Big trouble in Little Italy
You’ve probably heard of the willing suspension of disbelief, and the thing you will have to suspend your disbelief about here is that Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen are, in this particular movie, Italians.
Country: United States.
Director: Robert Mulligan.
Writer: Arnold Schulman.
Cast includes: Natalie Wood, Steve McQueen, Edie Adams, Herschel Bernardi, Tom Bosley.
Links: Wikipedia, IMDB
Keywords: abortion, pregnancy.
Set in era: contemporary.
Is it well known? less.
How did I see it? home.
Had I seen this before? never before.
Academy Awards:
Actress (nominated)
Original screenplay (nominated)
Cinematography (b/w) (nominated)
Cinematography (b/w) (nominated)
Golden Globes:
Actor drama (nominated)
Actress drama (nominated)
McQueen plays Rocky Papasano, a professional musician whom we never see play any music. Into his life comes — returns, actually — Wood as Angie Rossini, a Macy’s sales clerk he slept with after a gig. He can barely remember her, testifying to the number of beautiful women who must eagerly go to bed with Steve McQueen on sight. Believable.
In this instance, she informs him, she is pregnant. Not to worry, she isn’t going to keep it. She just needs to find “a doctor.”
The movies of 1963 are chock full of women who need “a doctor,” actually, and each one turns out a little differently. Perhaps it’s best not to spoil this one too much — just that it’s a journey complicated by money, family, religion, secrecy, and the tense relationship between our two main characters.
There is one great thing about Love With the Proper Stranger, and it is neither of the two not-very-Italian leads but their very Italian families. Any time the characters’ parents, brothers, sisters, and heck, all of New York City get involved, there’s a madcap energy and the movie is a total delight. Many scenes in the movie feel like scenes out of a play, in the manner of earlier filmmaking that had more of a foot planted in theater, and if you put these family scenes on a stage they would have gotten great laughs.
There’s one other time when the story between Angie and Rocky is at something like its best. The accidental couple have only 45 minutes to run different places, get some money, and get to the location where the “doctor” will be. “A minute later and don’t bother coming,” they are told, menacingly. But then they seem to come up with endless casual time in which they hide from some guys (Why? Unclear. ) before their fateful appointment. They manage to hole up in a cluttered . . . art studio? . . . for, like, ever, and just talk about life and love and things. And it’s their best scene together.
A song by Jack Jones comes on the radio:
I could fall in love with the proper stranger
if I heard the bells and the banjos ring,
if two certain eyes with the look of danger
smiled a welcome warm as spring.
She flicks off the radio and laments, “That’s what love is? Bells and banjos playing? How they brainwash you.”
The movie won’t really have the courage of its convictions on some of its weighty questions. The first problem posed by the movie is about unwanted pregnancy, but the second problem is this: What if two strangers are pushed together by circumstance? Is that enough? Can you manufacture love out of the trifles found in love songs?
I found the end of the movie not up to the challenge, but our journey to get there was kind of worth it. If they had made a sequel called The Rossinis vs. the Papasanos, I’d be first in line.
Notes
1. The film marks the debut of 20-something Tom Bosley as a rival for Natalie Woods’s affections. Pitting Tom Bosley against Steve McQueen on 1963 Love Island is an unfair fight.
2. I did not know the name of the director, Robert Mulligan, but maybe I should have as this came right after his most famous film, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
The conversation
• The NY Times critic didn’t find Steve McQueen to be leading-man material. We’ll keep monitoring that.
I feel very unhappy about the sturdy little clerk of Miss Wood, who deserves someone much more substantial and attractive than this lug of Mr. McQueen. . . . He’s a face-squinching simpleton, for my money.
Bosley Crowther, Eight New Movies Arrive for the Holidays, The New York Times, 1963
• Here are two modern-day reviews that also have thoughts:
“The primary characteristic of Love with the Proper Stranger, in defiance of its handsomely poetic title, is that it is fucking blunt. That is the first thing it wants us to be aware of.”
Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending
“Love with the Proper Stranger is a modest comedy-drama that unfortunately doesn’t age well, for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious is that despite its premise involving pre-marital sex, it’s still mired in 1950s sensibilities.”
Frank Showalter, Frank’s Movie Log
Country: United States.
Director: Robert Mulligan.
Writer: Arnold Schulman.
Cast includes: Natalie Wood, Steve McQueen, Edie Adams, Herschel Bernardi, Tom Bosley.
Links: Wikipedia, IMDB
Keywords: abortion, pregnancy.
Set in era: contemporary.
Is it well known? less.
How did I see it? home.
Had I seen this before? never before.
Academy Awards:
Actress (nominated)
Original screenplay (nominated)
Cinematography (b/w) (nominated)
Cinematography (b/w) (nominated)
Golden Globes:
Actor drama (nominated)
Actress drama (nominated)