It is Halloween night. I had just finished Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play of A Doll's House and I was making my way over to Faculty Hall to enjoy the film adaptation. Little did I know what was in store. After a brief overview of the play, it was time to watch the film. One hundred and nine minutes later, I was doing the fifty-yard dash out of room 208. Never in my life had I been so bored by a film. After enjoying the play, I was even looking forward to this movie. Where was the tension? Why did I not I feel sympathetic for any character in the film? Where was the imagination in the scenery? And most importantly, where was the wit in Jane Fonda's performance?

     When reading the play, one usually concludes that our main character, Nora Helmer, is not the smartest of women. Or is she? After finishing the play and our discussion in class, thought it seemed unanimous that Nora had learned this type of behavior not only as a child, but also as a wife in order to get what she wants. Secretly, Nora is actually a very smart women who figures out that she has what it takes to get what she wants on her own. This aspect of the play was not even close to being implied in the movie. By the end of the play, I was ready to shake Nora's hand as she walked out on Torvald. In Losey's film, Nora's walkout was a simple reminder that the movie was almost over!

     In my critique of this film, I feel that Joseph Losey did a poor job in developing Nora's character. While overall he stayed true to the text, I was very disappointed in the fact that by the end of the movie I could have cared less if Nora would have stayed or left. In the play, when Nora tells Torvald that he is not the man who could teach her how to be the woman she needs to be, I was internally saying, "You go, girl!" This spirit was undeniably lacking in the movie.