Strangers when we meet
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Strangers when we meet |
| Original title | Strangers When We Meet |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1960 |
| length | 113 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Richard Quine |
| script | Evan Hunter |
| production | Richard Quine |
| music | George Duning |
| camera | Charles Lang |
| cut | Charles Nelson |
| occupation | |
| |
Strangers When We Meet is a film version of the original title (Strangers When We Meet) book of the same name Evan Hunter . The film, directed by Richard Quine , is about the affair of two married people who in the end choose to stay in their ancestral relationships.
action
The architect Larry Coe lives in Los Angeles. He is married and has two sons with his wife Eve. Eve is very careful that Larry as an architect is primarily financially successful, while Larry is more about his creativity.
Maggie Gault, the mother of a boy, has moved in with her family. She is sexually neglected by her husband Ken. (Eve also shows signs of sexual neglect repeatedly throughout the film.)
Larry and Maggie meet at the school bus stop. Larry can persuade Maggie to enter into an intense erotic relationship with him. When Larry receives the contract to build a house from the writer Robert Altar, Larry and Maggie use the house building time and again as an opportunity to meet.
The neighbor Felix Anders finds out about them. When he presses Eve, she also realizes that Larry has cheated on her. She confronts Larry, and they decide to stay together and move to Hawaii, where Larry has received a town planning contract.
When Altar's house is finished but not yet occupied, Maggie and Larry meet there. Larry informs Maggie that he is going to Hawaii with his family. Maggie and Larry reassure each other of their love and say that they would love to live in this "their" house. The incoming construction manager speaks to Maggie as “Mrs. Coe ”and congratulates her on“ her husband's ”achievement. Maggie and Larry leave the house.
Motifs
The adultery that Larry and Maggie commit is shown only indirectly in the film, and it is hardly blamed. The time that the two spend together is portrayed as idyllic, even though both are always "strangers" to one another. Both also address their guilty conscience towards the betrayed spouse and both continue to devote themselves to their children. In this respect, considering the time it was made, the film hardly takes any (dis) valuation. As a counter-image, the explicitly prominent writer Altar appears with alternating companions .
In the end credits of the film, a song is played as background music, in which a hidden love is described, which causes the lovers to act as strangers when they meet .
With Felix Anders, Walter Matthau is a bourgeois snoop and the representative of a double standard who on the one hand speaks out against slippery jokes in the presence of women, on the other hand sees himself as an adulterous “professional” who wants to advise the “amateur” Larry on his amorous adventures . In the argument between Larry and Felix, Felix asks what makes him different from Larry, who has just harassed and harassed Eve and has been expelled from the house by her. The cliché that women ultimately want to be “courted” or “seduced” by men against their explicitly expressed opinion is clearly played out at this point (and at other points in the film).
criticism
“A sophisticated study of society about the passionate love between a brilliant architect and a neglected lady. Direction and camera understand elegant forms of sentimentality. "
Production and trivia
The film was the third of four joint works by Kim Novak and director Richard Quine . They became a couple during filming in 1959. The futuristic house built by Carl Anderson and Ross Bellah in the film was to be presented to Novak and Quine as a wedding gift after filming was completed. As the marriage plans failed, Quine later moved into the house alone.
Web links
- Strangers When We Meet at the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Traumfrauen edition No. 18: Kim Novak - Strangers when we meet from: Süddeutsche Zeitung Cinemathek, Munich 2008