I saw this movie with my mom when it first came out. My father grew up in Lake Forest*, and my parents lived there the first few years of their marriage. During this scene, my mom kept whispering, "There's the beach...There's the Presbyterian church...There's the high school..." I, barely out of my teens, was mortified and whispered back, "Shh! Shh!" *P.S. My father's family wasn't wealthy. My grandfather was a cabinetmaker and my grandmother ran a small neighborhood grocery store. The house where Jeannie (Elizabeth McGovern) lived was in my grandparents' neighborhood. My cousin still lives in a townhouse on that very street.
This movie resonated so much with me. I was in highschool at the time it came out and graduated that year. Although I think I wanted it to resonate with me. I wanted to be Conrad, the one who tried to off himself. This brings back some painful memories. I've felt nothing but depression all my life and I'm 61 now.
When I watched this movie the year it won the Oscars, it coincided with the period of my growth when there was a family crisis that I could not deal with nor talk about. I could feel how Conrad was crushed and the family was falling apart, just like what happened to my family. The movie made a lasting impact to my life (the other one was "The Awakenings") - that life can be very messy, and you really needed each other to cope with it.
The plot turns here, and what a scene to mark the turn! Perfect. I've seen this scene many times since, but nothing can bring back the satisfaction of seeing it for the first time within the movie.
Fantastic movie by Robert Redford making his director debut he did a fantastic job director this movie and a fantastic cast powerful script in my opinion Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore should got Oscars for there performance they were fantastic in this movie 🎥
I saw this movie in a California theater when it first came out in 1981. I was hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail (2,600 miles) and was in town getting food supplies. It was the only movie I saw during that entire trip, and I was quite moved by it. It was the first time too that I heard the beautiful Pachelbel's Canon in D Major and have loved it ever since.
I lived in the area with my parents and siblings this movie was filmed in. I have not lived there since about the time this movie was released. I have tears in my eyes, as I recognize most of the scenery (Highland Park and Lake Forest, Illinois) in this opening sequence. My parents are both gone now and my brother and sister live so far away from me that seeing either of them takes financial and logistical planning. Thanks for sharing this. God's Peace to you and all here. 🙏 ✌️
This was probably the most important scene in the whole movie. It reveals not just the truth about who Tracy really was. But exactly how her psychopathology began to emerge. It wasn’t just her father who taught Tracy how to be a con artist. It was also the mother…too drunk too self absorbed to intervene. This tells me Tracy was a sociopath not a psychopath. Psychopaths are born. Sociopaths are made.
The opening is beautiful with the Colors of Autumn, but depressing and Lonely which catches the essence of the movie prior to seeing the characters, and showing the shore in the Autumn, where alot of activity took place with people just weeks before... Now it's empty.. It gives it a Haunting, sad vibe.
A magnificent film, brilliant acting, exquisite direction. I love how he used the lake, where the tragedy all begun, and the change of seasons, as the opening ,to what changes were about to occur even more, within the perfect family on the inside but the real story that was taking place on the inside then the pan through the chorus to Hutton, and you can see by his appearance he has been through a great trauma. No one makes movies like that anymore. I truly miss the 1980's.
Not only the showing the lake at the start, but also the proximity of Conrad to Jeannine in the opening scene was, no doubt, intentionally done. As I am sure you are aware, that relationship takes on significant meaning in the film.
Never saw it on the big screen. But now at 53 I enjoy listening to the beginning credits on RU-vid. I love the opening scene to the ocean and then moving to the green grass with a tree, a tree, and more trees on flat green grass..
The opening scene has my Coral teacher, Virginia Cecil. She actually had a part I went to the school, it was filmed at Lake Forest high school. Which was kind of funny, because where they filmed the house it was in Glencoe, which is a neighboring,city. Brilliant movie.
One of my favorite movies of all time!! I was a budding psychologist when this came out and it completely moved me. Watching Timothy Hutton’s face descend into depression and his mother -son interaction was excruciating. I’ve used the theme of this movie often in my sessions…emotion is strength, not weakness.
