STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET

US, 1960, 117 minutes, Colour.
Kirk Douglas, Kim Novak, Ernie Kovacs, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau, Virginia Bruce, Kent Smith.
Directed by Richard Quine.

Strangers When We Meet is based on a novel by Evan Hunter who wrote the screenplay. Evan Hunter went on to write the screenplay for Hitchcock’s The Birds. However, Hunter was better known as Ed Mc Bain with his many novels about the 87th Precinct in New York City.

The film is about marriage, fidelity and infidelity. Kirk Douglas plays an architect whose marriage is brittle (with Barbara Rush as his wife) and encounters a neighbour, Kim Novak. Their sons are friends at school. Soon they begin an affair. What seems romantic suddenly becomes tawdry when a neighbour, Walter Matthau, makes advances towards Kim Novak. They have to reassess their situation.

The film is very open for 1960 and indicates the type of treatment that was to come later in that decade for films about marriage, affairs, fidelity and infidelity.

1. The meaning of the title and its tone? The indications of glossy melodrama? The song and the musical score?

2. Why are such films popular with most audiences? The appeal of soap-opera, of a ‘woman's picture’? The cardboard characters and situations? How real or unreal? What value do these entertainments have? Do they help people in understanding human nature, or are they misleadning with their glossiness and contrivance? How do these criteria apply to this film?

3. What moral tone underlay the film? A message about emotions and the clash of human characters? Or did the film tend to exploit these clashes and crises?

4. How important was the American background, the city and suburbs, wealth, the comfortable way of life, boredom, ambition, morality?

5. Comment on the film's emphasis on the particular details of this world, schools, supermarkets, housekeeping, jobs, cafes, parties? How important for the film's success was this accuracy of detail?

6. How sympathetic a hero was Larry? Kirk Douglas’s style, the ordinary man, his home life, relationship with hie wife and children? The importance of his job and sense of achievement? Larry and Roger and all the discussions
about building the home? The emptiness and harshness of Larry's life? Why did he allow himself to be attracted to Margaret? His decision to follow her, her leading him on? The nature of the affair and the emotional involvement? The effect on Larry's life, his lies? His refusal to make decisions? The playing on his sympathy for Margaret, stories of her husband? The importance of the sequence at the party and the acting out of lies? The clash with Felix? The importance of Margaret’s story about her nymphomania? His decision to break, take the job in Hawaii, break completely with Margaret at the house? What insight into the modem middle aged man did this character give?

7. How attractive was Margaret? The initial contrast with her mother, her sense of inferiority, her fears of emotional involvement? Margaret as a mother and wife? Her being the same as her own mother? Her relationship with her husband and his coldness? Why did she enter the affair? How much emotional involvement? Her decision to go to the party, her lies to her husband? The importance of the story of her seduction? What did this reveal about her character? Her being hurt by Larry's breaking off the affair, her choice to continue it and her going to the house? What future would she have?

8. How did Eve contrast with Margaret? How good a wife was Eve, her inability to help Larry,her nagging, her fears? Her attempt to reconcile with the past? The hurting of the truth? Her decision to reconcile? Was this the best?

9. How did Ken contrast with Larry? Ken's ordinary businessman way of life, his Puritanism with his wife?

10. The comment on American morals in the character of Felix? His initial primness, his leering telling of Larry about the affair? the ugliness of his attempt with Eve?

11. The importance of Margaret's, mother: the values and her moral stances, her taunting of her daughter, her pointing out that the daughter was exactly like the mother?

12. What importance did Roger and his way of life have in the film? Roger and his girlfriends, his creative art, the house? The nature of the friendship between Roger and Larry?

13. The sub-plot of art and achievement and creativity? In terms of jobs, in terms of emotions and relationships?

14. How well-made a soap opera was this? The main values it stood for? The value for audience entertainment?