Essentially, our current soulmates or significant others (who those who are lucky enough to find one) are all strangers at the very beginning, so are Natalie Wood’s Macy’s girl Angie Rossini and Steve McQueen’s odd-jobbing musician Rocky Papasano, both in their salad days, they do make an adorable couple, but before they go down that inevitable road, there is a snag here in Robert Mulligan’s LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER, she is pregnant with his child before they can get to know each other.
Pluckily wrestling with the contentious topics like one night stand and abortion, Mulligan’s follow-up of his pièce-de-résistance TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962) is tonally friskier and visually more fluid, especially through its opening passage of a jam-packed musician hiring session, which channels the two protagonists together when she drops the bombshell, and its coda on the crowded intersection right outside the Macy’s, the influence of French New Wave is in evidence, an emancipated mobility runs through these exterior sequences, engenders a revelatory frisson of realism that heralds the footsteps of the New Hollywood.
There are satisfaction aplenty in watching the smoldering interplay between Angie and Rocky which culminates with the moment we await (it is made in the 60s, thus a mainstream American movie would be unconceivable to advocate a pro-choice prog stance), when the abortion is scotched in the eleventh hour, and Rocky, a hardened bachelor, is finally if begrudgingly willing to tie the knot. Much to his disappointment, his purportedly mature overtures only backfire grossly and exasperate Angie, whose modern if slightly paradoxical view on love cannot stomach a shotgun marriage, she wants him to marry her because he loves her, not because there is a bun in the oven.
Mesmerically acting with a steely resolve which possibly she hasn’t exhibited before, Wood reaps her third and (unfortunately) final Oscar nomination by individuating Angie’s plight and independence with an alternately harrowing and delightful seriocomic immediacy and force (the boisterousness of a congested Italian-American household is choreographed and acted with great momentum); McQueen, on the other hand, also ups the ante with delineating Rocky’s persona as amusingly befogged, self-effacing and philosophical in front of the dilemma, a very disarming and likable characterization that is diametrically different from his trademark hard-boiled, taciturn, lone hero screen alter ego, one cannot help but wonder whether Clint Eastwood has that chops in him as well, can he hold that “better wed than dead” placard without any scintilla of machismo? Seems unlikely.
LWTPS also marks our beloved TV star Tom Bosley’s film debut, his Anthony has no qualms about being a fallback in Angie’s plan, bringing about enough lulz with his humble self-knowledge and also comically reseting audience’s first impression of his maladroitness, which could be a trustworthy indicator of a bad match. Plaudits should also be granted to Edie Adams’s canine lover Barbie, Rocky’s casual bedmate who can yap “You want me to find you a doctor?” like no one else could, in the real world, she and Rocky are more aptly to end up together, but through a film’s life-affirming filter, LWTPS is nonetheless, a scrumptious confection with its winning candidness and a proper moral backbone.
referential entries: Mulligan’s INSIDE DAISY CLOVER (1965, 6.6/10); TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962, 9.1/10)
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