User reviews

I skimmed the other comments before writing this one in case I'd missed something, but I think my initial lukewarm reaction to the film, which I saw on Turner Classic Movies, is the one I'll stick with.

I tuned into this movie because of Mel Gibson and also because I also happen to like Matthew Modine and Edward Hermann.

One commenter said something about the director liking strong female characters, but I didn't see Mrs. Soffel as being strong. Yes, she was unfortunate to be born at a time when women were basically seen as appendages to men. Her husband was not terribly understanding. As the movie opens, she is ill. Then she seems to undergo a miraculous recovery after being bedridden for months. My interpretation of this is that she had probably been suffering from a depressive episode. Yes, Mrs. Soffel is weak. Instead of doing something positive to stir her out of her situation, she falls prey to a criminal, who, admittedly, may not have been all bad. I suppose she had formed some sort of romantic image of Ed Biddle. And perhaps he also had a romantic streak. Both characters are shown to be not at all realistic in the way they see life.

I also found the film rather slow-moving, especially at the beginning. I almost stopped watching. Overall I found, though there were some touching emotional moments, especially at the end, that the movie lacked much of a plot and the characters lacked depth. With such a weak script, I think it would be difficult for me to see much for the actors to have worked with and cannot praise their performances. I wouldn't consider the movie to have been a complete waste of my time, but I couldn't really recommend it.

Mel Gibson's performance in "Mrs. Soffel" is superb in any event, but viewed in the context that it is the first time he played an American character on film, that his brother was played by American actor Matthew Modine, and that the film was based on a true story of two men from Pittsburgh, it is an even greater achievement.

This one was a nice surprise, I hadn't seen it when it first came out, so I rented it and enjoyed it thoroughly. Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson carry the day in this true tale of a wardens wife who falls for a prisoner. Matthew Modine does a fine job as Mel Gibsons brother, and the entire cast is fine. It's beautifully shot in Pittsburgh, and there is a languid quality about it that I found alluring. Well done all around.

Australian director Gillian Armstrong makes great films with strong women characters--her earlier Australian film "My brilliant career" being a perfect example. I watched "Mrs. Soffel" because of my admiration for Armstrong and found that "Mrs. Soffel" could not hold a candle to "My brilliant career" even though American actress Diane Keaton was admirable compared to the Australian actresses in the latter.

Armstrong had the talented Australian cinematographer Russel Boyd (who was responsible for the seminal works of Peter Weir and Bruce Beresford) once again to work with. While Armstrong and Boyd used justifiably darkened interior shots, I had problems seeing anything for long periods and had to rely on the soundtrack!

Armstrong loves to develop the female characters but leaves the male characters totally undeveloped (Mr Soffel and Jack Biddle). This is one reason I prefer the works of Weir and Beresford over Armstrong--even though her latent talent cannot be ignored. It is amazing to see Soffel's daughter getting equal or more prominence in the script than Mr Soffel towards the end.

Mel Gibson has made a name for himself by directing "Braveheart," but I give more credence to his acting phase in Australia ("Tim", "Mad Max", etc.). I am convinced that he is a director's actor--doing well with good directors. In "Mrs Soffel" Armstrong has evidently invested time with Diane Keaton, who carries the film. Gibson only lends support to her thanks more to the script than his acting capabilities.

Most of the fine tribe of Australian filmmakers of the Seventies have drifted to the US to become richer and gain international recognition--but their work in Australia in the Seventies remains unsurpassed.

