The Hospital (1971)

          Speaking as a cineaste, a devotee of ’70s film, and a screenwriter, I’m about to commit an act of heresy by admitting that I don’t dig The Hospital, which netted Paddy Chayefsky one of his three writing Oscars. While I understand the use of dark satire to skewer the foibles of the medical industry—and, on a larger scale, the foibles of bureaucracy and capitalism run amok—I’ve watched The Hospital twice at very different times in my life, and on both occasions I’ve found the movie to be cold, pretentious, and tiresome. Seeing as how Chayefsky’s writing was singled out for praise, it’s possible my reaction stems from a problem of execution. Arthur Hiller’s sloppy camerawork and undisciplined dramaturgy prevents a clear point of view from coalescing, so he seems lost as the story zooms back and forth between tonalities.

          Proving that giving an ambitious Chayevsky script a pleasing shape wasn’t impossible, Sidney Lumet made a masterpiece from Chayefsky’s next opus, Network (1976). Many of the outrageous narrative maneuvers that make Network so wonderful are present in The Hospital, but they don’t work nearly as well. The omniscient narration, the religious allegory, the spectacular monologues—whereas these elements feel germane to the coherent lunacy of Network, they contribute to making The Hospital feel scattershot. The Hospital is not without its virtues, of course, because George C. Scott’s leading performance is impassioned, and the movie’s dialogue vibrates with Chayefsky’s unique blend of indignation and intellectualism (even though all of the characters sound identical). Furthermore, the best jabs at the medical industry land with tremendous impact. Taken as a whole, however, The Hospital is contrived, episodic, long-winded, and underwhelming.

          The picture is set at a fictional Manhattan hospital, which is perpetually surrounded by protestors, some of whom also work at the facility. Chief of Medicine Dr. Herbert Bock (Scott) is a suicidal drunk reeling from a divorce, and therefore emotionally unprepared for a series of crises. One by one, doctors and nurses start dying as a result of absurd mix-ups—injections given to the wrong patients, sick people pushed aside and “forgotten to death,” and so on. Herbert’s life takes a turn when he meets Barbara Drummond (Diana Rigg), the daughter of an eccentric patient. A hippie involved with Native American mysticism, she tries to remove her father from the hospital, sparking many debates about the efficacy of Herbert’s management. Other subplots include the travails of one Dr. Welbeck (Richard Dysart), a snobbish surgeon who has incorporated himself in order to prioritize money over medicine. All of these things come together in wild ways. A serial killer stalks the hospital’s halls. Herbert confesses self-destructive thoughts to a shrink, nearly injects himself with lethal chemicals, and overcomes impotence by raping Barbara.
          In one of the film’s least pleasing developments, Barbara interprets Herbert’s sexual assault as an act of love. Suffice to say the film is not as sharp on women’s issues as it is on economics and medical ethics.

          While The Hospital is all over the place in terms of mood and themes, Scott is incredible, even if the script requires him to exclaim “Oh, my God!” a few too many times, and the supporting cast is filled with lively players. Beyond Dysart and Rigg, The Hospital features Roberts Blossom, Stockard Channing, Stephen Elliot, Katherine Hellmond, Barnard Hughes, Nancy Marchand, Frances Sternhagen, and Robert Walden. Moreover, the movie has unquestionable literary quality, and it’s a meticulously researched examination of a worthy topic. Yet it’s also bewildering and strident and ugly. Still, what else could be expected from a self-proclaimed examination of “the whole wounded madness of our times”? Happily, Chayefsky found a perfect vessel for his op-ed rage in his next project.

The Hospital: FUNKY

Man of La Mancha (1972)

          Convoluted circumstances worked against the makers of Man of La Mancha, a troubled film adaptation of the enduring stage musical that premiered in 1964, so it’s no surprise the picture earned enmity during its original release and has failed to curry much favor during the ensuing years. Bloated, grim, miscast, old-fashioned, and over-plotted, the picture seems utterly bereft of whatever charms have captivated fans of the stage version throughout decades of revivals. Even the picture’s magnificent look, courtesy of cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno’s painterly images and enough production-design eye candy to make Terry Gilliam jealous, is insufficient to hold the viewer’s attention as Man of La Mancha lumbers through 132 very long minutes.

