Kirk Douglas, still pumped up from Spartacus, fills out an array of knit shirts and chews a thoughtful pencil as a "serious" architect trying to balance his personal integrity with his suburban lifestyle (materialistic wife, snot-nosed kids -- the full disaster, as someone once said). Into his fading dreams comes the stunning Kim Novak... bruised, hurting, and longing for love so much she's practically falling out of her cashmere sweater. They sneak away to a beachside roadhouse for martinis and you can guess what happens next.
Except you can't, really. Some commentators on this board have called this a soap opera, but in fact the strength of the movie is that it avoids cliché at every turn. The illicit lovers elicit only sympathy (sorry, edwagreen, you really need a remedial writing course) as they encounter every real-life obstacle that adulterers are prey to -- socially awkward patio parties, lies stretched to the breaking point, shameful discovery -- and eventually spread damage and heartbreak to each other and those they care about most.
And so the great Richard Quine takes Evan Hunter's overcooked potboiler of a novel and turns it into a small classic -- full of a delicate sadness "worthy of Ophuls," as critic David Thomson put it. The movie has its nostalgic charms: an L.A. with smogless skies and plenty of room for building a new house; Walter Matthau as a neighborhood wolf (his leering advice to his 9-year-old son is priceless); Barbara Rush as the wife (I liked one poster on the old AMC site who beautifully summed her up as a "tight package"); and Ernie Kovacks as a semi-sleazy writer who gets some life lessons from Douglas.
It also has moments of quiet emotional truth and one is particularly poignant: Douglas and Novak meet accidentally at a kiddie park and haltingly talk through their situation, realizing how hopeless it is. When I was a lad, my parents took me to this exact same amusement park; it was on Van Nuys Boulevard in the Valley, next to Ho Toys Chinese restaurant, glimpsed briefly in the background. The intersection of my childhood and adult perspectives in this scene fairly blew my mind... "Strangers" is a perfect time capsule of Los Angeles in 1960, but it's also quite timeless.
Except you can't, really. Some commentators on this board have called this a soap opera, but in fact the strength of the movie is that it avoids cliché at every turn. The illicit lovers elicit only sympathy (sorry, edwagreen, you really need a remedial writing course) as they encounter every real-life obstacle that adulterers are prey to -- socially awkward patio parties, lies stretched to the breaking point, shameful discovery -- and eventually spread damage and heartbreak to each other and those they care about most.
And so the great Richard Quine takes Evan Hunter's overcooked potboiler of a novel and turns it into a small classic -- full of a delicate sadness "worthy of Ophuls," as critic David Thomson put it. The movie has its nostalgic charms: an L.A. with smogless skies and plenty of room for building a new house; Walter Matthau as a neighborhood wolf (his leering advice to his 9-year-old son is priceless); Barbara Rush as the wife (I liked one poster on the old AMC site who beautifully summed her up as a "tight package"); and Ernie Kovacks as a semi-sleazy writer who gets some life lessons from Douglas.
It also has moments of quiet emotional truth and one is particularly poignant: Douglas and Novak meet accidentally at a kiddie park and haltingly talk through their situation, realizing how hopeless it is. When I was a lad, my parents took me to this exact same amusement park; it was on Van Nuys Boulevard in the Valley, next to Ho Toys Chinese restaurant, glimpsed briefly in the background. The intersection of my childhood and adult perspectives in this scene fairly blew my mind... "Strangers" is a perfect time capsule of Los Angeles in 1960, but it's also quite timeless.