Mrs. Soffel is one movie with a fine cast that I missed in the 1980's so when I saw this move as a $2 DVD, I snapped it up. It is a period drama and romance with interesting sets depicting Pittsburgh in 1901 and the prison for death row brothers, Ed and Jack Biddle. They are befriended by Diane Keaton, as Mrs. Soffel, the well-meaning wife of a prison warden played by Ed Hermann. The Biddle brothers are Mel Gibson and Matthew Modine as Ed and Jack Biddle. They are likable and good-looking and far from the image of hardened criminals, thus winning the hearts of working people, women especially. Mrs. Soffel is a Christian activist, who visits them with Bibles in hand trying to comfort them. She is a bright, middle class woman with a hard-working, responsible husband and three children. But Mrs. Soffel, who suffered from depression, is not content. Diane Keaton portrays a woman of her time who wants to go beyond her comfort zone and live a meaningful life. Thirty eight at the time of the movie, Keaton's age is about right to portray Mrs. Soffel, who is reaching middle age with her children getting older but she is a passionate woman whose own husband is focused on his career. Mrs. Soffel falls deeply in love with Ed Biddle. No small matter for a woman of her time. Both Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson were clearly chosen for their star appeal. Gibson is 10 years younger at 28, so this makes the romance more scandalous for the early 1900's and possibly titillating for a modern audience. As a period drama, it falls short because the romance gets the upper hand. Nevertheless, the prison sets, the on-location train travel and views of the horse drawn sled in the countryside are quite effective. I did like Matthew Modine as Jack Biddle, the less mature but more fun-loving younger brother. Mel Gibson cares deeply for his brother and wants him to be spared the noose; he feels it's his fault. He also is the true romantic who falls head over heels for Kate, Mrs. Soffel, writing poems about her and showing as deep an affection as he can behind the bars that separate them. Ed Hermann gives a good performance as Mrs. Soffel's husband, a man who performs his roles as husband and father, while awkwardly carrying on as prison warden.

Continuing my plan to watch every Mel Gibson movie in order, 8 come to his second American movie of 1984 Mrs Sofel.

Plot In A Paragraph: Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton) develops a friendship with Ed Biddle (Mel Gibson) a convict sentenced to death for murder, when she reads the bible to him.

A movie like this won't have hurt Gibson with female audiences, even though it failed to make a dent at the box office.

The movie almost seems like a showcase for Gibson at times, as with the exception of Keaton, nobody else (including Matthew Modine and Edward Herman) are giving anything to allow them to shine despite both being central to the plot.

It's a sad movie, but despite being "a true story" it takes a lot of believing!! How much of it was true and how much was dramatised I have no idea, but I'd say give it a watch and form your own opinions.

In my worthless opinion, I'd say it's worth watching once.

Mrs Sofel didn't break the top 100 grossing movies of the year.

(1984) Mrs. Soffel DRAMA/ SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Starring Mel Gibson as prisoner, Ed Biddle and Diane Keaton as Kate Soffel that was supposedly based on fact. That happened in 1901 centering on those two characters unusual love affair. 'The Biddle Brothers' of Ed (Mel Gibson) and his brother, Jack (Mathew Modine) are sentenced to death because of another former criminal's testimony, which this guy claims he saw the brothers shoot and kill a defenseless store clerk. Except that these claims are made by a convict who already has a criminal record. And since out of the many robberies the Biddle Brothers had done together, their had never been a recorded incident where someone had been killed as a result of those robberies, so it's more probable than not that it had never happened. Anyways, Mrs. Soffel is married to the warden of this particular prison where all she does is hand out bibles and blankets to all the inmates. At first, she doesn't believe Ed (Gibson) when he tells her that him and his brother are innocent in regarding a clerk's death, but as a result of putting one her daughters into bed, her daughter informs her as a result of saving newspaper clippings that it's more probable than impossible that 'the brothers' may be innocent. Ed then strike up an emotional attraction with Mrs. Soffel since she's not getting any from her impotent husband anymore, which her marriage seems to be lifeless. As viewers witness they sleep in separate rooms and act like husband and wife in principal only. And it was during that time, she of course does her best to prevent this death penalty to occur. Although, I liked both Mel Gibson and Diane Keaton's performances, the story structure is somewhat dull and predictable. For it was obvious the film is clearly arguing against the death penalty, solely for this reason is that the accused might be innocent. And this message was mentioned like in the first half hour before it drags and prolongs the movie by showcasing the two characters of Keaton and Gibson becoming intimate with one another, something one can get from a Harlequin novel. And that is boring which forced me to use the fast forward button on many scenes while playing.

