouble as they struggle to keep the wool pulled over Goldie Hawn’s enormous eyes.


This was my first viewing and I really enjoyed it. You can certainly tell that it was originally a play, but to me that is part of the piece’s charm. Bergman was a delight from the first scene to the last, but interestingly it was Hawn who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her performance.

Matthau is simply precious as grumbly, rumpled, square Dr. Winston, and it’s especially fun to watch him come to the realization that he’s tired of dealing with Toni and wants to “go home to his wife” (meaning Stephanie). I also loved the conversation in which Stephanie and Julian argue about wanting a divorce of their own, meaning a dissolution to their partnership.

In the end of course, things work out just as predictably as you think they will, but it’s still enjoyable watching the actors cross the finish line. However, one of the most interesting things for me was watching all the scenes set in the discotheque (which is a totally awesome word). It’s fascinating to me what passed as dancing in the 1969. To me it just looks like people throwing their bodies around in weird contortions. But the best of the bunch at the spacey dancing is Hawn, without question. She has this dopey little look on her face, not unlike a stoned pixie trying to imitate Ray Charles.

Check it out if you don’t believe me.


FINAL GRADE: A-

Off in search of a(nother) wife,

M.