Four Walls

If These Walls Could Talk is a 1996 Golden Globe and Emmy Award-nominated made for television movie, broadcast on HBO. It follows the plights of three different women and their experiences with abortion. Each of the three stories takes place in the same house in three different years: 1952, 1974, and 1996. All three segments were co-written by Nancy Savoca. Savoca directed the first and second segment while Cher directed the third. The womens' experiences in each vignette are designed to demonstrate the popular views of society on the issue in each of the given decades. The film became a surprise success, and was HBO's highest rated movie ever.

Based on John Golden's stage play Four Walls, MGM's Straight is the Way offers the monumentally miscast Franchot Tone as tough ex-convict Benny Horowitz, who announces his plans to go straight. This warms the heart of Benny's Jewish mama (May Robson), but his ex-moll Shirley (Gladys George) is unable to join in the happiness, since she is now the mistress of Italian gang boss Monk (Jack LaRue). Despite his efforts to stay out of trouble, Benny is required to bump off Monk before he can lead a clean life. Meanwhile, nominal heroine Bertha (Karen Morley), Benny's stepsister, pines away of unrequited love. The original Four Walls had starred Paul Muni, who was certainly better suited to the ethnicity of the piece than the markedly WASPish Franchot Tone.

If These Walls Could Talk is a 1996 Golden Globe and Emmy Award-nominated made for television movie, broadcast on HBO. It follows the plights of three different women and their experiences with abortion. Each of the three stories takes place in the same house in three different years: 1952, 1974, and 1996…

Two characters: old and young; teacher and pupil; man and woman. Four walls within which they conjure intellectualism, relive the profession (journalism), explore politics and discover each other.

In search of extra points, student Tadokoro (Nagaoka) joins the university's erotic writing club, finding a somewhat lifeless gathering of five men around a table. Led by the 56-year-old Sakamoto (veteran Emoto of The Eel and Dr. Akagi fame), who is still enrolled because "being married gives you a discount on tuition," they congregate in a cramped room whose four walls are covered floor to ceiling with nudie posters. The club's sole female member, the spunky Mayama (Eguchi), is also its most talented, already contributing stories to a weekly men's magazine and getting paid for them…..

Ambitious cello student Jessica moves into a new flat, together with her boyfriend Lorenz. When she receives the honorable invitation to represent Germany in an international contest for classic music it seems to be her great opportunity - at the same time it means enormous pressure. In her home, Jessica starts to prepare herself meticulously for the contest. However, her own four walls don't seem to give her shelter as Jessica finds herself more and more exposed to small and major anonymous harassments. What is the neighbour's involvement prying mysteriously behind half-closed curtains? Lorenz doesn't notice any of this and therefore finds it hard to believe Jessica's assumptions, which creates conflict between the young couple. The increasing pressure and stress begin to noticeably gnaw on Jessica's everyday life and pretty soon reality and imagination blur. Eventually Jessica finds her life scattered, caused by her own ambition. In the desperate hope to restore her felicity, she starts to defend her home - at all cost…