HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Up the Sandbox'' is a 1972 American comedy-drama film directed by Irvin Kershner, with a screenplay by Paul Zindel, based on the novel of the same name by Anne Roiphe. The film stars
Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...
as a young wife and mother in
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
, who slips into increasingly bizarre fantasies to escape the predicament of her pregnancy. The film's supporting cast includes David Selby, Paul Benedict, George S. Irving, Conrad Bain, Isabel Sanford, Lois Smith, Jacobo Morales as a character who closely resembles
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...
. The film deals with themes related to
feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
and the sexual revolution. Filming took place in Morningside Heights,
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
and Samburu National Reserve in
Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
in 1972. It was Streisand's first picture that she made with First Artists, a production company formed by Streisand,
Paul Newman Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, race car driver, philanthropist, and activist. He was the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Paul Newman, numerous awards ...
and Sidney Poitier. The film was released on December 21, 1972 by National General Pictures. Although it was a critical success, it was a box office flop.


Plot

Margaret Reynolds is a young wife and mother of two living on the Upper West Side of
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
with her husband, Paul, a
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
history professor. Margaret is bored with her bourgeois day-to-day life and neglected by Paul, who is consumed by his work. She soon discovers that she is pregnant again and initially does not tell her husband, and instead finds refuge in her outrageous fantasies: being sexually pursued by a Central American dictator modeled on
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...
, imagining confrontations with her husband and mother, going on an anthropological visit to an African tribe that promises a ritual of pain-free childbirth, and being involved in a terrorist mission to plant explosives in the
Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty (''Liberty Enlightening the World''; ) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, within New York City. The copper-clad statue, a gift to the United States from the people of French Thir ...
. After one final fantasy of visiting and then fleeing an abortion clinic, Margaret finally tells Paul about the pregnancy and then leaves in a taxi to enjoy a day without parenting responsibilities.There's a Cop‐Out in The ‘Sandbox’
''The New York Times''. 21 January 1973


Cast

*
Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...
as Margaret Reynolds * David Selby as Paul Reynolds *Ariane Heller as Elizabeth Reynolds *Jane Hoffman as Mrs. Koerner * John C. Becher as Mr. Koerner * Jacobo Morales as
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...
* Paul Benedict as Dr. Beineke * George S. Irving as Dr. Keglin * Conrad Bain as Dr. Gordon * Isabel Sanford as Maria * Paul Dooley as Statue of Liberty Guard * Anne Ramsey as Battleaxe * Lois Smith as Elinore * Lee Chamberlin as Jan * Jennifer Darling as Joanne *Marilyn Coleman as Rose White *
Stockard Channing Stockard Channing (born Susan Antonia Williams Stockard; February 13, 1944) is an American actress. List of awards and nominations received by Stockard Channing, Her accolades include three Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, and a nomination for an Acade ...
(uncredited) as Judy Stanley


Production

Producer Irwin Winkler purchased the film rights to Roiphe’s novel for $60,000, beating director Robert Altman, who confessed in 1972, “I wanted to do ''Up the Sandbox''. But I wasn’t able to get it.” Director Irvin Kershner reportedly told
Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...
's biographer James Spada that he was originally unhappy with the script and that he was advised not to express his dissatisfaction to Streisand. Several days into filming, when Streisand went to Kershner and asked him why they were having so much trouble, he told her that they had started shooting with a weak script. Kershner said "Your people warned me not to tell you." Streisand said "That's ridiculous! If a script isn't good enough, let's work to improve it." Kershner originally planned to shoot on a backlot at MGM. When Streisand convinced him it would be better for the film to shoot some scenes on location in East Africa, he agreed and then convinced producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler. Kershner used Samburu tribesmen as extras, portraying the fabled Masai tribe. Streisand remembered Kenya as "quite beautiful...I remember it being so hot. We had no air conditioner or anything, so I had a little, dinky trailer filled with flies. Flies everywhere. But I loved the people, the Samburu people, and I made very good friends with a woman of the tribe. We didn’t speak the same language, obviously, but she understood what I was trying to say to her. She showed me how to dress. Everything was held together with safety pins so nobody had to sew anything. I had the greatest outfits. You rip the fabric and you safety pin in where you want it. And then jewelry made out of telephone wires, little beads. She taught me how they put makeup on their eyes with the ground stone, blue..." Streisand filmed a kiss with a black revolutionary in the scene at the Statue of Liberty, however the studio ordered the footage cut from the final film, due to social attitudes at the time. Kershner's hopes of working with Streisand again were stymied when she rejected the title role in '' Eyes of Laura Mars''; Faye Dunaway eventually took the part.


