Ginger in the Morning (Sissy Spacek)

(Amazon UK link)

A couple of months ago, I bought four DVDs at a local charity shop. I had never heard of any of them, but they looked quite appealing, and the blurb on the back sounded interesting. We loved the first one we watched, ‘Keeping the Faith’. We liked the second one we saw, too, ‘Reluctant Angel’.

So last night we decided to watch the third one I picked up, ‘Ginger in the Morning’. As it started, we quickly realised that it was an old film; the style looked almost 1950s, as did the cars and the way people dressed and spoke. But it was in colour, albeit faded, and one or two references made us realise it was either late 1960s or early 1970s. When the film ended we looked it up, and learned that it was made in 1974.

It’s a bit startling that the film, almost fifty years old but well in our lifetime, looks as dated as this one does. Not that it matters; there were some excellent films made in this era. Unfortunately, this was not one of them.

The story opens with a young woman, Ginger (Sissy Spacek) saying goodbye to someone who has been giving her a ride on a little-used American road. She has a guitar case and a small suitcase, and walks along the road, trying to thumb a lift but mostly being ignored. Eventually Joe (Monte Markham) stops and picks her up.

We’ve already met Joe in a kind of prologue to the film, when he’s walking through an airport accompanied by someone he evidently just met. This companion is pushy, rather coarse in his language and ideas, and convinced he knows what Joe should do to help him get over his recent divorce.

Ginger is something of a hippy - I wouldn’t have known if it hadn’t been mentioned several times - and Joe quite serious, but they get along well and are looking forward to a night together when Joe’s best friend Charlie (Mark Miller) turns up. Charlie is quite loud and boisterous, and when Joe makes some unwise comments about Ginger he’s overheard… and she is extremely hurt.

So it’s essentially a standard and predictable romance with a remarkably rapid attraction, an unpleasant misunderstanding, and attempts on Joe’s part to redeem himself. To add to the story, Charlie’s ex-wife Sugar (Susan Oliver) is brought in, which works well until she rather demeans herself in a most unlikely scene.

The acting is not great; it’s very much in the style of 1950s American films, so much so that I was half expecting people to break out into singing and dancing. That doesn’t happen; instead there’s a snowball fight (amidst snow that suddenly appears and then vanishes) and a lot of drunken staggering about that’s rather distasteful.

There’s some quite nice scenery, and one or two places that feel poignant, but there seemed to be a lot of plot-holes. Quite apart from the unlikely snow, I have no idea how Ginger managed to produce full evening dress from her small suitcase of poetry books, for instance. And although she has no money, she manages to buy quite a few groceries. We kept watching; I wondered why, once or twice, but there was nothing so bad it made me want to give up. But it’s not a film we’re likely to see again.

The rating is only PG, probably because there’s almost no bad language, no nudity and no scenes of intimacy although there’s some quite frank discussions and many implications that would not be appropriate for children. 

It’s unlikely to be of interest to anyone under the age of about fifty anyway, unless someone really likes these 1970s films. I gather it's quite popular with some folk; I had not heard of any of the cast, but apparently they've made other films and have quite a following. I don’t suppose we’ll want to see it again, but maybe in another decade or so. 

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