Our Time (1974, Peter Hyams)

Coming out in 1974, a year after the monumental Roe v. Wade decision, Peter Hyams' Our Time, with its 1950s boarding-school girls grappling with teen pregnancy and illicit abortion, may as well have been set on a different planet.  There was criticism (here and here, and surely in other places) rooted in the idea that the film was cheaply nostalgic and overly maudlin; looking at the film 40 years later, I didn't get the sense that the filmmakers were looking back whimsically at the '50s nor that they used exploitative tactics to elicit tears or other such strong emotions.  While Hyams, writer Jane C. Stanton, and producer Richard A. Roth (the producer behind the massively successful Summer of '42, a key antecedent for Our Time, and Hyams' later film Outland) were for the most part excoriated by contemporary critics, my view is that time has been kind to the film and it stands as a dramatically potent and sensitive coming-of-age tragedy. 

Just a few years after making her screen debut in To Find a Man, which dealt with an unwanted teen pregnancy and abortion, Pamela Sue Martin returned to this subject matter in Our Time.  Martin is top-billed as Abby, a senior at a strict, upscale all-girls boarding school in Massachusetts in love with Parker Stevenson (a student at a neighboring boarding school).  Martin is excellent, but it's her co-star Betsy Slade, as Abby's roommate and best pal Muffy, who really blew me away and whose performance continues to haunt me.  That Slade (who was De Palma's original choice for the title role in Carrie) disappeared from big and small screens less than a decade after Our Time, probably contributes to this "haunting" quality.  She is the sister of Mink Stole, a key member of the John Waters stock company, but other than that bit of trivia and the Carrie footnote, there is very little about Slade in the public sphere.  It's a shame her career ended so soon because she's a unique and mesmerizing onscreen presence and imbues her character with a mixture of wisdom, naiveté, sweetness, and nerdiness that I found quite beguiling and, ultimately, heartbreaking.  

The scenes of beautiful couple Stevenson and Martin making plans to consummate their love don't break much new ground and are not especially interesting, but Slade's scenes with the gawky boy (George O'Hanlon Jr.) who loves her and, later, with a well-intentioned and empathetic med student / abortionist (Robert Walden) are special; they are painfully real moments, beautifully realized by Slade and her co-stars.  And, although they apparently did not get along at all in real life (check out this interview with Martin, Stevenson, and Larry Karaszewski), the "friends till the end" bond between Martin and Slade is touchingly and convincingly portrayed, and the shattering final scenes are well-earned by the players and filmmakers.  Our Time ranks highly, for me, with other superb coming-of-age tales from the period such as the aforementioned To Find a Man and Jeremy, which manage to strike a delicate balance between earnestness, sentimentality, "realness," charm, and provocativeness; they each contain certain transcendent moments that never fail to move me to some combination of tears and reflection.

Michel Legrand was the go-to guy when it came to lush, delicate scores for romantic teen dramas in this period, such as Summer of '42, Ode to Billy Joe, and Breezy, and the maestro adds to his illustrious discography with his gorgeous main theme for Our Time.

In the supporting cast, are the late Debralee Scott and Nora Heflin as schoolmates of the two leads and Jerry Hardin as a chaperone at the school dance.  Heflin and Hardin would appear together a few years later in Obscure One-Sheet all-time favorite Chilly Scenes of Winter.

Our Time is available in a feature-less, unrestored, but--most importantly--16x9 DVD via the Warner Archive.

