LOVE STORY: Paramount Presents...Blu-ray (Paramount, 1970) Paramount Home Video
Love means never having to say you're sorry'...and
apparently never having to worry about narrative continuity either.
Director Arthur Hiller's Love Story (1970) is the three-hanky weepy by
which all other soapy, soppy and sloppy ‘boy meets girl’ romances have
subsequently been judged. And why not? The picture stars two of the brightest
talents of the decade, with Ryan O’Neal’s platinum-haired ‘moon doggie’ sex
appeal firmly in play, while Ali MacGraw’s doe-eyed ingenue, seemingly stricken
with an incurable disease at the height of her feminine innocence and loveliness,
took female martyrdom to a whole new level of idealized suffrage. Love Story
left ‘em crying in the isles when it premiered, and continues to hold up spectacularly
well as an effective and affecting 70’s time capsule of ‘the way we were’ or
hoped we could be, if all the perfect variables for romantic love were neatly
lined in a row, and Waspish interludes, familial hang-ups, and bourgeois, pig-headed
father-in-laws be damned. The book 'Love
Story' is actually based on the film – not the other way around – both
written by Erich Segal. Its 'can a Wasp and an uppity Radcliffe bitch find
true happiness?' scenario apparently clicked with audiences, enough for
Sydney Pollack to ape it three years later with The Way We Were (1973)
for Columbia Pictures.
In hindsight the premise behind Love Story
seems so rife for success – and parody – that it is easy to forget, at the time
it went into production, there were more than a few sweaty palms inside the
front offices at Paramount. The studio, once host to such luminaries as Cecile
DeMille, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, had fallen on very hard times and was
in real danger of closing its doors forever. Paramount’s top brass made a
radical decision, appointing former – failed – actor, Robert Evans to resurrect
its dwindling profits. What did Evans know about the picture-making biz from
the other side of the camera? Plenty! Indeed, there was regular talk around the
back lot, the fate of Paramount rested squarely on Evan’s shoulders. Happily,
these were nevertheless broad enough to weather the burden, and, under Evan’s
reign, Paramount marked a miraculous return to form, scaling the mountain at
the box office with such blockbusters as Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The
Godfather (1972) and Chinatown (1974). To suggest Evans was on a
lucky streak is a tad insulting. Moreover, like MGM’s Irving Thalberg nearly 50
years before him, Evans possessed the uncanny knack of knowing what the public
wanted to see, arguably, even before they did. Gulf + Western, the corporate
leviathan having devoured Paramount in 1968, merely for its fading prestige and
real estate, now discovered they had a profitable toe-hold in the entertainment
industry to be exploited further still and build their ever-expanding
reputation as a massive and diverse ‘holding company’. This proved a mercy
indeed, as a similar coup at MGM by Las Vegas financier, Kirk Kerkorian had
effectively shutter this once-proud and seemingly indestructible titan of
Hollywood, literally to ‘pave paradise and put up a parking lot’ (or in
Metro’s case, high-rise condominiums).
Interesting to consider how wildly popular Love
Story was in its day, as it remains a fairly standard melodrama at best.
The picture never strains the conventions of a typical Hollywood fluff yarn
about two young, firm bodies on a date with destiny. And yet, there remains
something heartrending and unique about the experience of seeing Love Story
for the first time. The clothes have dated. The hairstyles too. But the
sentiment behind these superficial trappings is as fresh and alive as it was
back in 1970 and just as capable of tugging at our heart strings. Is this grand
storytelling? I am not even sure it is competent storytelling – with
whole portions of time glossed over or simply omitted for obligatory budgetary
and run-time restrictions. Yet, what is here, clings together with a genuine
sense of youthful idealism prematurely snuffed out by the fickle finger of fate.
Perhaps there is nothing more magically dramatic than seeing young love
thwarted in its prime – and nothing more fêting to the senses than, as the old cliché
goes, “having loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. Under
this hypothesis, Love Story is undeniably a heavy-hitter. Audiences ever
since have been unable to hold back their tears. Bring Kleenex!
Erich Segal’s screenplay tells the story of Oliver
Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal) - a preppie who hates his father, Oliver III (Ray
Milland) but falls madly for uber-opinionated Radcliffe liberal super-bitch,
Jennifer Cavalleri (Ali MacGraw). Not much parental strife on this outing.
Jen's dad, Phil (John Marley) has some initial objections and Ollie’s senior
attempts to berate, belittle and further undermine Jenny's importance in his
son’s life by chronically referring to her as 'she' (oh, now that’s
threatening!), but otherwise it's a fairly smooth sail for the happy couple.
Well, almost...okay, not quite. Oliver III disowns his son after the two are married.