This is one of the best American films of the 1980's. It is based on the true story of the wife of the Allegheny County Jail warden, Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton) who falls in love with a sexually alluring working class inmate, Ed Biddle (Mel Gibosn) in turn of the century Pittsburgh and plots to help him and his brother, Jack (Matthew Modine) escape. Director Gillian Armstrong and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner brilliantly decided to deal with the story in an elliptical and indirect way. We aren't telegraphed anything. We don't know if the Biddle's are innocent. We don't really understand why Kate falls in love with Ed. We aren't directly told why Kate is so disappointed in her life. The filmmakers takes this personal story and turns it into a progressive feminist mood poem. It is extraordinary to see a post 1970's American film this complex and this progressive.

Diane Keaton gives a remarkably complex and nuanced performance. The film is almost unimaginable with her in the leading role. Early in the film she communicates the torment and longing of Kate in a way that warrants comparisons with the greatest acting of the silent cinema. We see the depression and desperation in Kate's face in a way that rivals Maria Falconetti in Dryer's THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and Lilian Gish in Victor Sjöström's THE WIND and D.W. Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOM'S. One of the remarkably subversive aspects of the film is its relationship to Kate's Christianity (which becomes particularly pointed watched in the contemporary context and thinking about Mel Gibson's PASSION OF THE Christ fundamentalism). She is a bit scary creeping about the prison trying to sell doomed men on a faith that will set them free. The suggestion is that it is this same faith, or more precisely the way Christianity is used as a structuring device of patriarchy, that has trapped Kate into her own life sentence. When she becomes aroused by Ed everything shifts, she looks different, some kind of remarkable radiance shines forth from Keaton's face. Her bible lessons become a pretext for sexual release. She literally makes love to Ed through the bars with his brother nearby, which adds a remarkable charge of voyeurism to the proceedings.

Mel Gibson has never been photographed more sensually then in this film. There is a scene late in the film, in which, he is lying in bed with the sunlight playing on his face that in which his beauty is almost angelic. He's photographed and contextualized the way male directors have often shot young classically beautiful women (think of Julie Christie in David Lean's Dr. ZHIVAGO, Joseph Losey's THE GO BETWEEN, or Donald Cammell's DEMONSEED or Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN or Sydney Pollock's 3 DAYS OF THE CONDOR). Armstong also allows Gibson's sense of humor to peek out to suggest layers to this character. We never totally trust Ed, yet we root for him or at least root for Kate's vision of him.

The cinematography by Russell Boyd is exceptionally original and the production design emphasizes the grimy oppressive nature of an industrial town. this was actually a critique of the film at the time of its release. It was too dark, mainstream reviewers said. Well actually its historically accurate. Pittsburgh was so soot filled and grimy that the street lights had to stay on all day long! This is the great environmental tragedy of the industrial revolution. Armstrong uses this look for strong dramatic effect and creates a kind of mood poem here that reminds me of the best work of Antonioni and of Werner Herzog remarkable NOSFERATU. Like in that great film we can never quiet situate ourselves, the oppressive dim look of the film suggests we might be in a kind of waking nightmare. Is the environment part of Kate's psychic and physical affliction? Who could be happy or healthy living in this kind of relentlessly dismal environ? When we finally leave Pittsburgh Boyd and Armstrong present us with some of the most lovingly photographed images of sun and snow in American cinema. The viewer so ready for these brighter images that they alter our the way we connect to the story.

