The Group (film)

1966 film by Sidney Lumet

The Group is a 1966 American ensemble drama film directed by Sidney Lumet based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Mary McCarthy about the lives of a group of eight female graduates from Vassar from 1933 to 1940. The cast of this social satire includes Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman, Shirley Knight, Jessica Walter, Kathleen Widdoes, and Joanna Pettet. The film also features small roles for Hal Holbrook, Carrie Nye, James Broderick, Larry Hagman and Richard Mulligan. It was the 25th highest grossing film of 1966.

The Group was released to DVD by MGM Home Video on January 15, 2011, via the MGM Choice Collection as a Region 1 manufacture on demand DVD.

Critic Moira Finnie of FilmStruck sums up The Group: The crowd of highly educated, privileged characters on the screen in The Group approached their postgraduate life in the Great Depression as though it was a midterm exam to be aced and filed away, with each milestone treated like a fast course in typing or dancing, another skill acquired, to be trotted out at the next luncheon with the other girls in the group. Full of ideas about a woman's role in the society, but with little real life experience other than in school, the movie chronicles their continued education in the real world. Variety wrote that the film is faithful to the novel but retains too much detail.

Joan Hackett was nominated for the British BAFTA Film Award for the best foreign (i. e. non British) actress. The film was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival in 1966.