          Reviewing some of the tortured history behind the project reveals why it was doomed to mediocrity, if not outright failure. In 1959, CBS broadcast a dramatic play for television titled I, Don Quixote, written by Dale Wasserman. In the story, which is set during the Spanish Inquisition, author Miguel de Cervantes gets thrown in jail and put on “trial” by his fellow inmates. Then he defends himself by describing his in-progress novel, Don Quixote, about a madman who thinks he’s a knight. All of this material, of course, was a riff on the real book Don Quixote, written by the real Cervantes. After the TV broadcast, Wasserman was invited to transform the play into a musical. Hence Man of La Mancha. A trip to the big screen seemed inevitable, given the success of the musical and the ubiquity of the musical’s theme song, “The Impossible Dream.” (Everyone from Cher to Frank Sinatra to the Temptations had a go at the song while Man of La Mancha was still on Broadway, and it briefly became a staple of Elvis Presley’s act.) Actors, directors, and producers dropped in and out of the project while debates raged about whether or not to include the music.

          When the dust settled, journeyman director Arthur Hiller inherited a cast featuring James Coco (as Cervantes/Quixote’s sidekick), Sophia Loren (as the hero’s love interest), and Peter O’Toole (as Cervantes/Quixote). O’Toole was many things, but a singer was not one of them, so the die was pretty much cast when he was given the lead role. O’Toole is potent in the film’s dramatic scenes, speechifying gloriously about dreams and honor, but it’s irritating to watch him lip-sync while John Gilbert’s voice flows on the soundtrack. Equally frustrating is watching Loren struggle with her singing chores, since her voice lacks beauty and singularity.

          And then there’s the jumbled storyline. The sequences in the dungeon require much suspension of disbelief, and the play-within-a-play bits are weirdly stylized—some exterior scenes were filmed on location, while others were shot on a soundstage with glaringly fake backdrops. Once the play-within-a-play gets mired in messy subplots during the middle of the movie, Man of La Mancha goes off the rails completely, resulting in tedium. The filmmakers would have been better served by a bolder choice—either diving wholeheartedly into musical terrain by presenting something as chipper and treacly as the music, or veering all the way back to Wasserman’s dramatic source material. Hell, even making a straightforward film of Don Quixote, with the same cast, would have been preferable. Man of La Mancha isn’t an excruciating mess, like so many other overwrought musicals of the same era, but it’s a mess nonetheless.

Man of La Mancha: FUNKY

W.C. Fields and Me (1976)

          While not to be taken seriously, seeing as how its attempts at verisimilitude result in campy superficiality, the showbiz biopic W.C. Fields and Me is watchable by virtue of a brisk pace, interesting subject matter, and lush production values. As for the acting, that’s by far the film’s weakest element—ironic, since both leading characters were actors in real life. But then again, star Rod Steiger delivers an over-the-top caricature while playing a man who spent his life cultivating a larger-than-life persona, and costar Valerie Perrine delivers an underwhelming turn while playing a woman who, for 14 years, was overshadowed by her more talented companion. So, in a weird way, the mixture works for creating mindless entertainment, even if W.C Fields and Me is hardly a dilligent replication of history.

          Based on a memoir by Carlotta Monti, a bit player who caught the real Fields’ eye and then spent a decade and a half as his assistant, companion, and occasional lover, W.C. Fields and Me depicts Fields’ trajectory from the end of his vaudeville career to the last days of his life. When he’s introduced, Fields (Steiger) is already a stage star, but his arrogance and drinking alienate him from employers including the legendary Florenz Ziegeld (Paul Stewart). In a weak attempt to portray Fields as psychologically complex, the picture asserts that he used onstage shock tactics (such as risqué humor) to compensate for offstage anxieties, and the filmmakers accentuate Fields’ jealous feelings toward fellow comic Charlie Chaplin. After a financial turnaround, Fields sets out for Hollywood accompanied by his only real friend, a little-person actor named Ludwig (Billy Barty). By writing comedy scripts and submitting them to studios, Fields eventually wins the patronage of studio boss Bannerman (John Marley), who gives Fields his first shot at performing on camera. Stardom follows, as does an excessive lifestyle defined by drunken adventures with pals including John Barrymore (Jack Cassidy). Eventually, Carlotta (Perrine) enters the mix, but her endeavors to wean Fields off booze fail, so she ends up bearing witness to the legendary funnyman’s decline.

