Movie #271 Two for the Seesaw *1962*

I am tired of seeing Robert Mitchum as a sad sack.  First it was The Friends of Eddie Coyle, now this.  In this film Mitchum played a man who was in the early stages of divorce.  He is a straight laced lawyer, or at least he used to be a lawyer.  He meets a woman at a party played by Shirley MacLaine.  She is a beatnik type and several years his junior. 

Both leads are fantastic in their roles.  It is the roles that got to me.  The script was based on a hit Broadway play and it plays out like one on screen.  The two leads go through every emotion in the book and it is tiresome to watch it.  Unfortunately for me I found Mitchum's role WAY TO FAMILIAR.  He was a passive aggressive, pitiful, manipulative, sorry excuse for a man.  And the thing was his character didn't realize it.  What he thought was charm was drenched in self doubt and desperation.  There was a time in my life where I acted the same way.  It made me sick to see another human being doing the same things. 

MacLaine was equally lost in her role.  She had big dreams and ambitions, but she didn't poses the skills needed to make those dreams come true.  Again, there was a time in my life where I met a girl very similar to MacLaine, and just by chance it was soon after my divorce. 

The end of the film came as a real surprise to me.  It was the only part that rang false.  I guess if you play these types of relationships out to their inevitable ends, they rarely work out.  But Hollywood is known for making the unlikely likely.  That's why there is the term "Hollywood Ending".  But this film doesn't give you that.  I won't say what it does, but I was really surprised by the ending.

This film is directed by Robert Wise.  A man who I think has one of the strangest film careers in the business.  Check him out some time on IMDB.  As for the film, I was a weeping ball of misery by the end.  I give Two for the Seesaw ★★★1/2.