I've loved movies since the early '50s, and I somehow managed to miss this one until today. Well, ignorance finally ends in bliss. What a marvelous movie!
Spoilers ahead. I'm sure enough has been said about how wonderful both Wood and McQueen are--everybody else in the film, too. Neither lead actor was ever this natural and winning. But I want to say something about Robert Mulligan, and maybe Alan J. Pakula. Whoever made the decision to allow so much silence in this film was close to genius. I first noticed in the furniture store, when the two have escaped her brothers. There are three long silences at least a half minute long, while Angie and Rocky think and feel about what they've said and what is happening to them. The expressions on both faces are minimal but very moving. In fact, I think that it's in this scene that the seeds of love are planted in each of them. The silences continue when she is asleep in his girlfriend's apartment, when she has him to her new apartment for dinner, and elsewhere. Almost the entire scene in the abortion apartment was improvised. Except for the Italian family scenes, the whole thing is understated, and I think this aspect of the film shows great belief in the actors and the story, and great courage. And that's how Mulligan got the best out of both of them.
I have a different way of rating movies. How on earth can On the Waterfront, West Side Story, Vertigo, and The Philadelphia Story be rated on a single scale? Each is a masterpiece in its genre and can only be compared to similar films. Love with the Proper Stranger is in its own genre: gritty, heartbreaking, and romantic. I've given it a nine, will watch it again--and probably again--and might raise that score. What other film like this one, if there is one, is as fine?
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