Paul Newman has many more famous roles...but for some reason, this is one of my all time favorite movies of his. It comes on the Love Stories, AMC, or TCM cable channels every here and now...or you could just buy it like I did.
He's nice, determined, well-meaning Alfred Eaton, who starts off with lofty, wealthy ideas about what is important in life...the right woman, the right career, the right friends...and showing them all how important he can be when he has them. Ultimately, he learns that what is important is only what feels right to him alone.
I love his story of personal discovery as much as his love affair story with Natalie. Alfred and Natalie have this beautiful scene where they are saying goodbye, they're barely touching, but it's the most painfully romantic thing to see.
Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward have some excellent scenes in this movie also with real good comeback dialogue. He's the hardworking, decent man and she's the desperate-to-impress and just plain desperate society wife. She self-righteously and hurtfully accuses him of adultery with a girl with no guts when she's been sleeping with her ex-fiancee all along. She actually calls her lover and arranges a tryst while her husband is in the room!!!! She has guts!!!! Unbeknownst to her, Alfred has exhaustingly if unaffectedly (if you can look unaffected and disgusted at the same time, that is) done his best to makes her invisible in the room, but she probably just becomes invisible without any real effort on his part to make her so by that point. Their voices just have the most impactful tones...especially when they get to play off of each other. I can play their final scene over and over again where she says she won't give him a divorce and he says,"Any further communication between you and me will be through legal channels." He has the most genuine smile on that handsome face in that moment than through the entire movie!!!!!
This movie is actually pretty long, but not a moment is wasted. It all comes together in the end when Alfred finally chooses what he actually wants instead of what he's supposed to want.
Maybe it's because it's so subtle and not at all like a "movie" that it seems to be largely overlooked by everyone except me and 20 other people. Paul Newman is one fine, naturally classy actor, I say.
He's nice, determined, well-meaning Alfred Eaton, who starts off with lofty, wealthy ideas about what is important in life...the right woman, the right career, the right friends...and showing them all how important he can be when he has them. Ultimately, he learns that what is important is only what feels right to him alone.
I love his story of personal discovery as much as his love affair story with Natalie. Alfred and Natalie have this beautiful scene where they are saying goodbye, they're barely touching, but it's the most painfully romantic thing to see.
Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward have some excellent scenes in this movie also with real good comeback dialogue. He's the hardworking, decent man and she's the desperate-to-impress and just plain desperate society wife. She self-righteously and hurtfully accuses him of adultery with a girl with no guts when she's been sleeping with her ex-fiancee all along. She actually calls her lover and arranges a tryst while her husband is in the room!!!! She has guts!!!! Unbeknownst to her, Alfred has exhaustingly if unaffectedly (if you can look unaffected and disgusted at the same time, that is) done his best to makes her invisible in the room, but she probably just becomes invisible without any real effort on his part to make her so by that point. Their voices just have the most impactful tones...especially when they get to play off of each other. I can play their final scene over and over again where she says she won't give him a divorce and he says,"Any further communication between you and me will be through legal channels." He has the most genuine smile on that handsome face in that moment than through the entire movie!!!!!
This movie is actually pretty long, but not a moment is wasted. It all comes together in the end when Alfred finally chooses what he actually wants instead of what he's supposed to want.
Maybe it's because it's so subtle and not at all like a "movie" that it seems to be largely overlooked by everyone except me and 20 other people. Paul Newman is one fine, naturally classy actor, I say.