When I decided to write this, the film people of the internet had rolled into day three of complaining about Sight and Sound’s 100 Greatest Movie List. Instead of participating, I decided to get blown away by Diane Keaton in Looking for Mr Goodbar. A film that’s still M.I.A in terms of physical release. Not due to the subject matter, which is tough, but due to music distribution rights. The soundtrack features disco hits from the likes of Donna Summer and Thelma Houston. The upbeat tracks date the film historically, while the lyrics also foreshadow its troubling ending. Songs like Don’t Leave Me This Way flip from being well-known floor fillers into something deeply chilling. Looking for Mr Goodbar is not an easy watch. Not in the slightest. Yet the themes raised still hold a strong relevance, while the provocative nature of the film makes it difficult to forget.
Based on a bestselling book of the same name, Goodbar is a fictional account of a real-life tragedy of Roseann Quinn, A well-liked teacher who had led a double life in her spare time. Richard Brook's matter-of-fact feature is unlike modern true-crime entries. With so many current examples enjoying placing fetishist attention placed on the murderers of senseless violence, however, one could wonder if the film's availability on streaming has been able to grab the attention of true crime junkies who know of the original case but are new to the film.
In Looking for Mr Goodbar, Diane Keaton plays Thresa, a trainee teacher whose home life is suffocating by her domineering polish-catholic parents. She studies to be a teacher while her hot mess of a sister has escaped the family home and has delved into the dual pleasures of drugs and polygamy. Theresa, at first, finds herself sexually involved with her college professor. However, the relationship is cut short before her graduation. Thresa soon obtains a job as a teacher for deaf children and proves herself to be a thoughtful and nurturing guide for her students. Her work life is a marked difference from her spare time, however, as she finds herself frequenting dive bars, engaging in one-night stands and experimenting with drugs. She soon finds herself at the hands of manipulating and self-centred men. Soon, her nightlife slowly seeps into her day job. A feeling of risk begins to stem from her precarious behaviour. Tragedy strikes when Teresa while reconsidering her personal life, has a chance encounter that changes her fate for the worse.
Looking for Mr Goodbar has no surprising plot. Theresa's story may have viewers entering the film with an understanding of the tragic crime and controversial source novel. Despite this knowledge, Looking for Mr Goodbar remains a startling picture. Even though the film is over 40 years old, the film still holds a potent relevancy as the harrowing narrative will feel relatable to many women. Although the story sets itself against the backdrop of the women's revolution of the 70s, there's a feeling the modern world has moved as much as expected. While parts of the urban scene may have faded, the misogyny found within Goodbar feels no different from today. The opening photo montage, littered with glassy-eyed men ogling young women in bars, only needs an outfit change and a gloss of paint to feel pertinent to where we are now. Something about the aged, unchanging grimness and the sense of foreboding helps Looking for Mr Goodbar remain shocking.
Goodbar’s lack of substantial physical release gives the film an added mystique. Its subject matter and lack of typical availability only compound its notoriety. Critics who have sought the movie out remain just as divisive as the likes of Vincent Canby were back in the 70s. Reviews have been quick to claim the film muddles its execution. Claire Davidson is cold towards the film. In a piece focusing on the film's soundtrack for Little White Lies, she dismisses Goodbar as redundant. Despite praising the film, Jim Owen of We Are Cult questions the struggle for Goodbar to define itself. The film's release in 1977 has the powerful lead performance by Diane Keaton overshadowed by her more affectionate display in Annie Hall. It is a curious displacement, when in contrast to the sexual allegations that dogged Hall's director Woody Allen in his later years. A strange, tangential connection of abuse lies between the two films. Along with the limited availability of the film and the critical discourse, this mixture of elements almost keeps the tenacious display of Keaton overlooked.
One thing that does not get overlooked in Looking for Mr Goodbar is the stacked before-they-were-famous cast. The film is bursting with burgeoning talent from all corners. As previously mentioned, Diane Keaton is completely arresting as Theresa. She flitters easily between sweet and sensual in a display that is intelligent, sexual, and yet without judgment throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the supporting cast is a heady brew of then up-and-coming performers. Richard Gere appears as the finger-drumming narcissist Tony. While his appearances are brief, he hums with dangerous sexual energy when on screen. Gere delivers a similar vibrancy in American Gigolo (1980) and Breathless (1983). And it's upsetting that a generation of filmgoers may only know him as the corporate silver fox who chased Julia Roberts around in Pretty Woman (1990), if at all. William Atherton, known more for his smug, cinema bastard roles in Ghostbusters (1984) and Die Hard (1988), finds realms of darkness as James, a Welfare Caseworker. A hapless Irish American man who makes nice with Theresa's Polish Catholic parents but soon becomes unhinged as his traditional desires infringe on her sexual freedom. LeVar Burton shows up as the tough older brother of one of the pupils Theresa teaches. His stoic, no-nonsense demeanour is light years from his role as Geordi in Star Trek. Tom Berenger appears late on as the homophobic final partner of Theresa. He is equally as unbalanced as those who came before him while still presenting a different sexual danger to Richard Gere’s Tony.
