Strangers When We Meet
by Richard Quine
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barbara Rush, Ernie Kovacs, Kim Novak, Kirk Douglas, Walter MatthauDirector: Richard Quine
Brand: Sony
Cinematographer: Charles Lang
Producer: Richard Quine
Editor: Charles Nelson
Writer: Evan Hunter
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language); Japanese (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-02-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Strangers When We Meet
Movie Review: Dancing about architecture
Summary: 5 Stars
A soap opera, sure, but one that's perfectly extravagant and surprisingly grown up, with unexpected moments of surprise and tension -- "Strangers," it's worth noting, has the best, most nerve-wracking unanswered phone call this side of "Once Upon a Time in America," and that's by no means faint praise.
Kirk Douglas plays a driven, artistically-inclined, vaguely-Zen-without-saying-Zen architect who builds high-dollar homes around Los Angeles. He's contentedly married but you couldn't call it "happily" -- to turn the old phrase, "his wife just doesn't understand him." Seriously.
Kim Novak is a troubled neighbor Douglas' character meets, befriends and then falls into an affair with. No way around it -- she's beautiful but she is seriously damaged goods and while an expensive big studio film from 1960 can't lay out everything we'd like to know about her past, it's still surprisingly frank: Her husband seems to have gone cold toward her following a rape she may or may not have allowed to happen.
We follow the couple through their rendezvous, awkward meetings and changes of favor, and the movie really takes its time establishing their environment and telling their story. It should be boring but it isn't. Part of that is due to the overall backdrop -- with its moneyed flavors, stitch-perfect clothes, painstakingly appointed sets and barely covered subtext, "Strangers" feels right in line with Douglas Sirk from the same period. But director Richard Quine and screenwriter Evan Hunter eschew Sirk's overt melodrama and lace the story with some unexpected maturity.
Novak, her blonde hair tinted vaguely violet, plays the whole movie on edge, phrasing her lines with tense whispers that shouldn't work but mostly kind of do.
Walter Matthau is also good as a sleepy-eyed suburban shark who makes big trouble for nice people, and the character could've supplied the basis for a fascinating film all on his own. As he and his son stroll the neighborhood, Matthau spies a beautiful housewife and says to his boy, who is about ten years old, "Love 'em all." Funny for a second, but hearing the leer in that friendly, familiar voice made my skin crawl.
Ernie Kovacs is also on-hand as one of Douglas' clients, a best-selling author. Kovacs doesn't appear to have a literary bone in his body (jet pilot, clothing magnate, casino owner and lottery winner all would've been more suitable-seeming careers for this character) but he sells their friendship far better than he sells the character. Plus, it's Ernie Kovacs, which is cool period casting you can't argue with.
I'm still working out the ending -- maybe it's a cop-out, but it's also devastating. Throughout the film, Douglas and Novak are constantly putting their fling on hold, then rushing back to each other, apologizing and basically asking to never fight again. Onscreen, it seems wildly indecisive and chain-yanking, but it also carries truth. That's how passion frequently operates. So at the end (SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT) when Douglas tells Novak he's going off to Hawaii to "build a city" and he's taking his wife and kids instead of her ... we have to wonder if that's really his final answer. Or an answer dictated by the studio. On top of which, hours earlier Douglas' wife banished him from her life with blunt economy, only to return almost immediately and successfully take it all back.
These questions and concerns, however, pale in harsh light of the final shot in which Novak, freshly dumped and taking it well, almost immediately encounters another smiling man (the same way she met Douglas, the same way she met the man who raped her) and drives away, crying, screwed again. It looks like a gimmick ending, it feels like a gimmick ending, but as it extends to show us her long drive away from something that really should've work out, it asks a particularly bleak question: What the hell is she going to do now?
Summary of Strangers When We Meet
Architect larry coe has a wife and family but becomes embroiled in an affair with beautiful maggie gault a neighbor with her own family. The two lovers are forced to face the choice between love and loyalty. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 06/27/2006 Starring: Kirk Douglas Ernie Kovacs Run time: 117 minutes Rating: NrClassics DVD Video
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