The Film That Changed My Mind on Abortion Rights: ‘Love with the Proper Stranger’ (1963)
Cinema | 9 June 2020 | Dwain Leland
About this review’s context:
A wildly intelligent new friend of mine who is fanatically into the art of cinema recently asked what my favorite film is, and my response is always the same, no matter who asks: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). But, as my friend dives into the more classic end of the cinema ocean, his request then became: “What is your favorite film made before 1968, and why?” Never one to miss a beat when given a writing prompt, I quickly penned my justification for loving a film that forced me to take a hard look at my already-shaky views on a woman’s right to choose, and did so in a way that allowed me to cement my support for preserving and expanding women’s reproductive rights.
After I wrote the film review that appears below, I realized that the handful of years before 1968 provide such a rich context for the themes of the film I discuss here, and that time’s parallels to our current climate sadly keep the film relevant beyond the age that produced it. The early- to mid-1960s bore the most brutal conflicts of America’s Civil Rights movement, and fostered the beginnings of second-wave feminism and its resultant Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade (1973). Unfortunately, the same issues of those decades remain largely unresolved, and, like then, those mortal struggles continue to run in tandem through our days and nights: We are still battling for equal rights for all ethnicities and races, as evidenced by the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests and movements rocking 2020, and we also still grapple with the overall rights of women and, specifically, their legally- and morally-justified freedom to obtain abortions. It seems that any war waged against injustice will never be over, but as we stand together to express our outrage and attempt to abolish systemic racism, let’s not lose sight of other oppressed groups and the systematic dismantling of their hard-won rights by privileged powers that constantly seek to undermine them. Women, after all, are our Mothers.
Love with the Proper Stranger
Starring: Natalie Wood, Steve McQueen
Director: Robert Mulligan
Cinematographer: Milton R. Krasner
Genre(s): Comedy / Drama / Romance
Release Date: Christmas Day, 25 December 1963
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Runtime: 102 minutes
Rating: (Unrated)
The Film
Love with the Proper Stranger, a 1963 Robert Mulligan dramedy, is my favorite film made before 1968 for many reasons, but the greatest one has to be that it shows how absolutely messy true love actually is. Its narrative reverses the traditional love story by having our two protagonists hook up in a one-night stand, get pregnant, find they dislike each other, make near-devastating mistakes, and then apparently find love on the tough road of mending those mistakes. Usually these things happen off-screen after the picturesque wedding at the end of a trite, saccharin-sweet film; but in Love with the Proper Stranger, we receive the rare privilege of seeing our young protagonists wrestle with family, biology, money, and integrity of character, from the beginning to the end of its collective frames.
This film is ultimately genuine in look as is set in a realistic, gritty version of New York City, which sits in direct contrast to other films of its ’60s heyday, when the new International Style of sleek architecture and the promise of a new era of Camelot and space travel saturated moviegoers with polished dreams of the future. (Consider the look of my other almost-favorite pre-1968 film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), which offers a more typical rendering of the feel of the mythical NYC at that time.) Moreover, its two main characters, making a mess of things, are both beautiful people as they usually are in films, but they are much less traditional beauties: a lot poorer, increasingly care-worn, and therefore rough around the edges. They are: Natalie Wood as Angie Rossini, and Steve McQueen as Rocky Papasano.
However, beyond these more analytical reasons for why I appreciate this film is the raw emotional pull the film exerts on its audience, and because it was so strong for me personally, I will relate for you the clear memory I will forever have of seeing this film for the first time.
Setting the Scene
It was the year 2000, and I had just moved in to my first apartment after leaving my newly-married Mom’s house. (That chapter of my life is a more… sensitive one.) It was a turbulent time for me, and I was hand-to-mouth, but I had to escape a new and hostile stepfather. My maternal aunt was a live-in manager at the complex I moved into, so she and my uncle carefully agreed to let me rent a one-bedroom apartment from them with no extra graces afforded to me just for being family; it was to be an honest arrangement at arm’s length. But none of us on either side of the agreement really had much, so my Aunt would routinely retrieve and reappropriate things former tenants would leave behind when they often suddenly vacated the buildings she looked after. We all did what we had to just to get by. And, sometimes, these were full apartment setups, which was a chore to clean up (I helped a time or two). As a reward for our hard work, we could sometimes end up with some interesting used items that magically transformed into new belongings for us.
A junior at university, with all my saved cash having gone to this new phenomenon for me called “rent”, as well as to food and the copious amounts of gas one needs to live and work in Texas, I gratefully received two such new-belongings-from-old-apartments in the form of:
(1) a dog-pee-fragranced, foam-framed futon that sank one’s hind quarters damn near to the floor upon being seated; and
(2) an old CRT boob tube with rabbit ears that displayed a “picture” in the form of static perhaps 60% of the time, if I am generous in my recollection.
