Smile

The state pageant qualifiers are being held in a small California town. Thirty-three young women spend a week in rehearsals, preparing talent numbers and learning to smile. The organisers are the town's businessmen; the head of the jury sells caravans and treats the event as the most important work of his life. The subject is not beauty but a town taking itself seriously through this contest. The real subject is not the girls but the adults watching them: beneath the attention they pay the young is the emptiness of their own lives, and the film shows it without mercy. The form is close to documentary. Michael Ritchie keeps the scenes crowded and unbroken; the talk overlaps and the camera moves through the rehearsals. Much of the cast are not professionals and most of the contestants were genuinely recruited locally. It drew no interest on release and failed commercially; over the years it came to be counted among the harshest examples of American satire. The bleakness of the section after the contest separates it sharply from the comedies of its moment. Bruce Dern plays the head of the jury and Barbara Feldon the organiser. Who it is for: viewers who like seventies American satire and portraits of communities. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a sympathetic character; the film mocks nearly everybody.