Strangers When We Meet (1960)

 I watched this movie on YouTube because I’m a fan of the novelist Evan Hunter. 

The movie is an adaptation of his novel by the same name. Hunter wrote the screenplay. 

This is a really good movie. The two leading actors are Kim Novak, as Margaret (Maggie) and Kirk Douglas, as Larry. Both of them are at the peak of their careers and they, particularly Novak, deliver very effective performances. 

The story is set in middle class suburbia. There are nice homes, lawns, newish cars, sidewalks, and shade trees. This projects everything that we have come to be seen as The American Dream. It’s an early sunny morning. Elementary age children are assembling on the sidewalk. They are being seen off to school by their youthful parents. A man drives up. His son jumps out of the passenger side and we see his father, Larry (Kirk Douglas). Something catches his eye and he stops to look out the passenger side window leaning from the driver’s seat. Reverse angle reveals a beautiful blond young mother in the final moment of delivering her son. She glances at the driver looking at her. He drives off to his day. It’s that “first sight” moment very nicely shown to us. 

 We follow him into his life. He is a successful architect. He drives to the apartment of a successful young novelist played by Ernie Kovaks. He is going to build a home for him. It’s one of the fruits of his first two novels being commercial hits. He is also a footloose playboy.
They talk about the house Larry is to design for him. Along the way they discuss artistic freedom. Larry tells him not to write for the commercial crowd, but what he really feels inside.This is an indicator of what is to come. A breath of Do What thou Wilt no matter what the others think as the path to real success and personal fulfillment in life.
  This 1960 movie represents a departure from the Motion Picture Production Code (1929-1968) in that it deal directly with love and sex and infedelity outside of the institution of marrige and shows it in an unjudgemental way. It is treated for what it is simply a matter of fact and what a certain number of people do.
This is not a free love romp, but a clearer view inside the Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver world that the entertainment of the 1950s presented. Larry and Maggie get together and have a caring love affair out of the view of the spouses of each. There is guilt, but there is also clear justification particularly in Maggie’s character. Her husband is distantly doing what he has been trained to do, job number one for a man. He is caught up in business, working, and excuses himself when Maggie indicates being lonely and wanting to get together. “Not tonight dear”, as he sits in the living room after work, busy with pressing matters in his work papers.

Kim Novak is so great in this. In a very reserved close in performance she clearly shows Maggie’s demure nature that is shaken up by her desire for love, for life. Although the modern viewer might cringe a bit at certain aspects of the mutual physical approach scenes of these two which skirt the edge of the cliche “no means yes” familiar in so many movies as the man makes his move. But in this instance there is some reality. Maggie is really in that edge of the high dive position of wanting but governed and held in check by the culture she is willingly a part of but is not fully serving her. 

   There is a critical scene at a house neighborhood cocktail party that Larry’s wife, Barbara Rush, has. She invites all the neighbors including Maggie and her husband who in fact show up. Late in the evening Maggie and Larry have a moment away from the others in his home studio. They quietly talk and Larry writes I LOVE YOU on a big yellow legal pad. At that moment an obnoxious neighbor, Walter Matthau, enters and sees Larry tear off the sheet, crumple and toss it in the trash. This sets up the climax of the story. 

   A rare honest movie in which many will find it easy to see themselves in one of the roles or feel like they are spying on a couple of friends. One can feel an uneasy compassion toward them even if not directly involved, maybe even left out of their passion. There could even be a sense of relief in not having to go through it all again.