Two For The SeaSaw (1962)

Another of my favorite things, this movie, "Two for the SeaSaw"


Directed by Robert Wise (“Audrey Rose,” “The Andromeda Strain,” “The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story,” “Citizen Kane—as editor”), this is not what I would have guessed that the man would have gravitated toward. “Two” is an almost film noir starring Shirley MacLaine and Robert Mitchum—a paring that I still have trouble with. MacLaine I can see. But I would have picked half a dozen others for the role of Jerry Ryan, the soon-to-be-divorced lawyer from Nebraska, slumming around Greenwich Village. Somehow MacLaine and Mitchum make chemistry and the rest his not only movie history, but a damn fine movie.

The play and movie could not be more appropriately named. This movie is going to drive you nuts when you see it if you’re looking for a stock formula or obvious plot. The reason is that this couple go back and forth so many times on every issue in the book that they’re truly sea-sawing for the entire play. And the ending is a not-so-wrapped-up one. I can see where this may have worked better as a stage play and probably had more popularity with New Yorkers when it came out, rather than the somewhat downer of a movie it can be viewed as. That’s how others might see it, but not me. I love the oddness of it and the stark black-and-white film. I love the New York apartments and the seediness that is shown—how New York used to be.

While there are things that irritate me about this movie, it still remains one of favorites. The irritating things are the split screen, showing both apartments of Ryan and Mosca (Shirley McClaine.) There’s an inordinate amount of phone conversations going on in this movie. But the reason I gravitate toward this William Gibson play (he also wrote “The Miracle Worker”) is because it is so far from the norm, so far from what you’d expect, and so human. It really is “reality” without the boredom. I supposed you could say that fear of commitment is the main theme and perhaps that is one more reason I liked it. It’s probably the only movie I know of that handles this idea this well, and in this framework that takes us through the film. It’s basically an enormous character study of two people.

Robert Wise is a fantastic director and this is totally unlike anything else he did. He died in 2005 of heart failure, but before that won 4 Oscars and another 28 wins and 18 nominations from the committee. He got a lot of attention from Orson Welles when he became editor of “Citizen Kane” and quickly moved up the ladder. Few know that he was a fan of commercial Indian cinema (yeah, it shocked me too), and that when he died in ’05 he was the last surviving member of the cast and crew that worked on “Kane.” Another great movie he directed was “The Sand Pebbles (1966).” A great man who directed this great movie.


by Sam Friedman