          Itemizing all the things that are unsatisfying about W.C. Fields and Me would take an inordinate amount of time, so a few key complaints will have to suffice. The central relationship is inconsequential. Fields never evinces any growth as a character. Every showbiz type presented onscreen is a one-dimensional cliché. Steiger’s performance never achieves liftoff, because the actor wobbles between mimicking Fields’ gimmick of speaking from one side of his mouth—making the character seem like Burgess Meredith as the Penguin on the old Batman TV series—and because Steiger’s few moments of effective nonverbal pathos seem like Steiger peeking through the characterization, rather than the other way around. Worse, director Arthur Hiller can’t seem to decide whether the film is a comedy or a drama, so while some scenes include broad farce, others are mawkishly sentimental. Having said all that, the movie looks gorgeous; cinematographer David M. Walsh uses a glamorous combination of painterly angles, romantic filters, and sweeping camera movement to make Old Hollywood look seductive. Furthermore, the movie zips along at terrific speed, never losing clarity.

W.C. Fields and Me: FUNKY

The Out of Towners (1970)

          The Out of Towners is notable as the first feature that mega-successful playwright/screenwriter Simon wrote directly for the big screen; previously, the comedy kingpin adapted such hits as Barefoot in the Park (1967) and The Odd Couple (1968) from his own plays. The good news is that Simon has a blast taking advantage of opportunities presented by the cinematic medium, so The Out of Towners starts in Ohio, zooms to Boston, lands in New York, and covers dozens of locations. The bad news is that the piece isn’t especially funny—too often, frenetic activity substitutes for inspiration. That said, the premise is amusing, since the picture aims to depict the worst trip to New York any couple has ever experienced. This is Simon in pure-farce mode, not touchy-feely Simon.

          Jack Lemmon stars as George Kellerman, an Ohio businessman summoned to Manhattan for a job interview. While he and his wife, Gwen (Sandy Dennis), fly from Ohio to New York, George shares his grand, OCD-fueled plans for a night of dinner and dancing before acing the interview in the morning. However, Gwen’s enthusiasm is muted—she’s perfectly happy raising the couple’s kids in the Midwest. Then comes a series of calamities: New York gets fogged in, so the couple’s plane is rerouted to Boston; catching trains is a nightmare; New York is gripped by a transit strike; the Kellermans’ hotel reservation is cancelled; muggers prey on the couple; and so on. About half of the problems that Simon contrives represent clever satire, and about half represent narrative desperation. For instance, George’s stubborn insistence to remain inside a police car while the officers at the wheel chase criminals is an absurdly stupid decision. Only Lemmon’s innate likability ensures that George remains more or less palatable, and it helps that Lemmon is virtually peerless at playing frazzled schmucks. Sadly, Dennis can’t come close to matching her costar’s energy, coming across as bland and mousy until the latter half of the picture, when her character suddenly (and unbelievably) grows a spine.

          Compounding the inequity of the leading performance is director Arthur Hiller’s grubby camerawork. Although he paces scenes beautifully, Hiller shoots the picture with the dark, handheld textures of a crime movie; as does Quincy Jones’ weirdly intense score, the look of the film makes some scenes that should be humorous seem frightening. Ultimately, however, the real blame for the project’s overall mediocrity must fall on Simon, who sacrifices character reality for silly gags at regular intervals. Nonetheless, The Out of Towners gained enough stature to warrant a remake in 1999. In the second version of the story, Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn play the titular travelers.

