The Bachelor Party

Five men from an accounting office throw a bachelor party for a colleague about to marry. The night passes from bar to bar and then from party to party. As it goes on, each man's own trouble opens up: one is frightened of his wife's pregnancy, one hates his marriage, one hates never having married. The film is not interested in celebration. It is interested in the mourning underneath it: none of these men is really celebrating, each is looking at his own life, and the tone darkens as the night runs. What arrives near dawn is not comedy but confession. The form is black and white and realist: New York streets, cheap bars, small apartments. A production sensibility out of television, talk-heavy and unshowy. Delbert Mann directed, from Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay and his own television play. The pair had made Marty, and the view here comes from the same place: what ordinary people cannot say. Don Murray, E.G. Marshall and Jack Warden star. Carolyn Jones, as the woman at the party, is onscreen for only a few minutes and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for it. Who it is for: viewers who like fifties American realism and Chayefsky's dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone expecting comedy. The film is the opposite of what its title promises and the last half hour is openly oppressive.