Four Friends (film)
Encyclopedia
Four Friends is a 1981 American drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Arthur Penn
Arthur Penn
Arthur Hiller Penn was an American film director and producer with a career as a theater director as well. Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...

. The semi-autobiographical
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Steve Tesich
Steve Tesich
Stojan Steve Tesich was a Serbian-American screenwriter, playwright and novelist. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1979 for the movie Breaking Away.-Career:...

 follows the path of the title characters from high school to college during the often turbulent 1960s and beyond.

Plot synopsis

The titular quartet are Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

n-born Danilo Prozor, who arrived in America at the age of twelve and ever since has been trying to distinguish between the reality of his adopted homeland and the idealistic vision of it he brought with him; overweight, Jewish mama's boy
Mother's boy
Mother's boy, also mummy's boy or mama's boy, is a term for a man who is excessively attached to his mother at an age when men are expected to be independent...

 David; Tom, the attractive WASP
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is an informal term, often derogatory or disparaging, for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of British Protestant ancestry. The group supposedly wields disproportionate financial and social power. When it appears in writing, it is usually used to...

 jock who has a way with the ladies; and free-spirited, self-assured Georgia, who fancies herself the reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...

 of Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...

, dreams of a successful career as a dancer, and is loved in turn by each of her three friends.

The film is a series of vignettes whose primary focus is on Danilo - his conflicts with his father, his struggles with his heritage, his courtship and thwarted marriage to Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

 debutante Adrienne Carnahan (sister of his college roommate Louie), and his lingering relationship with Georgia.

Production notes

The film was shot on location in East Chicago
East Chicago, Indiana
East Chicago is a city in Lake County, Indiana. The population was 29,698 at the 2010 census.-Geography:East Chicago is located at ....

, Hammond
Hammond, Indiana
Hammond is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. It is part of the Chicago metropolitan area. The population was 80,830 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Hammond is located at ....

, and Whiting
Whiting, Indiana
Whiting is a city located in the Chicago Metropolitan Area in Lake County, Indiana, which was founded in 1889. The city is located on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. It is roughly 16 miles from the Chicago Loop and just short of two miles from Chicago's South Side. Whiting is home to Whiting...

 in Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

; Chicago and Elgin
Elgin, Illinois
Elgin is a city in northern Illinois located roughly northwest of Chicago on the Fox River. Most of Elgin lies within Kane County, Illinois, with a portion in Cook County, Illinois...

 in Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

; Philadelphia; and on the campus of Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

.

The soundtrack includes "Georgia On My Mind," written by Hoagy Carmichael
Hoagy Carmichael
Howard Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust", "Georgia On My Mind", "The Nearness of You", and "Heart and Soul", four of the most-recorded American songs of all time.Alec Wilder, in his study of the...

 and Stuart Gorrell
Stuart Gorrell
Stuart Graham Steven Gorrell is best known for writing the lyrics for the song Georgia on My Mind.Gorrell attended Indiana University; there he became friends with fellow student Hoagy Carmichael...

 and performed by Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...

; the theme song from Bonanza by Jay Livingston
Jay Livingston
Jay Livingston was an American composer and singer best known as half of a songwriting duo with Ray Evans that specialized in songs composed for films. Livingston wrote the music and Evans the lyrics....

 and Ray Evans
Ray Evans
Raymond Bernard Evans was an American songwriter. He was a partner in a composing and songwriting duo with Jay Livingston, known for the songs they composed for films...

; "Hit The Road Jack" by Percy Mayfield
Percy Mayfield
Percy Mayfield was an American songwriter famous for the songs "Hit the Road Jack" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love", as well as a successful rhythm and blues artist known for his smooth vocal style.-Career:...

; "Shop Around" by Berry Gordy
Berry Gordy
Berry Gordy, Jr. is an American record producer, and the founder of the Motown record label, as well as its many subsidiaries.-Early years:...

 and Smokey Robinson
Smokey Robinson
William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. is an American R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is one of the primary figures associated with Motown, second only to the company's founder, Berry Gordy...

