Loving (1970)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A frank, very adult look at a marriage on the verge of destruction. George Segal is a not so successful graphic artist married to very efficient homemaker Eva Marie Saint. He has his hands full with a wife, a girlfriend, two children, ambivalent clients, and very little money. Segal is exceptional in a role that is really perfect for his particular befuddled angst. Saint is every inch his equal, slowly realizing her husband's unhappiness, but not shy about letting him know the door is always open. Whether she actually will kick him out is debatable. The supporting cast includes David Doyle, Keenan Wynn, Roy Scheider and, briefly, Sterling Hayden. Directed with his usual sure hand by Irvin Kershner from a script by Don Devlin. The expert cinematography is by the great Gordon Willis.

Even George Segal himself acknowledged that he had a bland screen presence (Halliwell's Film Guide-1995). Most people wouldn't list him as one of their favorite actors. However, he was definitely okay for this film. Segal's character in this movie is quasi-tragic, a talented commercial artist and a family man, married to adequately attractive Eva Marie Saint and with two cute, wise-cracking daughters. Why he seems to want (or needs) to throw this away for drinking and women makes for somewhat compelling viewing, and leads to a great climax at a party for a lot of sophisticated art types on a very cold winter's night, in which first a lot of drinking and then temptation lead to one of the better conclusions you're likely to see.

George Segal (not as scruffy as he typically had been at the start of the decade) plays a troubled husband and father suffering through career uncertainty who cheats on his wife (Eva Marie Saint, cast yet again as a doormat-spouse). Segal is an affable screen presence, but we never learn much about what makes him tick, what causes him to hurt the ones he loves. Talented director Irvin Kershner hit a few snags in his career; here, the semi-improvisational ground he's treading desperately needs a center, or a leading character we can attach some emotions to. The dramatic finale is well-realized, and Segal's comeuppance is provocative and thoughtful--at least something is HAPPENING; overall, it's a cynical slice of the marriage blahs, one that probably played a lot fresher in 1970 than it does today. ** from ****

In the great Jean Renoir classic "Rules of the Game", a character played by the director himself comments that "everybody has his own good reasons." This rightly has been taken to be the great humanist director's basic philosophy of life. Seeing, over and over again, this understanding, non-judgmental attitude by a narrative artist toward his characters' weaknesses is what makes art film audiences love Renoir's work and consider him one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. Irvin Kershner's "Loving" is one of the rare Hollywood films worthy of being called Renoirian, and it is for just this reason. Even though "Loving" is filled with highly-flawed characters making seemingly disastrous choices about their lives, its genius is how it puts the audience in a position where it cannot (or at least cannot with any decency) judge them. This may be more than many audience members can handle, being so used to films with heroes and villains about whom they are allowed to feel smugly superior. The legendary "New Yorker" critic Pauline Kael, in her rave review of the film, wrote that it "looks at the failures of middle-class life without despising the people; it understands that they already despise themselves" and that there's "a decency in the way that Kershner is fair to everyone." We could use a few more films like "Loving" out there in the American film cannon. If you every get a chance to see this film, don't hesitate to do so!