The Out of Towners: FUNKY

The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)

          Although best known as an actor, for extensive work on the London stage and for Hollywood endeavors such as his spectacular performance as Captain Quint in Jaws (1975), the late Robert Shaw was also a novelist and playwright. His most famous literary endeavor was the 1967 novel The Man in the Glass Booth, which he adapted into a 1968 play of the same name. Set in modern-day New York, the story concerns Arthur Goldman, a wealthy Holocaust survivor who spends his days haranguing employees with outlandish opinions about Judaism even as he seems to teeter on the brink of a nervous breakdown. One day, Israeli secret agents break into his home and reveal that Goldman is actually a Nazi war criminal living under an assumed identity. Next, Goldman is illicitly extradited to the Middle East for prosecution. (During the court action, he’s placed in the titular glass booth for his own protection.) All through the trial, Goldman proudly wears his SS uniform and outrageously lectures the Israeli audience with justifications murdering Jews. The story ends with a bizarre twist that raises as many questions as it answers.

          Although the play of The Man in the Glass Booth was presented in New York with an acclaimed production directed by Harold Pinter and starring Donald Pleasence, changes were made after the piece was selected for production by the American Film Theatre, a short-lived production company that filmed plays for limited movie-theater exhibition. The project got a new director (Arthur Hiller), a new star (Maximilian Schell), and a new script (by Edward Anhalt). Shaw was sufficiently displeased with the alterations that he removed his name from the film’s credits. Setting aside the matter of fealty to its source material, the movie version of The Man in the Glass Booth is a strange experience. Hiller does an okay job of opening up cinematic potential, using intricate sets to create separate spaces and thereby divide long scenes into smaller sequences; similarly, he also employs close-ups to accentuate the weird rhythms of Goldman’s euphoric monologues.

          And if Hiller’s filming is lively, Schell’s performance is positively supercharged—though not necessarily in a good way. Flamboyant, loud, and sensual, Schell’s interpretation borders on camp. One can make a strong argument that Schell chews scenery in proper proportion to the way his character does, but it gets suffocating after a while to watch the actor cackle and gesticulate and scream. Still, many found his work impressive, since he got Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. The real challenge of The Man in the Glass Booth, however, relates to the story’s ending, which won’t be spoiled here—suffice to say, the denouement is such a surprise, and such a head-scratcher, that it retroactively colors every preceding scene. Nonetheless, The Man in the Glass Booth offers a unique combination of ideology, philosophy, provocation, and wit—so even at its most questionable, the movie is arresting and sophisticated.

The Man in the Glass Booth: GROOVY

The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder (1974)

 

Vietnam-vet movies came in all shapes and sizes during the ’70s, but it’s nonetheless startling to realize that someone thought PTSD was a suitable subject for light comedy in 1974, when the war was still raging. The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder takes place primarily at a VA hospital in Los Angeles, where mischievously charming ex-soldier Julius Vrooder (Timothy Bottoms) lives in a mental ward with several other vets suffering from shellshock. Able-bodied but emotionally fragile, Julius spends his days cavorting around the hospital campus, pulling childish pranks on his doctors and flirting with sensitive nurse Zanni (Barbara Hershey). Accentuating just how disconnected Julius is from reality, he even has a secret underground lair that he’s created across the street from the campus, complete with electricity that he’s illegally siphoning from the city’s power grid. (Never mind the logical questions of how Julius got the equipment and free time needed to build his fortress.) As the story progresses, Julius tries to woo Zanni away from her other suitor—Julius’ uptight shrink, of course—and he tries to evade municipal authorities who want to find out who’s stealing their electricity. And that’s basically the whole movie, excepting a few inconsequential subplots. Among the film’s many problems is the fact that we’re supposed to sympathize with Julius’ unique plight even though he doesn’t seem especially unwell—he treats his hospital stay like a vacation from responsibility, faking seizures or sharing sad war stories whenever he wants sympathy. Were it not for Bottoms’ inherent likeability, Julius would be insufferable; as is, the character is merely uninteresting. Similarly, the fact that the shrink isn’t a formidable romantic rival precludes any tension in the love story—Zanni seems to worship Julius unconditionally, so the resolution of the triangle is a foregone conclusion. As directed by the efficient Arthur Hiller, The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder is too innocuous to dislike, but it’s also far too vapid to make a significant impression.

