Sinning in Suburbia, circa 1960

STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET (1960)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Kim Novak will always be Madeleine in Hitchcock's masterpiece "Vertigo." Although she is one of the loveliest presences of the last forty years, she has seldom been used well. Outside of Hitchcock, she gave a poor performance in "Picnic" where it was readily apparent that she was straining to fall in love with William Holden's character. Although that may have been the intention, Novak always seemed penurious. "Strangers When We Meet" was one of the few times where Novak's acting flowed from the character she played.

Kirk Douglas plays Larry Coe, a Californian architect who feels like a sell-out for making the same designs for the same exact houses. He gets the golden opportunity to make a house with a bizarre design for a successful author (Ernie Kovacs), and does it so that he isn't as restricted in choosing unimaginative clients. Larry has the typical trappings of your average suburban family - a nice wife, a beautiful lawn, a child, etc. It is unclear if Larry is happy, especially since his wife is so deeply involved in his career choices (she obviously wants him to make money). A neighbor named Maggie (Kim Novak) opens his eyes to a potential affair. At first, she is disinterested in going for a simple ride with Larry to the designated hill where a new house will be built. Slowly, she grows to accept him and falls in love. In other words, it is a tale told so many times in the exact same setting - suburbia (these tales come tenfold on Lifetime television every week). What cues the interest is that the film was released in 1960, the beginning of a new era where 1950's attitudes and values still meant something, particularly taking care of a family, yet were about to be headed in a new direction with women's lib and so on. The last thing you would expect is for Maggie or Larry to leave their families to pursue their affair beyond their tidy existence of suburban heaven.

There is one scene that evokes an honest, almost frightening disturbance to the calm and idyllic nature of pleasantville. Walter Matthau plays Larry's best friend, Felix, who astutely reads body language and notices that Larry is having an affair with Maggie. Felix attempts to seduce Larry's wife in a sequence that is as scintillating and subversive as one can imagine - he taunts her with piercing words and one senses that she almost plays into his hands.

Beyond that, Kirk Douglas ably performs though he seems more willing to pick up a spear than make love to Kim Novak, especially in the passage where she admits to having a prior affair. Kim Novak really startles the eyes and the ears with her incandescent beauty and dreamy voice, possessing all the characteristics that made her a spectacular success in "Vertigo." She also displays her need for love, particularly to her husband in a scene that will make you squirm since the husband seems so repressed and loveless - how can anyone resist Kim Novak? Ernie Kovacs, who died shortly after making this film, provides ample comic relief as the friendly, sensitive ear to Larry. And Matthau is at his best, playing a nearly-villainous neighbor whose main weapon is seduction.

"Strangers When We Meet" is no classic and its melodramatic, syrupy, soap-opera theatrics with swooning, syrupy, sentimental music may cause many to tune out. But I admire the performances and the revelations about marriage and commitment in an era where such ideals were often met with more success than they are today. It wasn't all as squeaky-clean and repressed as we might have thought, and this film proves it.