To Find a Man (1972, Buzz Kulik)

When she discovers she is pregnant, 16-year-old Rosalind (Pamela Sue Martin) returns home to New York from boarding school and asks her childhood friend Andy (Darren O'Connor) to help her obtain an abortion.  Made just prior to Roe v. Wade, Buzz Kulik's 1972 coming-of-age-film To Find a Man offers an illuminating look into the process of getting an abortion in New York City before the landmark Supreme Court decision, while also providing some nice showcases to Hollywood veterans Lloyd Bridges, Tom Bosley, and Tom Ewell. O'Connor, who who had only a couple more acting gigs before studying law, is excellent as Andy, the brainy kid next door, a little goofy, yes, but not lacking in confidence.  He hasn't put the moves on Rosalind, but it's not because he's an awkward nerd who's afraid of girls.  It seems that it's just not his major pre-occupation, as it is for his slovenly schoolmate Pete (a chubby, long-haired, pot-smoking Miles Chapin). Rosalind is beautiful, but spoiled and not very bright, or as her father (Lloyd Bridges) puts it so delicately after a few drinks, "She's got most of her brains in her tits."  Despite director Kulik's television pedigree, a tv movie this is not!  That said, as was so often the case in the early days of the ratings system, it received a GP (later PG) rating, in spite of its having a fair share of adult language and content. 

Martin matches O'Connor with her performance and in contrast to her character's aforementioned shortcomings, she is not mean-spirited and she remains a sweet and likable presence throughout; in short, she's more complex than my description makes her sound.  The young stars' fine work culminates with the film's pitch-perfect ending in a wintry Central Park.

For fans of Glynnis O'Connor, it's a trip to see some of the same mannerisms and vocal inflections in the person of Darren O'Connor. 

Until it showed up recently on streaming services such as iTunes and Amazon, To Find a Man was sadly lost for all intents and purposes. Part of an underrated wave of teen pictures of the 1970s, of which I'd also include Jeremy (starring Darren's younger sister Glynnis), To Find a Man is moving and affecting without being overly sentimental or cloying.  It has many of the best qualities of the films of this era--progressive in its ideas, shot and performed in a docu-realist fashion, and frank while also maintaining a layer of ambiguity.  It is not saddled with the irony and myriad pop culture references of so many of the teen films of the '80s nor does it wrap everything up in a shiny bow.

Working from a novel by S.J. Wilson, veteran scribe Arnold Schulman was an appropriate choice to write the film adaptation, as he had earlier written (and been Oscar-nominated for) the original screenplay for Love With the Proper Stranger, a film which had dared to take on much of the same material nearly ten years earlier. '70s stalwarts, David Shire and Andrew Laszlo were on hand for scoring and cinematography duties respectively.  Shire's score is appropriately melancholy, but also jaunty and hummable in parts. Laszlo covers some of the same "dirty old New York" turf that he would return to in The Warriors.

Chemistry of another kind.

While the "New Hollywood" was largely the domain of young men both in front of and behind the camera, To Find a Man is refreshing in that it offers audiences a chance to see old-timers like Bridges, rather than his boys Beau and Jeff, outside of the confines of the studio era.  The work of Bosley, Bridges, and Ewell opposite young O'Connor is the highlight of the film for me, with each moving the narrative in unexpected directions.  Bridges and Ewell are particularly moving and I found myself re-watching their scenes a second time, and shedding a tear or two, as they both perhaps see something of their younger selves, or something they wished they still had, in the boy verging on manhood.  

A fine post-Sea Hunt, pre-Hot Shots performance is given by Bridges pere.

It's just one of many fine films of the era that have slipped through the cracks in terms of availability and by the fact that they haven't been written into the popular narrative of what one unfortunate written account dubbed "easy riders, raging bulls."  I guess, though, that it is the nature of such narratives to simplify and narrow the criteria so that it all can ultimately fit nicely into an hour-long made-for-IFC Channel talking head piece.

"Well, what the hell is this?!  In order to get an abortion here, you gotta make an appointment before you're pregnant!"

....anyway, have a look at Larry Karaszewski's informative "Trailers From Hell" piece on the film and rent / download the feature before it's taken down.  Thanks, Larry...where in the hell did you unearth that trailer anyway?!

It wouldn't be a "dirty old New York" movie without a little mugging.

Kulik returned to New York to shoot Columbia's Shamus the next year, including scenes on the grounds of the future, first-ever Brooklyn Whole Foods in Gowanus!