It’s curious that 1973’s
Sunshine has fallen off the cultural radar these days: back when there were only three networks and average viewing figures were still in the tens of millions, this pulled in the highest ratings ever for a TV movie in the US and for years after it didn’t matter where in the world you went you could find the soundtrack album in every record store. It’d be easy to dismiss it as another of the dying girlfriend/wife movies that tried to jump on the Love Story bandwagon in the early-mid 70s (the Italians seemed particularly fond of them), but in many ways this is the anti-Love Story, avoiding the sugar coating and gloss (no beautiful deathbed scene here) for something altogether messier and more down to Earth. Its characters don’t behave the way you expect them to, often making stupid or selfish decisions, running away both figuratively and literally and constantly argue – in other words, behave like regular human beings rather than idealised romantic movie stock characters. It gives the film a sense of honesty and integrity that rises above the stereotypical weepie.
Not that it isn’t emotional: it’s a choker from the very opening scene, but it sets out to be more than just another manipulative weepie: it’s also an unusually honest depiction of just how difficult it is for both partners living with someone who is dying. While the censorship restrictions of 70-s network TV’s standards and practices means that the unpleasant medical details are overlooked, the emotional cost, frustration and exhaustion are at times pretty brutal. Cristina Raines’ young mother constantly makes bad and impractical decisions early in her illness long before treatment becomes a question of quality of life versus a few more years too zoned out on medication to make the most of them, and is prone to temperamental mood swings even before then, lashing out at her partner Cliff DeYoung as things get worse. Money is a problem, family aren’t supportive, her early symptoms lead to arguments and breakups, friendships become frayed and broken. As she admits, she starts to like feeling sorry for herself - “I like being a martyr. At least it gives me something to be.” Nor is DeYoung any more idealised, unable to understand why she won’t fight the disease on his terms, walking out on her to try to force her and finding it increasingly difficult to be around her as her condition worsens.
If all that sounds offputting, it’s the honesty with which the film deals with their very human fallibilities and troubled relationship that actually makes the film work: as infuriating as their responses can sometimes be, it’s because neither knows how to deal with the enormity of the situation. Ultimately the one true anchor she finds is dictating a book about her life and thoughts into a borrowed tape recorder so that her infant daughter will at least know who she was when she’s old enough to start asking questions – and while the tapes give her a sense of purpose, the real life events the film was inspired by mean that even that doesn’t work out the way you expect. Indeed, little in the film works out the way you expect, because it’s about the way that lives that were already messy can be derailed even further by disease until you have to make the most of the increasingly few calms between storms. Raines’ character is constantly trying to grasp at what’s still beautiful in her life, but the film never gives into mawkish sentiment in the face of reality, which makes it more emotionally relatable rather than less.
It’s also something of a time capsule, set in that early 70s counter-culture the hippies left in their wake: DeYoung’s character is a musician, and there’s a lot of music in the film, most of it by John Denver (though only Country Road is performed by him). It’s given a surprisingly generous 126-minute running time for a TV movie, and the credits are pretty much top notch: Brenda Vaccaro and Meg Foster feature in the supporting cast, director Joseph Sargent directed Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Marcus-Nelson Murders (which won him the first of four Emmys and would spawn the Kojak TV series) and would follow this with The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, screenwriter Carol Sobieski would go on to co-write Fried Green Tomatoes (and would herself die prematurely), while cinematographer Bill Butler would go on to shoot Jaws. Thankfully the latter’s work looks very good indeed in this region-free and genuinely remastered Bluray: although the film was given a theatrical release outside the US, where it made less of an impact, the Bluray is in the original 1.33:1 TV ratio rather than cropped for widescreen, and the transfer has been done with tender loving care. The only extra on the disc itself is a one-minute TV promo, but it’s still an impressive release of a film that’s a lot more honest and challenging than it first sounds. Definitely well worth discovering.
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