A Married Couple

A Married Couple

A marriage in crisis – what could be more normal, more easily recognizable? And yet, for such a mundane matter of the modern bourgeois world to take on unprecedented dimensions, all it takes is a camera to find a spot inside the “war zone.” Not only because the most familiar of situations are, in fact, the least well known, but also because the cinematic lens has that terrifying power: to turn even common experience – when it captures its unwrought core – into a thing of awe. And so, in A Married Couple, that which is ostensibly uninteresting due to its utter banality (in the very first scene, the couple bicker over something trivial) becomes, in due course, so intense that it is often hard to look, even though you know full well your eyes will be glued to the screen right up until very the last moment. And this is because (whatever it is we think, whatever it suits us to believe, just to get through) so much truth cannot be taken in without resistance – and such resistance serves as proof that something of the most serious and ongoing relevance to us all has been expressed here with a painful honesty.

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.


Direction: Allan King
Cinematography: Richard Leiterman
Editing: Arla Saare
Sound: Ron Alexander
Music: Zalman Yanovsky, Douglas Bush
Production: Allan King Associates
Producers: Allan King
Format: HD
Color: Color
Production Country: Canada
Production Year: 1969
Duration: 97'
Contact: Colleen Murphy

Allan King

Filmography

1967 Warrendale (TV)
1969 A Married Couple
1973 Come on Children
1977 Who Has Seen the Wind (fiction)
1989 Termini Station (fiction)
1998 The Dragon’s Egg (TV)
2003 Dying at Grace
2005 Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company