LEGACY

Bissie Hapgood, a well-to-do suburban matron from Pasadena, has been left alone for the day by her husband, who is off on business, and by her children, who are away at summer camp. After visiting her sick mother and reliving moments from her childhood, she returns home to her empty house and starts planning a dinner party. Perhaps the guests won't turn up; perhaps there is no dinner party after all. She begins to think about a maid who keeps losing butter-knives in the garbage disposal system. Her imagination takes over, the stereotyped roles she has created for herself collapse, and she enters a nightmare world of fear and paranoia, She telephones her doctor, she talks about her early sexual experiences; she has an hysterical outburst against the foreigners whom she considers to have taken over her country.

Bissie Hapgood is played by Joan Hotchkis, who wrote the script, and the film is directed by Karen Arthur as her first feature.

'...a terrible, probing insight into a woman who has been pushed over the border of sanity by her husband, myths, the so-called and much-pummelled American dream and her own fantasies.'

Mosk, Variety

Jozef Von Sternberg Prize, Mannheim 1975. International Critics Award, Locarno 1975. Silver Plaque, Chicago 1975.