That this film was neither a critical nor a commercial success is a tragedy for the contemporary Hollywood cinema. Its failure became one of the many excuses for the overwhelming turn to the banal cookie cutter cinema that Hollywood is known for today. One hopes that cinephiles everywhere will reclaim ambitious films like MRS. SOFFEL as an example

oh the power of sex with a young piece of stuff (Mel Gibson) when you are a 35 year old woman with an unloving, ungrateful, old and ugly husband! i, also, chanced on this film when little other viewing was on. i could easily have changed channel,as the beginning of the film was uninspiring, but i was interested to see Mel Gibson in one of his early roles, in which he looks much younger than the 28 years he was at the time. i was surprised not to have seen the film, Mrs. Soffel, before, it has been around since 1984. Mel is not one of my favourite actors, but he does a good job with the role of a hot,charming guy, and believable performance in persuading Mrs. Soffel to help him escape prison. well, what a waste it would be to hang him! the film helped me to understand why so many women fall for and marry convicted murderers with life sentences. sexual chemistry can go right to a woman's head! i did wonder if reality kicked in for Kate Soffel (brilliantly played by Diane Keaton) when the sheriff's men started to chase and shoot at them! or are we to believe her life before was so dreadful she would rather die? ladies, the moral is, keep well away from temptation, before it is too late. the film had the makings of being a real weepy, and i was prepared to get the tissues out, but the script was not verbally in-depth enough to stir my heart. i wept buckets at Mel Gibson's performance in Braveheart. maybe if the ending had been more heart rendering this film would have had more attention. still, worth watching for two good acting performances. a film for the girls. female writer.

Based on a true story of two death-row-imprisoned brothers about to be hanged, and then rescued by the warden's wife... the titular character played by a classic-melodrama-suited Diane Keaton... these convicted killers have very little interesting about them, while the leader, played by Mel Gibson, looks like... well... a young Mel Gibson (opposite Matthew Modine), who just about any woman would fall for...

And being a likeable, wink-at-rebellion movie-rebel countered by a bullying guard, there's absolutely no edge (or glory) to his performance that would, in a better film, provide Gibson a possible Oscar nomination... he simply plays it too safe and affable here, as does the director...

Who painted a deliberately bleak canvas nicely recreating turn-of-the-century rural America in its mahogany landscapes, dire factories and the actual prison...

But what's here is more a Harlequin Romance montage than either an effective prison-plot-escape thriller or true story that needed telling: because MRS. SOFFEL is more whispered than spoken, and soon after, forgotten.

This is a visually beautiful movie bringing the story along in with obvious and subtle references.

The title character is a trapped woman. The 'noblesse oblige'of being the warden's wife coupled with her own frustrations and frailties makes her life intolerable. She loves her children; she hates her life.

Here, she becomes intrigued by a prisoner in her husband's jail. He appeals to her imagination as well as her sensibility as a woman. She finds a soul-mate in their exchanges as she pretends to read-him-to-reform from bible passages. She flees with him and is willing to die with him to keep from returning to her unbearable life.

This is based on a true story. But it is a telling of the story of women, most of whom until the last 25 years or so, had little choice but to marry and to identify themselves in terms of their husbands. Their identity was not their own; their choices had to be appropriate to their marriage station; they were judged by how well they maintained husband's well being and their children's achievements.

While much has changed in women's lives, vestiges of the past still do exist. The references to "baking cookies" in the 2004 presidential campaign signals this.

Mrs. Soffel represents the lives of women over time. She desperately seeks the love and freedom that her standing in life denies her. This has been a common women's theme.

Diane Keaton is the warden's wife, and helps the Biddle brothers escape from jail. based on a true story. Keaton had already made a bunch of films with woody, and would make some more. Co-stars Mel Gibson and Matt Modine. The warden's wife falls for one of the brothers and runs off with them when they escape from jail. at the start of the film, she has strong religious beliefs, and uses that to comfort the prisoners, but along the way, she seems to lose her faith. so now the search is on! no big surprises. its pretty good. they paint the warden's wife as a little loopy, and they take some liberties. Directed by ozzie Gillian Armstrong.

It's 1901 Pittsburgh. Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton) is the wife of prison warden Peter Soffel (Edward Herrmann). Ed Biddle (Mel Gibson) and Jack Biddle (Matthew Modine) are brothers on death row for murder although they claim to be innocent. Kate befriends Ed. It grows into a romance and she helps them escape.

