Where's Poppa? (1970)

Carl Reiner’s film of Robert Klane’s black comic novel remains a cult classic. It deserves a wider audience.

The plot’s serious centre is the difficulty in properly caring for the aged. Successful Sidney (Ron Liebman) leaves schnook brother Gordon (George Segal) to look after their uncontrollable aged mother Mrs. Hocheiser (Ruth Gordon). Her genius for driving away caregivers incapacitates Gordon both at his law career and from realizing his new love-hope, the angelically sparkling and soft-focus Louise (Trish Van Devere). 

Gordon is so paralyzed by his father’s deathbed instruction that he can’t even utter the word when he considers putting his mother into a “ho…ho..ho….” When he finally squeezes out the full word, “home,” it’s as physical as the turd Louise’s first husband left on their honeymoon bed after their first love-making (“Doesn’t everyone?). 

Gordon rushes his mother to two homes, both “State Approved.” Gus and Grace’s proves a nightmare of elder care. The lone Gus (Paul Sorvino) manages only minimal service and concern. Gordon finally leaves her at a palatial rural estate, too idyllic to ring plausible.

Gordon completes the dream ending by carrying an old man over to his mother and presenting him as her lost husband. “Poppa?” “Momma?” Two hopeless delusions cohere for the happy ending. Make that three, counting our relief at the opulent placement.  

Mrs Hocheiser denies her husband’s death so the new assignment satisfies her. Behind the opening credits we see souvenirs, mementoes, army implements, tossed into an old trunk, emblematic of the missing father whose ghost shadows the film and propels his widow’s madness. We assume her new old man has persisted in a parallel fantasy.  

That human drama plays against a social landscape of broader insanity. The film reflects several lunacies of its time. The trials that the befuddled Gordon can’t focus on represent outrageous abuse in a society run amok. 

  In the first, the hippie (Rob Reiner, pre-Meathead) accused of cutting off a general’s toe is found in contempt of court for his profanity and anger. He’s all but justified by the general’s insane monologue of murderous racism. That catches the madness of the Viet Nam war and its protestors.

  In the second a mad football coach (Vincent Gardenia, puffing on a cigarette holder that augurs new health) is suing the team that fired him — for staffing it by kidnapping huge helpless children from the backwoods.  

  In this mad racism a taxi passes up on a black woman to pick up a gorilla (Sidney in costume). A woman dissolves when she thinks the panting man in a gorilla suit is masturbating beside her in the elevator. 

The madness extends to Sidney’s ostensibly normal family. His wife refuses to let him go help his brother — until Sidney threatens his mother will have to come stay with them. “Go. Now. Take a cab.” 

This home is as violent as Gordon’s. To get out Sidney threatens: "Get away from that door, or I'm gonna choke your child.” “He means it, Ma.” And again: “Let me out. I haven’t got time to beat up the kids.” 

Of course, in the first scene Gordon dons the new ape suit before waking up his mother in hopes of scaring her to death. But “Almost doesn’t count.” He suggests getting her a big dog after he fantasizes his mother shrinking to the point a dog eats her (“in one bite”). The dog raises a paw to be cuffed before being taken to the station to be booked. 

The only coherent social unit here is the gang that ritually robs Sidney every time he crosses Central Park. The slick swaggering leader extemporizes new scenarios. In the first he replays The Naked Prey requiring Sidney to shuck his clothes to escape his dread pursuer Motherfucker.  The next time, Sidney — as guest of honour at their gala party — is forced to lead off the gang rape. He’s arrested when the mini-skirted victim turns out to be an undercover male cop.

This leads to one of the decade’s richest shots. In the back of the cab Sidney — a cerebral lawyer animal in his gorilla suit — treasures the flowers and beams at the prospect of a new love. He asks Gordon if he should indeed follow up on the invitation. The roses and romance offset the ludicrous suit and the sordidness of the Park scene and the pervasive madness — without quite descending into sanity. Beside him sits the broken and despairing Gordon, who feels he has lost his one last shot at love. He has little patience for Sidney’s new bliss and his request for advice to the love-looming. 

When he first meets Louise her name sends Gordon into a long slow whispering recital of the eponymous love song. As it draws them together for a kiss, the song evokes the sonnet by which Romeo and Juliet first converse. Just meeting her has fired hope and love into Gordon's unrelievedly despondent condition. Only her plan to return to Waukegan (“Isn’t Jack Benny from there?”) inspires the courage for him to say “home” and put his mother into one. Love conquers all. 

Make that three romances. The Momma and the Poppa connected at the end provide a third relief in romantic delusion. Incidentally, the novel ended slightly differently: Gordon dumps his mother off at the Home but dry-humps her before leaving. (This alternative conclusion may be on the laser disc edition.) The scene recalls the Park mugger’s name, which may have been the first appearance of “motherfucker” in American mainstream cinema. Or not.

Finally, attention must be paid Mrs Hocheiser, in Ruth Gordon’s brilliant portrayal. Despite our sympathies for Gordon, she commands our sympathy and respect. The monster is a pathetic waif. Reduced to a one-room life with daytime TV, she touchingly shifts between perception and memory. She’s childlike in the difficulty of dressing her and in her breakfast, Lucky Charms drenched in Coca Cola, and an orange that MUST be cut into six pieces. When she dances and studies her looks she relives her lost beauty, that would return with her lost love Poppa. She’s plucky enough to punch the attacking gorilla in the nuts.

In her scenes with Louise she wavers between confusion and disturbing perception.  Rebelling against Gordon restricting her to mashed peas, she swipes something more solid from Louise’s plate. In an alarming perception she spots the couple holding hands. That prompts her major defence against abandonment. First her finger reveals the size of Gordon’s “little pecker.” Climactically, she pulls down Gordon’s pants: “I’d recognize Gordon’s tush anywhere.” The mother’s intimacy blocks out the fiancee. 

The film only incidentally touches on the eldercare issue. Its deeper drama derives from the minefield of parental control and its traumatic effects. That makes this film an even more comic partner to Hitchcock’s Psycho, but with the additional thread of contemporary social satire.