The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder: FUNKY

Silver Streak (1976)

          A box-office hit that gave birth to the on-again/off-again screen duo of funnymen Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, Silver Streak is impossible to take seriously for the same reason it’s impossible to dislike: The movie forgoes credibility in order to entertain viewers by any means possible. Essentially a Hitchcock-type thriller played for laughs, the movie follows an unassuming book editor (Wilder) during a cross-country train trip filled with unexpected danger, intrigue, and romance. As the tale grows more and more absurd, George stumbles into a dalliance with a sexy secretary (Jill Clayburgh), gets caught in the crosshairs of an evil conspirator (Patrick McGoohan), befriends a jive-talkin’ thief (Pryor), and survives accidents and near-misses in airplanes, cars, and trains. He gets arrested, chased, framed, shot at, thrown off a moving train, and targeted for murder, and yet he displays great moral character by striving to save his new lover and triumph over the bad guys.

          It’s all very silly, especially with the contrived McGuffin plot device relating to priceless letters written by Rembrant, but everyone involved in Silver Streak approaches their work with the same lighthearted attitude. Director Arthur Hiller keeps things moving briskly, creating comfortable spaces in which his actors can showcase their likeable personalities, and writer-producer Colin Higgins, whose gift for character-driven comedy distinguished ’70s movies like the great Harold and Maude (1971) and the effervescent Foul Play (1978), pumps the movie full of amusing one-liners. So, even though the picture drags on far too long and gets mired in bland action sequences like the elaborate shootout during the climax, Silver Streak is consistently watchable.

          Much of the credit goes to Wilder, who mostly eschews his signature hysterics while playing a straightforward romantic lead; he’s surprisingly believable as a dashing man of the world sharing flirtatious banter with Clayburgh, and his reaction shots whenever things get wild are priceless. Clayburgh is appealing in her mostly decorative role, while Pryor slides into an easy buddy-movie rapport with Wilder. Their obvious shtick, predicated on the differences between a streetwise African-American and an uptight honky, is epitomized in the famous scene of Pryor covering Wilder’s face with shoe polish and teaching Wilder to act like a “brother.” There’s no denying the humor of Wilder emulating urban swagger, but there’s also no denying the way the scene perpetuates demeaning stereotypes. Still, Silver Streak is too milquetoast to seem offensive: The racially insensitive gags are just tools the movie uses to elicit cheap laughs, and it’s hard to get angry at a picture whose only goal is making viewers happy.

Silver Streak: GROOVY

The In-Laws (1979)

          One of the most fondly remembered comedies of the late ’70s, The In-Laws is a study in controlled lunacy. Working from a solid script by Andrew Bergman, who previously came up with the idea for Blazing Saddles (1974), director Arthur Hiller orchestrates a slow burn as the movie’s central gag gets taken to absurd extremes. The premise of an unhinged character drawing a normal person into a mad scheme is hardly new, but Bergman sets up the particulars well by contriving a believable reason for the grounded character to tolerate crazed circumstances. Yet it’s the chemistry between the two leading actors that really puts The In-Laws over—Peter Falk’s deadpan derangement is a perfect complement for Alan Arkin’s epic exasperation. So even though the movie is too silly and slight to qualify as a classic, it's never less than watchable.

          Motor-mouthed nutter Vincent J. Ricardo (Falk) enters the life of New York dentist Sheldon Kornpett (Arkin) because Vincent’s son is about to marry Sheldon’s daughter. On their first meeting, a dinner at Sheldon’s house, Vincent bounces between jarring outbursts and preposterous lies; his story about watching gigantic tsetse flies pluck children off the ground is memorably bonkers. Soon Vincent draws Sheldon into a scheme involving stolen U.S. Mint engraving plates, a covert CIA operation (which may or may not be legitimate), and an illicit deal with an insane South American general.

          The main ingredient of The In-Laws is the clash between Sheldon’s blind terror during dangerous situations and Vincent’s nonchalant demeanor—throughout a reckless car chase, for instance, Vincent pauses to commend Sheldon for keeping his cool even though Sheldon is actually on the verge of an aneurysm. Arkin’s impeccable comic timing and offbeat line readings work wonders here, and the warmth of Bergman’s script helps Arkin thread welcome vulnerability into his sometimes-chilly screen persona. Meanwhile, Falk scores by underplaying. In a typical moment, he casually praises a benefit program available to covert agents before adding, “The trick is staying alive—that’s really the key to the benefit program.”

