Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1973

The Contenders:

Marsha Mason: Cinderella Liberty
Ellen Burstyn: The Exorcist
Joanne Woodward: Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
Glenda Jackson: A Touch of Class (winner)
Barbra Streisand: The Way We Were

Women of a Certain Age

Film: Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

This is going to be tough. Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams is a short movie about a woman’s mid-life crisis. That’s not an immediate deal breaker for me, although I admit that it’s hardly a step in the correct direction. More specifically, this is about the mid-life crisis of the sort of woman whose life appears to be entirely about herself. Her children are grown, her husband is kind of a stranger, and she is suddenly emotionally adrift.

The mid-life crisis genre isn’t necessarily one that I dislike. In fact, there have been movies like Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine that come from almost the same place as Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams that I have liked quite a bit. No, the issue here isn’t the story, but the character. Rita Walden (Joanne Woodward) is an awful, self-absorbed woman who clearly isn’t worth the 87-minute running time of the film.