Release


Critical reception

''Up the Sandbox'' was one of the early films to explore women's changing roles during the sexual revolution of the early 1970s, and critics praised Streisand's performance. According to Pauline Kael in ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'', Streisand "never seemed so radiant as in this joyful mess, taken from the Anne Richardson Roiphe novel and directed by Irvin Kershner. The picture is full of knockabout urban humor". Kael continued: "Barbra Streisand has never seemed so mysteriously, sensually fresh, so multi-radiant. As Margaret, wife of a Columbia instructor and mother-of-two, she's a complete reason for going to a movie, as Garbo was. If there is such a thing as total empathy, she has it." Roger Ebert, who gave the film three out of four stars, only had praise for her in his review: "This is a Barbra Streisand movie, and so we know the central character won't (can't) be stereotyped; nothing even remotely like Streisand has existed in movies before...She does not give us a liberated woman, or even a woman working in some organized way toward liberation. Instead, she gives us a woman who feels free to be herself, no matter what anyone thinks. This is a kind of woman, come to think of it, who is rare in American movies". Gary Arnold of ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' wrote "''Up the Sandbox'' is something rather special, a smart, imaginative, unconventional comedy about middle class married and domestic life that also is extraordinarily touching, truly loving. This is by several light years the most endearing and fundamentally joyous new movie the holiday season has to offer." Howard Thompson praised the film in a review published by ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'': "Barbra Streisand's sixth film is her sixth hit...it's hard not to think of this extraordinary young woman, perfectly wedded to the camera with her instant Modigliani face and timing. She's the picture, true, but the teamwork is admirable. Nearly everything works and meshes, starting with an adroit script by Paul Zindel...Fortunately and even when they're way out, the vignette musings generally miss blandness and strain because our heroine is a bright, likable girl, not a pinhead. Furthermore, Irvin Kershner has paced the picture—in which Miss Streisand plays a non-singing role — with a kind of take-it-or-leave-it verve that nimbly enhances the sharp dialogue, the more thoughtful passages and the performances." Rosalyn Drexler also wrote a review for ''The New York Times'', criticizing the politics but praising the direction and performances: "Now, although “Up the Sandbox” purports to examine Margaret's changing role in relation to her husband, children, political reality, racial problems—anything and everything that touches upon herself and the rest of the world—it becomes a clumsy reaffirmation of the notion that staying at home and having babies is the best thing for a woman to do, especially if her husband “generously” likes babies and is willing to give her one day a week off...However, politics aside, Irvin Kershner, the director, is often really excellent: I loved his direction of a family get‐together on the occasion of Margaret's parents' 33rd wedding anniversary. During this party, a relative is shooting home movies the lighting, is blinding, and so‐called normal behavior becomes abnormal or forced. The actors perform within a performance: they realize that movies—home movies—are for posterity, a reservoir of information, a cheerful record... Barbra Streisand is Barbra Streisand (love her or leave her) trying to be ordinary, but being beautiful." Streisand's performance was also praised by her former husband, the actor, Elliott Gould in a 1973 interview with ''The New York Times'': " Did you see her in ‘Up the Sandbox’? She's more refined in that than I've ever seen her before. I'm real proud of Barbra." On
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film has a 71% rating based on seven reviews.


Box office

The film under-performed and was Streisand's first box office flop.The 6 People Streisand Wants at Her Dinner Party
''The New York Times''. 21 April 2013
In a 1977 '' Playboy'' interview, Streisand reflected on the commercial failure of the film: "I don’t think people wanted to see me play a housewife who wasn’t funny. It was very discouraging."The ’70s Seen: Irvin Kershner’s Loving and Up the Sandbox
''Talk House''. 2 May 2017


Home media

''Up the Sandbox'' was released in a Region 1 DVD on October 5, 2004 as a part of the Barbra Streisand Collection.


See also

*
List of American films of 1972 This is a list of American films released in 1972. Box office The highest-grossing American films released in 1972, by domestic box office gross revenue as estimated by '' The Numbers'', are as follows: January–March April–June is ...


References


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Up The Sandbox 1972 films 1972 comedy-drama films 1970s English-language films Films directed by Irvin Kershner Films produced by Robert Chartoff Films produced by Irwin Winkler Films scored by Billy Goldenberg Films shot in Kenya Films set in New York City First Artists films Barwood Films films American comedy-drama films Films based on American novels 1970s American films American pregnancy films Cultural depictions of Fidel Castro American feminist films English-language comedy-drama films