An element of the film’s potency is that despite its cast of soon-to-be well-knowns when it stays focused on Theresa rather than the many men, the film shines. Many modern true crime stories have keenly leaned towards the suspects and killers. With fans posting online their unwholesome desires for these unstable criminals. The likes of Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story have had its admirers frame Evan Peter’s portrayal of the serial killer as a pin-up. A persuasive takeaway from Goodbar is that it maintains the dubious men within the narrative as pathetic while trying to maintain an amount of sympathy for Theresa. She may enjoy an element of manufactured risk in her exploits, but her liberation and sexual freedom shouldn't cost her life.
It is easy to find parts of Goodbar reductive. At times, the film stumbles on the central theme that such a woman with her sexual freedom should not have her wings clipped. Richard Brook's stagey direction of the material sometimes struggles to do enough to complicate the matter for the better. A viewing of the film could have it read as a moralist tract, with the film arriving just before the even more conservative sex = death slashers of the 80s. A meandering side plot involving Theresa's sister Katherine begins to drift halfway through the movie. At first, she is more sexually adventurous, yet soon Katherine looks towards Theresa as an emotional anchor and is unaware of her sister's antics. By the time we enter the final third, Katherine’s exploits have led to abortions and quickie divorces. She’s suddenly moving towards societal norms, an obvious contrast to Theresa, who only has second thoughts about her promiscuity when tragically too late.
However, something about Looking for Mr Goodbar remains compelling. There is something so illuminating about Keaton’s performance that ensures the film, while overlong, isn’t lazy in what it’s trying to say.
One can throw criticism at the frayed edges of the film, yet this only pinpoints the great tragedy that hangs in the narrative. Looking for Mr Goodbar manages to highlight a multitude of struggles from intergenerational, racial and gender standpoints. The film sets up various conflicts in which characters within them will never gain the chance to move on or gain strength due to a fateful act which ends things. The film doesn’t pin down everything easily. Begging the question: If Goodbar had tightened its loose ends, could it be as compelling? Possibly not.
True Crime fiction often asks how we can load ourselves with the knowledge to calm our anxieties while protecting ourselves so that the same fate of victims is not shared. Looking for Mr Goodbar is startling because slight stumbles aside, there is no easy, comforting answer to Theresa's journey. She battles her stifling family unit against a backdrop of women's liberation, defining her independence by her standards. There is a sense that Theresa would struggle to find this liberty through traditional societal norms. Theresa does not look for a man who fits the requirements of her father, but her sexual exploration, while enjoyable at times, does not fulfil her either. If she were to follow her sister down the well-trodden path, this also betray her newfound freedom. A streak of self-destruction lies in Theresa's behaviour, but her decisions are not what set about her demise. It is the tragic swinging pendulum of fate. Theresa's fierce independence makes her a character to root for. It also makes her unknowable. And the chilling final moments, utilising a strobe effect, are disorientating. Leaving us in the knowledge that despite being a rock for her sister, championing the young, disadvantaged inner-city children she teaches, or her fight for her sexual freedom, we will never know what she was striving for and that her ending is even more wrongfully unjust.
Looking for Mr Goodbar’s poignancy still hits hard because society doesn’t feel like it’s moved on from its talking points, despite Looking for Mr Goodbar approaching 45 years old. The disco-glazed city may not appear as dangerous as they do in this film. The dive bars that populate Goodbar would be hard to find now. Yet the fragile men who inhabit the dark corners still move among us. The type of man who can only exhibit control over independent, young women in aggressive, manipulative, or cowardly ways. Be it a gutless teacher who carries on an affair to feed his desires, a condescending potential suitor with a dated, traditional vision of relationships, or even a homophobic murderer who takes misinterpretation as a mocking dig at his own sexually. You can find these characters easily in movies today. While certain films have attempted to capture the anger and sadness within Looking for Mr Goodbar, they don’t hold a similar impact. The non-judgemental viewpoint sometimes exhibited by the lead character almost feels alien in the realm of girlboss representation that exists now. Whether Looking for Mr Goodbar will ever gain a solid physical re-issue in the UK or America, now that streaming dominates, remains to be seen. But while it finds itself on streaming channels with no sign of disappearing currently, that alone sends the message that it deserves to be discovered by a new audience and evaluated.
Looking for Mr Goodbar is currently on Paramount Plus and Amazon Prime at the time of writing.
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