Yeah, actually. The 30s and 40s cranked out a very specific type of melodramatic film designed to appeal to women. These were called, weepies. Usually the protagonist is either an ingenue who consorts unknowingly/innocently with bad people or a woman with a shameful past. These women are basically good women who go bad for one reason or another, usually due to the most sordid or ridiculous of reasons. Whatever it is, they royally fuck-up and spend the rest of the film redeeming themselves in the eyes of the male patriarchy. If they die in the process of regaining their lost honor, all the better and more noble.
The reason this struck me is that Garland's character goes to work at what passed in 1959 for a mental institution for children. She's clearly down on her luck, is noticeably single, and not a mother. She disagrees with the doctor's approach to helping the children and takes an interest in a terribly lonely child who Cassavetes deliberately makes into the most pathetic character in film since the baby Barbara Stanwyck accidentally killed in Night Nurse. Once again, a woman is shown the errors of her ways by the more intelligent man and she is redeemed by submitting to the doctor's authority, "for the good of the children."
Cassavetes actually has a good message in the film; "retarded" children belong in mainstream society, not institutions, but the melodrama is too thick and obvious. On Parents' Day the cars of the parents dutifully drive onto the institution grounds on cue, and they leave on cue. The college educated white couple are dubious neglectful parents while the poor single "colored" woman knows all there is to know about her child's disability. The doctor is a maverick with untried methods, misunderstood by his board of directors holding on to his job precariously. And like Addams Family Values, all is resolved during a Thanksgiving Day pagent.
It's a bit much.