Pumpkin Eater, The

Aroview: Anne Bancroft is riveting as a woman of the verge of a nervous breakdown in this penetrating and vastly under-rated British melodrama.

As wife and mother in well-to-do Hampstead, Bancroft has all the trappings but feels isolated and unloved by her coldly charismatic husband (Peter Finch), a screenwriter. Harold Pinter adapts the novel by Penelope Mortimer, and it's one of his very best screenplays, while Jack Clayton directs with customary elan. James Mason and Maggie Smith add further character and weight to this superior slice of upper-crust 'kitchen sink'.

Note: Not pumpkins are harmed, or even consumed, during the course of this movie.

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