THESE MARRIED PEOPLE

An intimate register of domestic interchange in the young marriages of three couples provides a semisweet commentary on the time- the 1950's- and the anxious age of moral indecision which shadows a generation just out of the last war and possibly into the next. For the Drakes, the Benedicts and the Hollisters, all friends, share the uncertainty of a marriage which may not be working out. The Hollisters live in an atmosphere of shock and disunity in spite of four children (two sets of twins) and Carol is relentless in her analytical invective and idiom which spikes every argument- while Dave, far past psychiatry, finds that her neurosis is largely Freud. The Drakes hit a when Mimi, who is impulsive and ambitious, interferes in the business in which Tim is impractical and to which he is indifferent- to the point of giving it up and staying home. For the Benedicts, there's Kit's doubt of Steve, as letters from a girl in Europe revive a wartime affair and it is not until she reaches a point of confidence in herself that she finds her faith in him.... A facile touch gives this its high rental aptitudes.