Love With the Proper Stranger

Boy knocks up girl, boy loses girl, boy makes honest woman of girl: that's a wonderful Cinderella story for the Morally Revolutionized Generation we learned all about in Time and Newsweek recently.

He has to lose her, you see, because she'd rather be an unwed mom than trap a guy into matrimony just because he got her in trouble. Who wants to get married these days when they don't have a meaningful relationship?

Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen tumble in the hay together without even knowing each other's names, but they don't actually meet until poor Natalie's with child. As you can imagine, this puts a crimp in their romance but lends real direction to the plot.

Steve, a hippic musician currently shacked up with a stripper named Barbara Seville, is accosted by Natalie in a Union hiring hall. "Were was it now?" he muses lecherously. "Grossingers? Brooklyn? The Catskills?" "Never mind that!" hisses Natalie, every inch the petulant mousketeer. "I'm going to have a baby."

Natalie comes from a nice Italian family. In fact, one gets the feeling that she'd hardy so much as kissed a fellow goodnight prior to her pushes in the bushes with Steve. So, remaining rather mutually aloof, they plan an abortion. Grubby business.

Finally, with a little fist-in-the-face encouragement from brother Dominic (Herschel Bernardi, I must interject, looks and sounds about as Italian as Menasha Skulnick), Steve proposes. To everyone's amazement except ours, Natalie rejects him. A wedding without love would be intolerable. Footloose Steve, feeling his duty discharged, ducks out the back door leaving Natalie's relatives in anguished pandemonium. You never heard so many Mama Mias.

Later, when Steve gets an eyeful of Natalie's cleavage ("Hey, you really look like a woman") he decides she wouldn't make such a bad mate after all. What if Natalie had been an ugly bag good for a one night stand? Well, we're not supposed to ask those questions. Still, the happy ending seems a good sign; the transgressors get off pretty lightly. A few years ago the moviegoing public would have demanded a little more suffering for such a sportive fling.

Some have called this a singularly "honest" movie, and indeed, Hollywood has been far more deceitful. When he rescues Natalie from the abortionist, for instance, Steve can think of nothing more clever than "C'mon getcher clothes on" which he reiterates six or seven times. But the characters, from Natalie's mother (who might be an ad for La Rosa spaghetti) to her oafish suitor (a sort of diminutive Chef Boyardee), are all pretty familiar.

Love with the Proper Stranger has been nominated for five Academy Awards and surely doesn't deserve any. Nevertheless, it is often good fun and, in its more furtive moments, even a little frightening. Clearly, unwanted pregnancy is no picnic, and Hollywood has turned in a powerful plea for chastity or contraception. I'm not sure which.