This is based on a true story. It doesn't always make it compelling. I can do with a lot less of the courting in the first half. It is terribly boring and terribly long. It takes an hour before they escape. The escape and the fugitive stages have a bit more tension which this movie sorely needs. As for the romance, it's hard to know Ed's true feelings until they become fugitives on the run. Keaton and Gibson do try to generate some heat at that point. It's a 50-50 proposition. It feels more like a romance novel. The most compelling scenes happen in the last five minutes. It is a very long slough to get there.

I'm not a big fan of Mel Gibson (his politics, especially), but I thought that his performance was the only thing that made this film bearable. It ran for just over an hour an a half, but it seemed like more than a week to me. I did not believe the love affair, even thought it is based on a true story; the wife must have had some other issues with her husband besides her illness (which was never defined in the movie.

Get a pizza and watch a wrestling match!

"Mrs. Soffel" is a wonderful movie I have seen many times, but the last viewing was so many years ago I'm watching it right now on TCM.

I'm a sucker for movies whose main characters suddenly, inexplicably make a decision which goes against everything they seem to embody, or at least that which the viewer has come to know about them. That Kate Soffel's story is a true one makes it all the more intriguing.

In early 20th-century America, the lot of a wife, even that of a well-to-do-man and mother to lovely children, was a lonely, empty, barren existence. In a wealthy household with servants, there was very little meaningful work for the mistress of the house to do every day.

Even the layers upon layers of clothes Victorian women wore served no practical purpose except to restrict movement and render their wearers merely decorative. Express your opinions and you got packed off to visit relatives in hopes that maybe the change of scenery would "do you good." There were millions of avenues for creative expression and enterprise that were simply cut off for women.

Good minds went to waste. Souls shriveled and died.

Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton) was the wife of a prison warden in Pittsburgh at the turn of the last century. She served as something of a missionary to the prisoners, giving them Bibles, holding prayer readings with them and hoping to guide them towards remorse and redemption. She never expects to fall in love with one of the inmates. But fall she does, for the charming Ed Biddle (Mel Gibson), who along with his brother Jack, (Matthew Modine) are in jail on murder charges.

Kate is suffocating; the Biddles are desperate. Prone to fits of melancholy and depression, plagued with fears that she is not a good mother and that she has failed her husband -- whom she has come to learn she really doesn't know very well -- Kate, like so many women of her era, is desperate for something to end the tedium, the frustration, the despair. She is a perfect candidate for the dangerous voyage she helps plan and sets out on with the Biddle brothers.

"Mrs. Soffel" raises many ethical and moral issues, among them the divergent path Kate takes from her religious teachings, and the Biddle brothers' guilt or innocence. It can be appreciated equally on one or more levels, but it remains a remarkably restrained depiction of emotions and passion that are anything but.

Just watched this on TCM. Up Front: I am reviewing the movie without reference to the true story. I am appalled at the glowing reviews this movie has received. Even as faction, this is not a glamorous story about two wonderful star-crossed lovers. It's about a weak, worthless female falling for a charming murderer who charmed the dingbat into helping him escape prison. It's not just a not-so-loving husband being abandoned. It's about a mother abandoning her children (I think there were four).so she can get laid by a handsome rogue. You cannot be more selfish, cruel, and heartless than that.

There is almost no relevance to the much more darker true story, whose female character is much more akin to my version.

"Mrs. Soffel", a movie much overlooked in the mid 1980s, deserves a reevaluation at present. With the advent of so many successful period films, "Mrs. Soffel" can be seen as a predecessor of sorts. The movie, a true story filmed on location in Pittsburgh, PA, is one of exquisite beauty and restrained passion. The emotions evoked by it are comparable to those produced by the more modern "The Age of Innocence" and "The Remains of the Day". The doomed couple, played by Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson have an extraordinary chemistry which smolders throughout the entire film. In addition, the cinematography is beautiful (for something filmed in 1984, it's almost remarkable how effective the atmosphere is!). Do not look towards this movie if you are seeking unbridled romance or breath taking action. The rewards of "Mrs. Soffel" are far more cerebral.