          Alas, the script’s setup is better than the payoff, so an inspired first half gives way to a wheezy second half following a droll airport shootout. Worse, an extended sequence featuring comedy pro Richard Libertini as the aforementioned South American general slips into tiresome cartoonishness, and the movie could have used a lot more of ace supporting players Ed Begley Jr., Nancy Dussault, and James Hong. Nonetheless, few movie comedies ever reach the manic peaks of the best moments in The In-Laws, so viewers are amply rewarded for wading through inferior bits on the way to the good stuff.

The In-Laws: GROOVY

The Killer Elite (1975)

          Part action picture, part conspiracy thriller, and part revenge epic, The Killer Elite is a mess. As directed by Sam Peckinpah, whose creative decline was rapidly underway at this point, the picture boasts a handful of exciting scenes and several vivid performances, but its intentions are as vague as its storyline. James Caan and Robert Duvall star as a pair of gunmen who work for a private espionage group that’s hired by the CIA for covert operations like securely transporting international political figures who’ve been targeted for assassination by foreign governments. For reasons that are never particularly clear, Hansen (Duvall) shoots Locken (Caan) after a successful operation, betraying his buddy and leaving Locken a near-cripple thanks to wounds to his elbow and knee. The movie then devotes about 30 minutes to methodical scenes showing Locken’s recovery. As soon as Locken’s back in fighting shape, Hansen conveniently surfaces with a contract to kill an Asian dissident (Mako), so Locken recruits a driver (Burt Young) and a sniper (Bo Hopkins) to help protect the dissident and, with any luck, confront Hansen. Also layered into the story are a series of double- and triple-crosses involving Locken’s bosses (Arthur Hill and Gig Young). Oh, and there are ninjas, too. Lots of ninjas.

          None of it makes very much sense, but the journey is still somewhat interesting because Caan is so charismatic and because Peckinpah knows how to shoot action scenes. (Extensive San Francisco location photography is another plus.) When The Killer Elite clicks, it delivers visceral moments like a shootout in a crowded street that expands into a nasty high-speed car chase. When the movie doesn’t click, it delivers spastic sequences like the climactic confrontation, during which Locken’s crew takes on an army of ninjas aboard a decommissioned warship, all of which leads up to a big swordfight between two supporting characters. Whatever. Luckily, the picture knows better than to take itself seriously, so sarcastic humor is woven into nearly every scene. Caan’s buddy-movie shtick with his sidekicks is terrific (Young is consistently amusing and Hopkins is memorably twitchy), and it’s also entertaining to watch Caan’s character get exasperated whenever the dissident spouts Eastern philosophy. “I understand now,” Caan opines bitchily at one point. “He wants to go back and die on his native soil. It’s that salmon-up-the-river shit.”

The Killer Elite: FUNKY

Nightwing (1979)

Despite its atmospheric poster and fantastic title, Nightwing is one of the worst big-studio horror movies of the late ’70s. Tedious gobbledygook about a Native American cop and a white scientist investigating the killer bats laying siege to an Indian reservation in New Mexico, the movie pathetically tries to mesh comin’-at-ya scares with then-fashionable Native mysticism, and the picture is so laughably inauthentic that the two principal Native American characters are played by an Italian-American (Nick Mancuso) and a Jewish Philadelphian (Stephen Macht). Both try not to embarrass themselves, though the idiotic storyline makes that challenging; they mostly end up bulging their eyes to simulate intensity. This misfire also features sexy leading lady Kathryn Harrold in one of her few starring roles. For several years in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Harrold eemed like she was one movie away from a big career, but Nightwing was among several embarrasing flops that impeded her momentum. Inexplicably, this turkey was directed by Arthur Hiller, whose filmography is dominated by sensitive dramas like Love Story (1970) and glossy comedies like Silver Streak (1976). There’s a reason he didn’t make any other horror movies, and that’s because Nightwing relies on cheap and derivative gimmicks like a scene that mimics the underwater-cage sequence in Jaws (1975)—suffice it to say that fake-looking bats swarming around a metal box that’s attached to a pickup truck in the middle of the desert doesn’t have the same oomph as a submerged Richard Dreyfuss steering clear of an enormous shark’s pearly whites. The end of Nightwing almost achieves a fever pitch of bad-movie kitsch, when Mancuso goes into some sort of drug-induced trance while summoning up the ancient spirits who’ve been driving the bats batty, but reaching that brief moment of amusing awfulness requires sludging through an hour and a half of unredeemable guano. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

