That Cold Day in the Park

Distinguished stage actress in her finest hour on screen.
Desperate for companionship, a lonely spinster invites a young homeless boy up to her apartment and then goes to drastic measures to make him stay. Following her Oscar-winning turn in Mike Nichols' ground-breaking drama "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?", this is the gifted Sandy Dennis' finest hour on screen. As the demented heroine, Dennis makes you feel your way into her character's dark and ultimately disturbing world. It's a blissful, strikingly effective performance, and watching it one might wonder why Dennis didn't win a second Oscar. The film is also well-directed by a supremely talented fellow by the name of Robert Altman whom you may know as the creator of such hit films as "MASH" and "NASHVILLE". Unfortunately, "THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK" bit the dust at the box-office. Like so many of Altman's films(3 Women, in particular), the movie requires a great deal of patience to fully understand its meanings, but those who sit it...

Upper middle-class solitude
In this old film by Robert Altman, we discover how solitude for a young woman is a plague on her way to happiness and satisfaction. She comes to the point where she cannot even ask anyone for the contact she desires. She lives in a completely artificial and closed world. One day she brings into her world a stranger she finds in a park and she desires him but she treats him like a canaribird in a cage : she feeds him, she bathes him, she dresses him, she provides him with all comfort, she even provides him with a woman, but he cannot escape, he is a prisoner. It is only within that frame and after a long evolution that she finally finds the courage to ask for what she wants, and yet with no promise that the cage will be reopened. In other words, after a long life with her mother after the death of her father and among people who are from her mother's world, she is totally handicapped in society and unable to navigate properly among desires and obstacles. She can only take and possess...

Intense Unique Poignant
Sandy Dennis is at her best in this film set in Vancouver in 1969. She plays a lonely woman and takes in a guy who pretends to be a mute. The most powerful aspect is what's going on in her mind..her break with reality when she realizes her vision of their relationship is an illusion. This mute guy is one evil dude. It's easy to empathize with Sandy's character. Another unique experiment in '60s revolutionary film: smashing many societal barriers.

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