It's My Turn (1980)

Director:

Claudia Weill

Writer:

Eleanor Bergstein (written by)

Release Date:

6 March 1981 (West Germany)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

Just when she thought she had everything right...in stepped Mr. Wrong.

Plot:

A successful but stressed mathematics professor (Clayburgh) goes to her father's wedding and falls in love with her father's bride's son (Douglas)...

Plot Keywords:

Mathematics | Baseball | Wedding | New York City | Mathematical Equation

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Jill Clayburgh	...	Kate Gunzinger
Michael Douglas	...	Ben Lewin
Charles Grodin	...	Homer
Beverly Garland	...	Emma
Steven Hill	...	Jacob
Teresa Baxter	...	Maryanne
Joan Copeland	...	Rita
John Gabriel	...	Hunter
Charles Kimbrough	...	Jerome
Roger Robinson	...	Flicker
Jennifer Salt	...	Maisie
Daniel Stern	...	Cooperman
Dianne Wiest	...	Gail (as Diane Wiest)
Ron Frazier	...	Professor (as Ronald C. Frazier)
Edwin McDonough	...	Professor (as Edwin J. McDonough)

Also Known As:

A Perfect Circle

Runtime:

Spain:91 min | USA:91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | Iceland:L | Australia:PG | Finland:S | USA:R

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Jill Clayburgh's proof of the "Snake Lemma" at the very beginning of the movie is technically perfect. In Charles A. Weibel's book, "An Introduction to Homological Algebra" (Cambridge U. Press, 1994), there appears the following: "We will not print the proof (of the Snake Lemma) in these notes, because it is best done visually. In fact, a clear proof is given by Jill Clayburgh at the beginning of the movie 'It's My Turn.'"

Quotes:

[First lines.]
Kate Gunzinger: Let me just show you how to *construct* the map S, which is the fun of the lemma anyhow, okay? So you assume you have an element in the kernel of gamma, that is, an element in C, such that gamma takes you to 0 in C-prime. You pull it back to B, via map g, which is surjective...
Cooperman: Hold it, hold it, hold it. That's -- that's not unique.
Kate Gunzinger: Yes, it is unique, Mr. Cooperman. Up to an element of the image of f, all right? So we've pulled it back to a fixed B here. Then you take beta of B, which takes you to 0 in C-prime, by the commutivity of the diagram. It's therefore in the kernel of the map g-prime, hence is in the image of the map f-prime, by the exactness of the lower sequence...
Cooperman: No.
Kate Gunzinger: ...so we can pull it back...
Cooperman: No.
Kate Gunzinger: ...to an element in A-prime...
Cooperman: It's not well defined!
Kate Gunzinger: ...which it turns out is *well* defined *modulo* the image of alpha. And thus defines the element in the co-kernel of alpha...
[...]

Soundtrack:

This Is My Love

Good acting plus poor direction = ......

bad product. Can anyone today direct a real film about women in NYC? I love Jill Clayburgh and Steven Hill. And this film did not do either of them justice. Granted, 1980 was a strange year. But did women still have to wear stiletto heels while teaching college mathematics? At this point in time, audiences shifted to a new generation. Yes, Fatal Attraction came out with Michael Douglas- there was a new edge. But there was still a theme, a story.

My primary complaint with this film is the trite stereotypes (Douglas as a baseball star), Hill as a Jewish businessman. We still see these portrayals today. It is tiresome.

While Clayburgh is an excellent actress, we do not get see her act, while she acts the "neurotic white woman in an upscale hotel in NYC" It really is over done; in the most basic sense of the word. If you want to see a good NY film about mid-life crisis, watch Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors"...light years ahead of this film in the sense of direction and projection. 2/10