Nightwing: SQUARE

Love Story (1970) & Oliver’s Story (1978)

          The cinematic equivalent of Wonder bread, this by-the-numbers tearjerker somehow became one of the defining hits of the early ’70s, earning $100 million at a time when few movies ever hit that milestone, much less low-budget melodramas. Weirder still, when screenwriter Erich Segal was asked by Paramount to create a novel of his script as a means of drumming up pre-release hype for the film, the book became a runaway hit, eventually moving more than 20 million copies. That’s a whole lot of marketplace excitement for a movie whose opening voiceover reveals the vapidity of its narrative: “What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?” The answer to that question is, apparently, little more than is actually contained within the question itself, because Love Story is 90 minutes of foreplay leading to a bummer ending. Obviously millions of people bought into the thin premise of excitable rich kid Oliver (Ryan O’Neal) falling for saintly working-class girl Jenny (Ali MacGraw).
          The repetitive, plot-deficient first hour comprises chipper scenes about young love set against the rarified backdrop of the Harvard campus (trivia lovers dig the fact that Oliver was partially inspired by two of Segal’s real-life Harvard homeys, Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones). The promising glimmer of a subplot about Oliver’s uptight dad (Ray Milland) disapproving of Jenny doesn’t amount to much; after papa detaches the couple from the family teat, Jenny works as a teacher to pay Oliver’s way through law school, after which he lands a cushy job at a law firm. The only inkling of drama arrives two-thirds of the way through the film, when Jenny’s unnamed fatal illness is discovered. Yet even the main event is all hearts and flowers, because Jenny slips away without so much as a cough.
          It’s to director Arthur Hiller’s credit that the picture moves quickly even though it’s running on fumes from start to finish, because he doesn’t get much help from O’Neal or MacGraw, neither of whom summons believable emotion (O’Neal is marginally better, but MacGraw is quite awful). Only the melancholy piano theme, by composer Francis Lai, really connects, especially in the movie’s one cinematically interesting scene: After Oliver gets the bad news, he wanders city streets in a montage set to car horns and snippets from Lai’s theme. Still, it’s hard to genuinely hate Love Story, in the same way it’s hard to hate Wonder Bread: Neither pretends to be anything but a spongy mass of empty calories.
          Seven years after Love Story conquered the box office, Segal published a follow-up novel, Oliver’s Story. In the 1978 film adaptation, O’Neal and Milland reprise their roles for a threadbare narrative about Oliver trying to love again two years after the events of the first film; meanwhile, Oliver’s dad tries to draw his son into the family textile business even though Oliver is satisfied with his work as a do-gooder attorney. Poor Candice Bergen gets the thankless job of playing the woman who tries to romance grief-stricken Oliver. In trying to generate believable relationship obstacles, Segal and co-writer/director John Korty rely heavily on soap-opera tactics. Marcy (Bergen) is a rich girl who accepts class divisions without guilt, whereas Oliver is a bleeding-heart type who feels anguished about coming from money. Although Korty shoots locations well, particularly during an extended trip the lovers take to Hong Kong, he can’t surmount the absurdly contrived narrative or the severe limitations of the leading performances. Handicapped by trite characterizations, Bergen and O’Neal seem robotic. And just when the film’s portrayal of Oliver as a saint becomes insufferable, the plot contorts itself to ruin Oliver’s second chance at love. Yet whereas Love Story earned enmity by being manipulative, Oliver’s Story merely earns indifference by being pointless.

Love Story: LAME
Oliver's Story: LAME