LOVING

US, 1970, 90 minutes, Colour.
George Segal, Eva Marie Saint, Keenan Wynn, Sterling Hayden, Nancy Phillips, Roy Scheider.
Directed by Irvin Kershner.

Loving is an ironic title for a small movie on modern marriage. The central marriage is that of Brooks and Selma. He is a commercial artist, she is a normally ambitious wife and they have two (rather obnoxious) little girls. Brooks seems to be undergoing some kind of crisis of nerve and direction in life, unsure of himself in work, extra-marital affair, behaviour and tact.

The film shows us, often wordlessly (as in the credit sequence), very ordinary situations but in careful detail. The audience observes closely the situation and the character's reactions and assesses their significance for themselves. On the whole the film is rather low-key, but nonetheless effective for it.

George Segal gives another excellent, and different, performance as Brooks. (He might be compared to Tina in Diary of a Mad Housewife which the film is akin to.) Time Magazine considered Loving as one of the ten best films for 1970.

1. How ironic was the title of the film? Why?

2. During the first ten minutes of the film only one word was spoken audibly ‘Grace’, yet plot and character were well communicated. How was this done? What did we learn about Brooks' situation, feelings, emotional crisis, about Grace, about Selma and the family situation? How were the city and school backgrounds used commentary? (Symbolic?) Bow did the sense of movement and running add to the film?

3. What kind of crisis was Brooks going through? How ordinary a man was he? Were we meant to regard him as in any way special? Was he a good father, husband, a good artist? How hypocritical did he feel his life was?

4. How did rather long sequences of family life and day-to-day things communicate the reality of the world in which these people lived?

5. How loving was Selma? Did she take Brooks too much for granted? Bow ambitious was she? Did she understand him?

6. Why did Brooks have the affair with Grace? Why did she break it off? Did he love her? Did she love him?

7. What picture of the business world, of industry and advertising did the film give? How realistic was it? How attractive or disgusting? Edwards, Lepradon, the style of commercial advertising, the pressures on Brooks (the sequence of photographing Selma and himself), the Illustrator's Club and his behaviour there?

8. Did you expect Brooke to capitulate to Lepradon - especially with his story of being a truck-driver?

9. How effective and significant was the sequence where the two go to look over the house of the about-to-be-divorced couple? How did the wife communicate the meaning of the scene? How ironic was the comment on Brooks and Selma'a marriage?

10. Why were Brooke and Selma fitting on the way to the party? How did this typify their lives? Did it help to explain Brooke' behaviour at the party?

11. Why was the party sequence effectively filmed? How?

12. Why was Brooks so cantankerous, why did he go off with Nelly? How funny was this? How serious was this? How pathetic?

13. What comment on friends and neighbours was made in the party's watching the television screen? What was the effect on the other partners? How was their surprise gradually shown?

14. What effect did the fight have on Brooks? On Grace?

15. Why did Selma hit Brooks so hard?

16. Did the final image of the film indicate whether they were reconciled? They were both exhausted? Could they begin again? (Brooks said they would soon forget about it; Selma had already agreed to let the Lepradon contract go when she did not know he had it. Would these attitudes have helped reconciliation?)

17. Comment on the musical commentary and the use of art as commentary on the situation -e.g. the slide of Grace superimposed on Selma's face, Brooks' flashbacks to Grace.

18. Was the film cynical or realistic? (Or both?)