Oliver IV struggles to pay his way through Harvard Law School and Jenny gets a
job working as a private school teacher. Passion prevails and so does hard
work. Oliver graduates and takes a position at a respectable law firm in New
York. The two decide to start a family. Only conception is not as easy as it
should be. After several false starts Jenny and Oliver undergo tests to, in
Ollie's own words, 'find out who's faulty.' Regrettably, the news is far
more devastating. Dr. Addison (Walker Modica) informs Oliver that Jenny is very
sick and will die shortly of one of those glamorous undisclosed Hollywood
illnesses never revealed to the audience. Call it cancer? Yes, let’s. Our of
desperation, Oliver appeals to his father for $5,000 to pay for Jenny's
treatments. Oliver III assumes that the money is for an abortion but writes his
son the check anyway. Too late, Oliver III learns what his money is really
being used for and rushes to the hospital to comfort his son only to be informed
Jenny has just died and with her, presumably, the last opportunity Oliver III
might have had to reconcile with his estranged son.
Love Story may not be high art, but it definitely fills the
bucket with genuine tears. Herein, I
recall a quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’s Lady
Chablis – something about “Two tears in a bucket…mother f#$k it!” Love Story is a shameless tearjerker
and that’s part, if not all of its drawing (and staying) power. The other part
is irrefutably owed Ryan O’Neal – then, hardly a star, whose career was given a
mega-boost by his appearance in this movie. O’Neal was bitten by the acting bug
after his mother, actress, Patricia Ruth Olga, got him a job as an extra
in a little known, and even less seen movie shot in Germany. This was all the
encouragement O’Neal needed. Nevertheless, success eluded him. He appeared on
television in bit roles before becoming ‘a regular’ on NBC’s short-lived western,
Empire (1962-63). But then came the television revival of Peyton
Place (1964-1969), O’Neal given the plum part of town stud, Rodney
Harrington. And although the hit series proved a springboard for the film
careers of Mia Farrow and Barbara Parkins, O’Neal would have to wait his turn –
almost until the series’ cancellation - before his big break in pictures. This
may not have been as desperate a hardship, as the film industry by 1970 had
lost its luster during a decade where big corporations virtually strip-mined Hollywood
for its tangible assets (backlots, props, real estate and movie back catalogs)
for quick cash to invest elsewhere. The movie industry was thus something one
aspired to get out of, rather than into. But the decade was just getting
started, and O’Neal, with a string on uninterrupted hits, including Love
Story, What’s Up Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), prove to
be one of ‘new Hollywood’s’ most invaluable box office draws.
Love Story actually fulfilled Ryan O’Neal’s desire, never again
to return to the small screen. After its premiere, O’Neal was Hollywood’s stud
du jour, the picture’s box office phenomenon adding cache and an Academy Award
nomination to his rapidly growing stature. In years to follow, O’Neal remained
bitter about the fact Ali MacGraw was afforded a percentage of the picture’s
profits while he was not. He might have first reconsidered MacGraw had ‘tenure’
– 6-years as a photographic assistant at Harper’s Bazaar, and, as a fashion
model at Vogue. Before her own stardom kicked in, MacGraw was also a photographer’s
stylist and interior decorator. That all changed when she appeared in a popular
TV commercial for the Polaroid Swinger camera where she caught the attention of
Larry Pearce, who cast her in the well-received, Goodbye, Columbus
(1969). Like O’Neal, MacGraw was catapulted into the outer stratospheres of
super-stardom with the premiere of Love Story, one of the
highest-grossing films in U.S. history. And, like O’Neal, the picture also
earned her an Academy Award nomination. Interestingly, at the height of her popularity,
and, after appearing in just 3 movies – one of them, 1972’s mega hit, The
Getaway, opposite Steve McQueen, MacGraw went on a 5-year hiatus, only to
return, hotter than ever, in 1978’s Convoy, opposite Kris Kristofferson.
By the early 1980’s, the love affair between audiences,
and, O’Neal and MacGraw had decidedly cooled. While both actors continued to
work, they were never again to enjoy such meteoric international acclaim.
MacGraw appeared on television, first, in 1983’s miniseries, The Winds of
War, and then, in 1985, joining the cast of prime-time’s Dynasty (1981-89)
as aristocratic fashion photog, Lady Ashley Mitchell, a thankless part. Her
character was killed off at the end of that season, as only one of two victims
of the ‘Moldavian Massacre’ cliffhanger. As for Ryan O’Neal…his, proved the
career with more far-reaching longevity, appearing in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972
sex farce, What’s Up Doc? – the 3rd highest grossing picture of
the year, and then Paper Moon (1973), which afforded his young daughter,
Tatum the opportunity to outshine her father and actually win the Oscar as Best
Supporting Actress, before being hopelessly miscast in Stanley Kubrick’s
spectacular period drama, Barry Lyndon (1975) – the movie O’Neal later
credited with completely changing the trajectory of his career. From this
misfire, O’Neal began a nearly 4-year-long artistic free fall, somewhat abated
when 1979’s The Main Event proved a sizeable hit with audiences. O’Neal
would later suggest all he needed to succeed was a good director and the right
property as his showcase. But frankly, that is true of any starving artist out
there in the cold. And truer still, O’Neal’s one-time Teflon-coated image as a
Hollywood’s latest glamour guy clashed with the more crassly commercial hard
bodies to emerge throughout the eighties.
