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Richard Quine is an odd choice for a marital infidelity soap opera. This material feels better suited to numerous other directors, not Quine’s more comedic strengths. Instead of bringing any energy into the material, Quine plays everything straight, and Strangers When We Meet is a bit of a pretty-but-empty slog about two neighbors engaged in an affair.
I wonder what acerbic undertones and bits of humor a director like Douglas Sirk could inject into the proceedings, because there’s only surface-level introspection here. There’s no deeper examination of suburban ennui or the culture at large here, just a sudsy story of a beautiful, frigid blonde goddess trapped in a sexless marriage who engages in an affair with an older man who isn’t unhappy at home, but adrift in his career. That’s about it for narrative depth and conviction.
Thank god then that Quine assembled such a strong group of actors, as they energize as best they can such a somnambulistic-paced film. Kirk Douglas, in the prime of his epic leading man days, feels slightly out of place at first, and we keep waiting for him to give a rousing speech or charge into battle. As the film goes on, Douglas tries valiantly to make us care, keeping his megawatt intensity on a low simmer throughout, and nearly succeeds even as the film’s artificiality keeps us at a remove from the characters and their emotions.
Kim Novak and Barbara Rush fare much better. Novak’s best performance use her frosty exterior to hide a neurotic, yearning inner life, and Strangers When We Meet taps into that quality repeatedly. Novak was never a highly demonstrative actress, preferring more interior and quiet work, but she’s strong here even if the material is fairly routine for her by this point. Rush is equally good, more hardheaded and tenacious in a role that easily could have dipped towards shrill housewife. Compared to her Bigger Than Life role, she’s not given much to do, but she plays her big scenes with grit and commitment.
The glossiness of its presentation keeps Strangers When We Meet in cellophane wrapping free from fingerprints and stains. Yet that messiness is what it needed to feel more alive, real, and emotionally honest, to truly engage with the audience and the characters a little less polish could do wonders. It’s worth a watch for the work of the stellar leading players, but it’s all empty melodramatics designed for maximum cheap sentiment.
