Directed By: Alan Alda
Starring: Alan Alda, Carol Burnett, Len Cariou
Tag line: "Here's to our friends... and the strength to put up with them"
Trivia: This movie was the second of six collaborations between actor Alan Alda and producer Martin Bregman
It seems a bit silly now, but there was a time when I was embarrassed by how much I enjoyed writer / director Alan Alda’s 1981 film The Four Seasons. A comedy / drama with just a touch of romance, it wasn’t the type of film my teenage self normally gravitated towards. And yet whenever I saw that it was playing on HBO or Prism (which, in the ‘80s, was the local Philadelphia cable station), I would always sit and watch it. I enjoyed the comedy, of course, but The Four Seasons also had plenty to say about marriage and friendship, and even though I was decades away from understanding the various dilemmas its characters faced, I always felt it was an honest portrayal of what it’s like to spend half your life with the same person at your side.
Three New York couples: Jack (Alda) and Kate Burroughs (Carol Burnett); Nick (Len Cariou) and Anne Callan (Sandy Dennis); and Danny (Jack Weston) and Claudia Zimmer (Rita Moreno), have been vacationing together for years, during which time they’ve grown very close to one another. Then, one spring, Nick makes the shocking announcement that, after 21 years of marriage, he plans to divorce Anne so that he can start a new life. Sure enough, by the time summer rolls around, he’s dating Ginny Newley (Bess Armstrong), a pretty blonde half his age. This sudden change in their group’s dynamic causes the other couples to reexamine their own relationships (with both their significant other and the friends they have grown to love), and the resulting friction will either draw them closer together or tear them apart once and for all.
As its title suggests, the movie features four distinct segments, each set in a different season of the year. It’s during their upstate vacation in the spring that Nick drops his bombshell, and all at once, Annie is out of the picture, replaced by the kindly but somewhat naïve Ginny, who tags along as Nick and the others spend a fair portion of their summer sailing around the Caribbean. In the fall, the couples visit their kids in college, and while Jack and Kate’s daughter Beth (Elizabeth Alda) is as full of life as ever, Nick’s daughter Lisa (Beatrice Alda) is having a hard time dealing with her parent’s failed marriage. Come the winter, the six main characters are shacked up in a ski lodge, at which point all the hurt and resentment they’ve been feeling for months makes its way to the surface. I liked how the movie ebbed and flowed in conjunction with the seasons (spring=change, summer=adjustment, etc), yet what ultimately makes The Four Seasons such a moving experience is its cast of characters, all played by actors and actresses at the top of their game.
We come to know them almost as well as they know each other. Alda’s Jack, a lawyer by trade, is the thinker of the group, a guy who asks probing questions just so he can answer them. He loves Kate, and the two are very happy together, yet at the same time Jack can't help but feels a bit jealous of Nick’s relationship with Ginny. Kate, played wonderfully by Carol Burnett, is the editor of Fortune magazine and the planner of the group, organizing their various vacations months in advance. Yet despite her strong marriage, she worries that, one day, she’ll end up like Anne, and find herself all alone. From the get-go, it’s obvious that Cariou’s Nick is in the throes of a mid-life crisis, yet while he is the catalyst for much of the group’s turmoil, his actions ultimately lead him to discover the love of his life.
Though we don’t get to know her as well as the others, Dennis’ Anne does, in her few scenes, come across as a bit stifled (a photographer, she’s spent the last three years photographing vegetables, and balks at an offer from Kate to take pictures that will appear in Fortune). Ginny, the new woman in Nick’s life, is the exact opposite of Anne: vibrant and fun-loving with a good heart, you can’t help but fall in love her (though it marked her big screen debut, Armstrong is absolutely wonderful in the part). Rounding out the group is Jack Weston’s Danny, a dentist who is also a hypochondriac; and Rita Moreno’s Claudia, a hot-blooded Italian who always speaks her mind. Weston and Moreno are the source for a good deal of the film’s comedy, yet in the end, they're every bit as worried and insecure as the others.
Revisiting the film now, when I’m close to the same age as its main characters, allowed me to see The Four Seasons in a completely new light, and while I can’t say I have a whole lot in common with any of its protagonists, I definitely understand them a lot better than I did when I was younger. What’s more, I’m no longer ashamed to admit I’m a big fan of this film, which, with its honest, heartfelt look at the nature of relationships, will never grow old.