; "Blue Moon" by Richard Rodgers
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

 and Lorenz Hart
Lorenz Hart
Lorenz "Larry" Milton Hart was the lyricist half of the famed Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart...

; and the theme from The Third Man
The Third Man
The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir, directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Many critics rank it as a masterpiece, particularly remembered for its atmospheric cinematography, performances, and unique musical score...

by Anton Karas
Anton Karas
Anton Karas was a Viennese zither player, best known for his soundtrack to Carol Reed's The Third Man.-Early life:...

, performed by Guy Lombardo
Guy Lombardo
Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo was a Canadian-American bandleader and violinist.Forming "The Royal Canadians" in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert, and Victor and other musicians from his hometown, Lombardo led the group to international success, billing themselves as creating "The Sweetest...

 & His Royal Canadians.

Principal cast

  • Craig Wasson
    Craig Wasson
    -Career:Wasson's first feature film was the 1977 suspense thriller Rollercoaster. In 1978, he appeared in two films about the Vietnam war: first as a private in The Boys in Company C and then as a corporal in Go Tell the Spartans. In 1982, he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of...

     ..... Danilo
  • Jodi Thelen
    Jodi Thelen
    Jodi Thelen is an American actress.Born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Thelen made her screen debut as Georgia Miles, "a willfully free-spirited girl, naive and narcissistic" in Four Friends in 1981....

     ..... Georgia
  • Michael Huddleston ..... David
  • Jim Metzler
    Jim Metzler
    Jim Metzler is an American television and film actor, best known for guest-appearances on popular TV series. In 1983, he received a Golden Globe nomination for his supporting role in the 1982 film Tex....

     ..... Tom
  • Miklos Simon ..... Mr. Prozor
  • Elizabeth Lawrence ..... Mrs. Prozor
  • Julia Murray ..... Adrienne
  • Reed Birney .... Louie
  • James Leo Herlihy
    James Leo Herlihy
    James Leo Herlihy was an American novelist, playwright and actor.Born into a working class family in Detroit, Michigan, Herlihy is known for his novels Midnight Cowboy and All Fall Down and his play Blue Denim, all of which were adapted for cinema...

     ..... Mr. Carnahan
  • Lois Smith
    Lois Smith
    Lois Smith is an American actress whose career in theater, film, and television has spanned five decades.Smith was born Lois Arlene Humbert in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of Carrie Davis and William Oren Humbert, who was a telephone company employee...

     ..... Mrs. Carnahan
  • Glenne Headly
    Glenne Headly
    Glenne Aimee Headly is an American actress of film, stage and television.-Early life:Glenne Headly was born in New London, Connecticut and her first years were spent living under the care of her mother in San Francisco and her maternal grandmother in Pennsylvania...

     ..... Lola

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...

 called it "the best film yet made about the sixties" and added, "It has the quality of legend, a fable remembered . . . [It] is one of Mr. Penn's most deeply felt achievements, ranking alongside Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...

, Alice's Restaurant
Alice's Restaurant (film)
Alice's Restaurant is a 1969 American comedy film co-written and directed by Arthur Penn. It is an adaptation of the 1967 folk song of the same name by singer and songwriter Arlo Guthrie...

, and Little Big Man. For Mr. Tesich, it is another original work by one of our best young screenwriters."

Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

described it as "a very good movie" and commented, "The wonder is not that Four Friends covers so much ground, but that it makes many of its scenes so memorable that we learn more even about the supporting characters than we expect to."

TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

rates the film three out of a possible four stars, saying it "attempts to cover so much ground that at times the film becomes frustratingly muddled," and adding, "Though [it] runs out of gas toward the end, it's filmed with obvious love for the characters and features outstanding performances from the underrated Wasson, Thelen and Simon. Well worth seeing."

Time Out New York says, "Although its episodic narrative entails a certain lack of unity, it's nevertheless an ambitious and impressive work . . . A dense but never pretentious film that manages to convey the atmosphere of the '50s and '60s succinctly, it offers delights galore, not least a light, perceptive wit and an unsentimental ability to touch the emotions."

Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

calls it a "stodgy, sentimental brew" and "a well-meaning film that doesn't really amount to much in the long run."
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK