(may contain spoilers.)

Displaced rage flashes across Diane Keaton's visage in her `love' scenes in the film. In half-shadows, in detached ambivalence, Keaton/Theresa Dunn chooses to embrace her hunger, and engages the audience in her spiritual annihilation. This is not a film about promiscuity, or the singles bar scene, or the `decadent' Seventies; those elements are settings and props, a backdrop for the unfolding of a much more interesting, emotionally violent internal war.

Judith Rossner's based-on-real-events makes its way to the screen largely intact in Richard Brook's dark film noir-ish take, despite the excising of the internal-monologue approach of the book. It's a glib, apt approach; the material has elements in common with `women's films' of the Thirties and Forties---narratively it details a woman who chooses a socially `unacceptable' method of living, largely out of disenfranchisement from her family and society, and the inevitable spiral through a dimly-lit Purgatory.

In those films, female destiny was decided by severe social delineations, determined by whether or not the male characters forgave social/sexual/economic transgressions; in `Goodbar', the era's different, and superficially the milieu has changed. It's the post-sexual revolution (as Richard Brooks hoarily points out in unsubtle references to the women's movement). The character's still straitjacketed, by her oppressive family structure and internal demons, and there (deceptively) appears a way out physically and psychically; new apartment, new life, a `room of one's own'. Theresa Dunn's freedom and self-determination will not go unpunished.

The first half-hour's riveting, because we see a young woman's transformation from naïve, emotionally hungry romantic to tough cynic. Even more chilling is that it's not entirely an act of will; in the face of an abusive father and a first love who treats her like a sexual cesspool, detachment becomes a weapon of survival. Brook's script adds greatly to the psychosexual claustrophobia of these moments, as it adheres so strongly to Theresa's consciousness that the spectator views not just what she experiences, but also what she imagines, desires, dreads. This appropriation of Theresa's thoughts and fantasies, woven into the structure of her physical existence, draws and binds the audience to her journey into Hell but is also problematic and disingenuous on Brook's part---as the film delineates her descent, Brooks' script appears to validate the integrity of her dilemma, but also implicates female sexual self-determination in her downfall. That is, Richard Brooks implies that Theresa's sexual freedom, her insistence on subverting traditional modes of feminine sexual behavior (in the film's `love' scenes she is frequently filmed on top, or on the right side of the screen, an unusual power-position for female characters in this context) is as much or more to blame than the mental damage sustained from her messy, classically dysfunctional upbringing. This is thematically the film's greatest weakness, the filmmakers' moral indecisiveness which severely undercuts the narrative thrust and focus of the film---who are we to blame, Theresa's emotionally screwy, perpetually in-denial family…society for going down a moral spiral…or is Theresa both protagonist/antagonist in this schematic arrangement?

Problematic, but this ambivalence and ambiguous thematic structure also makes this film infinitely more interesting. The anxiety provoked by these elements in conflict produces an unexpected, morbidly enticing drama. Most of the credit for this film's power goes to Diane Keaton's presence. Her work is perfectly modulated, at times repulsively real and raw, and at other times devastatingly poignant in the ways she lies to herself and others about the implications of her character's actions. She glows with dark energy, gradually becoming one with the film's descent into what seems like a long, long communion with Night. Keaton nearly single-handedly prevents the film from transmogrifying into an anti-feminist diatribe, by imbuing Theresa with qualities which seem infinitely flawed and human. Amazingly she does this without descending into dramatic grandstanding or exploiting her character's weaknesses. Flawed but full of conviction (even if it's misguided), seething with misdirected anger, Diane Keaton is overwhelming in the film's silent sequences, alone in Theresa's dim, cavernous apartment, suffocating in her loneliness. Regardless of how the writer/director or her fictional family chooses to judge her, it's in the amalgamation of moments like these (alone, in bed with just her pillow to gratify herself, no words are needed to show the turmoil she's feeling) that Keaton subverts the moralistic scheme of the film and shows us something infinitely more wonderful---a persona in conflict with herself, unable to find an easy resolution within and without her dimly lit surroundings. What the audience takes away are fragments of Theresa's ruptured psyche that add up to a very beguiling human drama. Keaton won the Oscar for the wrong film in 1977.

In the end, Theresa Dunn finds the resolution to her journey. It's horrific. It's even more of a shock, because by that point, the confused, morally disjointed film has gathered into a coherent portrait of a soul in transition. She's struggled, and does she earn her fate? Seen as a moral judgement on her `lifestyle', the climax might be seen as a `punishment' justified by the character's behavior and lack of morals. In a sense, it's true that the film offers up Theresa as an example of when Good Girls go Wrong and what happens when you're not what's construed as a `good woman' despite the goodies and freedoms that society periodically offers up.

An alternate reading of the resolution: Theresa finds her Animus, her male side embodied in a sexually ambiguous stranger who represents the impossibility of psychic reconciliation with the fragments of her divided spirit. Theresa exploits and uses men as physical revenge for her childhood and the psychic wounds inflicted by her father and first love, but in doing so creates a psychosexual monster of injudicious power.

Theresa meets, and embraces, her shadow.

Thersea Dunn (Diane Keaton) is a dedicated teacher by day. By night she cruises bars picking up men for increasingly violent sexual encounters. This leads to drug abuse and starts affecting her job. Can she stop?

A VERY negative view of the swinging 70s before AIDS came about in the 80s. I originally saw this on TV when I was in high school where it was cut to ribbons and virtually incomprehensible. A revival theatre did show it a few months later so I got to see it uncut on the big screen. I was a little too young to understand it fully (a 10th grader doesn't know much about singles bars:)) but the message came through loud and clear--sex + drugs = death. There's more to it than that--they get into Dunn's family life and you see she grew up feeling neglected with an obnoxious loud father and a meek mother. There's also her sister Katherine (Tuesday Weld) who is also addicted to sex and drugs. Basically this is a very depressing film full of unpleasant characters and situations. Keaton is great in her role--she totally buried her "Annie Hall" image with this. She also did nude scenes which she previously refused to do. Weld was superb (and Oscar-nominated) for her role. It's also fun to see Richard Gere and LeVar Burton before they hit it big. Also a still unknown Tom Berenger pops up at the end in a very disturbing but crucial role. He had guts playing the role he does (I won't give it away). This movie has disappeared due to song rights (I believe) and that's too bad. It IS disturbing but an accurate portrayal of the dark side of the singles bars in the 1970s.

So much has been written about this film, it's hard to imagine what anyone could add to the discussion. But having finally seen the uncut film after thirty years, I'm going to make a few comments about it.

I also recently read the novel by Judith Rossner that the screenplay was based on, and one thing stands out definitely:In the movie adaptation,all of the men Theresa gets involved with are negative, destructive characters in one way or another. The most striking difference from the novel is in the portrayal of James, the conservative, traditional man who would like to marry her. The film's James, played by William Atherton, is ultimately a creepy kind of guy, who turns out to be pretty unstable, and not the nice, if dull, man he is in the book. Tony is also portrayed in a more negative light by Richard Gere. He is much more sleazy and vaguely sinister than in the novel. The relationship is built up more too, probably for contrast with the conventional marriage and family offered to her by James. Theresa's difficulties at mutual understanding with her angry father are clearly at the root of all her later struggles with male/female relationships. This too is emphasized much more strongly than in the novel.

Diane Keaton is convincing as a serious young woman with high ideals, who finds herself leading a double life as a bar hopping party girl by night. The essential contradictions of her character are never really resolved, but are certainly echoed by her sister Katherine's succession of failed marriages and affairs. Both stand in contrast to the third sister, Brigid, who has assumed the role of the traditional Catholic housewife and mother.

There's a really moving quality about Keaton's portrayal of a seemingly fragile, yet tough young woman who has had to cope with physical disability, rejection by those she loves, and being casually abandoned by a man she thought really loved her. Her insistence that she is " alone, not lonely", is not convincing, ultimately. She has chosen this life of thrill seeking and playing by her own rules, in contrast to the way her family would like her to have turned out, but her decision near the end of the movie to quit drugs and stop hanging out at bars is a strong indication of a new resolution to find a more meaningful life.

Whch leads us to the problematic ending. This film has been criticized for thirty years now for apparently showing that sexually liberated young women deserve to end up dead. Many viewers have interpreted it that way, especially when it was new, and the ending continues to trouble people today. I am unable to come to a definite conclusion about this. On one hand, it seems arbitrary and out of left field, and yet we know that the real life tragedy that inspired the novel occurred pretty much like what is shown here. For what it's worth, I don't feel that the movie is suggesting that she deserved it, or somehow she had it coming. One might assume that she could end up being killed by either the increasingly unstable James, or the small time criminal Tony, both of whom have shown jealousy, possessiveness, and a violent streak, especially startling coming from James. But her death as the result of a sudden attack from a total stranger doesn't seem to fit the possible ending one might have expected. It's as if she were to be struck by lightning while walking home from the bar. One could even say that it has very little to do with her, but is the result of the uncontrollable self hatred of the man who kills her; something foreshadowed by his angry response to the man who was flirting with him earlier at the bar. This man was a stick of dynamite waiting to go off, and anyone could have been the victim, but it just happened to be her.

The movie has its flaws, but the overall impact is powerful, and Diane Keaton is lovely and heartbreaking in the role of a lifetime. I only wish Theresa's story could have had a happy ending, but then it wouldn't be the thought provoking and moving story it is. Well worth seeing, but a very sad film about a sad life.