The Chapman Report

Production: Warner. Director George Cukor; Producer Richard D. Zanuck; Screenplay Wyatt Cooper, Don M. Mankiewicz; Camera Harold Lipstein; Editor Robert Simpson; Music Leonard Rosenman;; Art Director Gene Allen
Crew: (Color) Extract of a review from 1962. Running time: 125 MIN.
With: Efrem Zimbalist Jr Shelley Winters Jane Fonda Claire Bloom Glynis Johns Ray Danton

The Chapman Report is a talky melodramatization of several abnormal patterns in the sexual behaviour of the upper middleclass American female. The scenario, from an adaptation by Grant Stuart and Gene Allen of Irving Wallace's novel, attempts the feat of dramatically threading together the stories of four sexually unstable women who become voluntary subjects for a scientific sex survey conducted by a noted psychologist and his staff.

The Chapman Report is a talky melodramatization of several abnormal patterns in the sexual behaviour of the upper middleclass American female. The scenario, from an adaptation by Grant Stuart and Gene Allen of Irving Wallace’s novel, attempts the feat of dramatically threading together the stories of four sexually unstable women who become voluntary subjects for a scientific sex survey conducted by a noted psychologist and his staff.

One (Claire Bloom) is a hopeless nympho and alcoholic. Another (Jane Fonda) suffers from fears of frigidity. The third (Glynis Johns), a kind of comedy relief figure, is an intellectual who feels there may be more to sex than she has realized in her smugly satisfied marital relationship. The last (Shelley Winters) enters into a clandestine extra-marital affair with an irresponsible little theatre director.

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Johns does the best acting in the film, rising above the flimsiest of the four episodes with a spirited and infectious performance. Fonda seems miscast and is affected and unappealing in her role. Bloom suffers up a storm. Winters plays with conviction. The men are all two-dimensional pawns.

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