ALLAN KING IN PERSON!

One of Allan King’s finest early works and a cornerstone of the cinéma-vérité movement, A Married Couple focuses on Antoinette and Billy Edwards, a middle class couple whose marriage is experiencing tough times. Searingly honest and insistently upfront, the film captures every awkward and unsettling moment as they bicker over money and ultimately power. The perpetually wound-up Billy feels he pays for everything but isn’t appreciated for it. Conversely, Antoinette feels Billy treats her like a servant because she doesn’t contribute to the couple’s finances. The film provides a revealing record of sexual politics after feminism and the rise of the baby boomer generation, and holds up as well today as it did when it was released. (It sparked ongoing debates about the role of documentary filmmakers in shaping their material.) A Married Couple spawned many imitators, including the watershed television series, An American Family, but few have matched its emotional wallop. (The film, incidentally, was an influence on Sarah Polley’s Away From Her.) “Quite simply one of the greatest movies I have ever seen” (Clive Barnes, The New York Times). – Steve Gravestock

Allan King will introduce tonight’s screening