The picture was made in the wake of dozens of unrelated movies all bearing an "Italian-Style" tag, most famously two pictures starring Marcello Mastroianni: Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all'italliana, 1961) and Marriage Italian-Style (Matrimonio all'italianna, 1964), Vittorio De Sica's film with Sophia Loren. Divorce American Style has a vaguely European influence, but mostly is a half-baked effort to satirize a growing suburban phenomenon.

The picture starts out promisingly, with an oddly surreal montage featuring a God-like conductor lording over suburban Los Angeles, as angry, bickering married couples are heard arguing behind closed doors. Among them, Richard (Dick Van Dyke) and Barbara Harmon (Debbie Reynolds), upper middle-class suburbanites with two kids (one of whom is Tim Matheson) and a luxurious $49,000 (!) house. Their already disintegrating marriage collapses when co-worker Joe Flynn leads a drunken Richard to hooker Lee Grant. However, Richard is too much of a "square" to allow anything to happen, though Barbara assumes the worst and the War of the Harmons begins.

The rest of the picture follows the separated couple as they unsuccessfully begin new romantic relationships, he with Nancy Downes (Jean Simmons) whose ex-husband (Jason Robards) is anxious, for financial reasons, to see her remarry; she with car dealer Big Al Yearling (Van Johnson).

The picture starts out well enough; by 1967 Hollywood standards Divorce American Style is unusually critical and honest about both the pressures of keeping up with the Joneses and the unflattering side of married life. In a sequence echoing one done more successfully in Alexander Payne's About Schmidt (2002), the two undress in silence after a lengthy shouting match. She smears cold creams and lotions over her face, he clips his toenails and reads Life Magazine while on the can. One must also take into account that in 1967 divorce was a taboo subject in an America where couples and their 2.5 kids lived happily ever after. Unlike today, divorce was then seen as an utterly shameful defeat, so in attempting to satirize such an off limits topic, the picture sort of breaks new ground, rather like suggesting Van Dyke's Rob Petrie had a messy divorce with wife Laura.

But the almost real hostility of these early scenes is quickly undermined by an increasingly sitcom-like approach, with characters played far too broadly and/or unbelievably. Simmons effectively underplays her part, subtly implying all the hurt and anger of a divorce with a minimum of gestures. Conversely, Robards is so over-the-top as her ex-husband that his performance is almost a burlesque, as if the actor was warming up for The Night They Raided Minsky's. Reynolds' character, meanwhile, sees a marriage counselor complete with Viennese accent. The Harmon's kids are pure sitcom types, little adults more mature than their parents and unfazed by their parents' separation. Mainly and perhaps most fatally, the picture hedges its bets. Sure they bicker and argue, but Richard and Barbara's anger toward one another is never specified, other than Richard's non-sexual encounter with hooker Grant. And as heated as their divorce is, they soon realize they were better off married.

The picture works best as a time capsule of a 1960s Americana on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Cinematographer Conrad Hall captures the look of suburban life, with all its great pastel-colored furniture, the butt-filled ashtrays (Van Dyke's character never stops smoking), bowling alleys and McDonald's (when 67 cents bought you a burger, fries and soft drink).

Norman Lear and Robert Kaufman were nominated for an Oscar for the their script, and perhaps deservedly so within the context of when Divorce American Style was made. By today's standards, though, the picture plays pretty toothless, with its cast and crew all doing much better work elsewhere.

Video & Audio

Columbia, once the best big studio DVD label, has again done a disservice to one of its library titles. Divorce American Style is presented as a full frame only DVD, perversely promoted on the jacket as gtransferred in High Definition.h Judging by the very awkward framing when one zooms the picture on widescreen TVs, it would appear the film may have been hard-matted at 1.66:1 (but intended for 1.85:1 projection). This would account for the tight framing watching it full frame, and why foreheads get chopped off when zoomed in. The film otherwise looks acceptable, though there is a strange jump cut, perhaps inherent in the original negative, at the 37:46 mark. The Dolby Digital mono sound is okay, but as further evidence that Columbia is beginning to cheap out on its library titles, gone are the plethora of subtitle and audio options; Divorce American Style offers only an English track and English subtitles. A few unrelated trailers are the only extras. In keeping with its Wal-Mart-friendly packaging, a beginning-to-end plot synopsis is provided.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. He is presently writing a new book on Japanese cinema for Taschen.