In retrospect, Love Story remains the real/reel
‘beginning of the end’ for Ryan O’Neal. Initially, director, Arthur Hiller
wanted either Beau Bridges or Michael York to play Oliver IV. Both turned down
the part. Today it is quite impossible to imagine anyone else being half as
good. Ali MacGraw's 'go to hell' attitude wears a tad thin during the last act
of Love Story. I mean, she’s dying. Can’t she just let the chip on that slender
shoulder slip just a little? Otherwise, MacGraw is the real spitfire in this otherwise
soapy melodrama. Segal's script is witty. The verbal sparring between Jenny and
Oliver IV sustains, even if the narrative is tragically episodic to a fault.
Dick Kratina's cinematography is fairly straight forward, although his staging
of the hockey match involved mounting the camera on a pair of hockey sticks and
getting a camera man who could shoot and skate at the same time. Love Story
is also noteworthy for the debut of actor, Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Simpson, one
of Ollie's frat buddies, briefly glimpsed during a card game. Composer, Francis
Lai's theme gets overplayed throughout the movie but is memorable nonetheless.
No matter your age, Love Story will likely have you delving into the
Kleenex by the final reel.
Paramount’s new Paramount Presents… Blu-ray is
advertised as a new 4K scan. But actually, it looks suspiciously similar to the
Blu from 2012 with perhaps marginally improved grain structure, and ever so
slightly more saturated colors – both to rectify the major sins committed on Paramount’s
standard DVD from 2001. The one obvious improvement is the eradication of a
handful of age-related anomalies which appeared to have been ‘baked’ into the
older Blu-ray, but have now been digitally removed. Truly, Love Story
has never looked better on home video. The 1080p image retains its dated
1970’s look with a grain-heavy, naturally thick appearance, while color
fidelity and contrast levels take a quantum leap forward. Better still, all
that pesky edge enhancement and aliasing that plagued the DVD is gone on
Blu-ray. Film grain looks like grain, rather than digital grit. The image is gritty,
yet very film-like. Arguably, Richard Kratina’s cinematography was never the
movie’s tour de force, and occasionally, the image veers into a residual ‘soft’
quality that is in keeping with the original intent. The DTS 5.1 audio here is
identical to the 2012 release, and that’s not a bad thing. Although it exhibits
all the shortcomings of vintage audio, the effect has been lovingly and
painstakingly preserved to eliminate minor hiss and pop.
I think Paramount might have been listening to all the
gripes lobbed at their previous re-issued Blu’s under the Paramount Presents
banner, to have shorn a ton of extras that were readily available on previous
Blu-ray releases – a dumb marketing decision, stolen from the Disney Inc. corporate
mentality, to make fans chronically repurchase their movies in order to own ‘all
of the extras’ by piecing them together from the various releases. Badly
done!!! But on Love Story, everything has survived. So, yes – Arthur
Hiller’s commentary is here; also “Love Story: A Classic Remembered” and
the original theatrical trailer. To these, Paramount has tacked on its usual ‘Filmmaker
Focus’. Aside: I find the name of these brief introductions, most of them done
by film critic, Leonard Maltin, rather misleading since Maltin did not actually
have anything to do with ‘making’ these movies. He isn’t the ‘filmmaker’. Ergo,
these intros ought to be called, ‘Critic’s Focus’. I love Maltin. But he
always seems rushed, and – no kidding – if I only had 6 minutes to summarize a
movie’s entire history and its enduring appeal, I would be too! I suspect,
Paramount has a certain allotment of cash for which they are willing to pay for
Maltin’s services, and are, as yet unwilling to invest in full-blown
documentary-styled featurettes as were once the standard and the norm on
Blu-ray releases. The other new-to-Blu extra is Ben Mankiewicz’s TCM intro.
Mankiewicz, who inherited this mantel of quality from the late Robert Osbourne,
and hails from Hollywood royalty, isn’t quite so good at this gig as I would have
hoped. His 3-min. intro herein offers tidbits not otherwise available, so, it
is nevertheless, welcome here. Bottom line: Love Story remains the
granddaddy of all 3-hanky chick/flicks. That’s part, though not all of its
charm. If you’ve never seen it, Paramount
Presents…Blu-ray reissue is definitely your ‘go to’ for a good cry.
Highly recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
5
EXTRAS
2.5
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