I could sit in old, dried dog pee (you can’t ever completely clean that out) with my reconstituted can of Chef Boyardee and watch that static-y picture, if I banged the edge of the set in just the right place (and, of course, if the weather was clear). Imagine the television set Jared Leto steals from his mother in Requiem for a Dream, age it 15 years in the ghetto, and you arrive at something probably much nicer than my own set. Yes, I was poor in means, but finally rich in peace, especially due to the fact I never really dated during my university years. Therefore, having no one to impress but myself, I settled in for one of my many solitary evenings after a long day of upper-level classes and IT work that remunerated me at bargain-basement student wages. (I did get noticed and received good raises later. Thank you, Lauri and Mark.)
Because that television set had the propensity to be so cantankerous, I steeled myself for a lover’s spat with it, and tenderly flipped on the dial; if there was even a remote for such an old model, it was most certainly long-gone. I then posed in just the right location and manually coaxed the antennae to receive some of those magical broadcast airwaves passing by and through us… froze still… and held my breath. Not getting anything on the screen, I gave the back-right edge of the set its fetishistically satisfying love-tap a few times, and got a black-and-white movie a few moments after some errant lines crossed the screen that threatened to protest my relaxed viewing. Come to think of it, all the movies on that old set were black-and-white, because it couldn’t present color. At any rate, not really caring what the picture was, but just grateful that I even had a picture, I happily finished preparing one of my humble meals, stealing glances at the picture when possible to see if I could recognize anyone or anything in it. At some point, Natalie Wood entered the frame,…
…and not knowing who she was in adult form at that time, I was instantly intrigued by this fantastic dark beauty I thought I had never seen before. It was the iconic scene where Angie (played by Wood) is working in the Macy’s department store, and Rocky (McQueen) is trying to have an on-the-sly conversation with her about what to do with “the problem,” which of course is their unwanted (perhaps “unplanned” is more forgiving?) pregnancy from a one-night stand they shared.
My Experience of the Film
{CAUTION: **Spoiler Alert** — Narrative descriptions that contain critical plot details and crisis resolution in the film lie ahead.}
I couldn’t take my eyes off the television. Always the sensitive one, and very susceptible to being empathetically drawn in to worlds on screens, this strange “love story” took a hard left into horror territory when Angie and Rocky arrive and meet in a seedy part of the city for what we know is likely going to be a botched, back-alley abortion. As a severe woman, obviously not a physician, removes an assortment of barbaric tools from a weathered suitcase and arranges them on a dirty sheet on the floor of an abandoned apartment, we viscerally fear the coming moments just as much as Angie visibly does, while she painfully tries to work up the courage just to disrobe. That scene was set in what could have been the nearly-bare apartment I was living in at that moment; it was a filmic mirror of my own harsh existence, and the dreadful scene filled and occupied my penniless home. I was Angie, surely in a less precarious way, but still identified with both her and Rocky on fundamental levels. How could the three of us in that colorless world flee the danger, but still resolve the problems we were trying to avert through illegal means?
Having grown up in Conservative-land (read: Middle America) all my life, the idea of this beautiful blackbird having an abortion procedure was horrifying enough to my then-ignorant mind, let alone having to see the dangers my Roe-era Mom used to relate to me about unsafe reproductive “care” during that terrible time play out on the screen with unflinching veracity. Additionally, the alarming tone of the scene is ramped up by the fact that the film has by this point effectively sown enough seeds of doubt about Rocky’s character that we are not entirely sure he will do the right thing and stop the madness of the horrific butchery to come. Palpably sweating as much as he was on the screen, I was moved to tears when he (FINALLY!) pushes past the hack doctor’s lookout muscle, bursts through the bedroom door, embraces Angie, and removes her from the danger. His love for her — not necessarily romantically confirmed at this point, but rather a robust compassion for her fragile humanity — literally saves her life. It is perhaps one of the most moving scenes I have ever witnessed on film, and establishes the foundation of genuine respect and consideration upon which we know that true love between two people, in this case our angelic Angie and rugged Rocky, can be built. Indeed, just at this point of the narrative arc’s climax, we find the hope of romantic salvation birthed in a place of what looks to be certain death.
Texas
This film, this story, changed my life and my views on abortion. I always had secret doubts about toeing the “Pro-Life” religious line I had been forcefully encouraged to adhere to all my life, but with no first-hand experience anywhere near me in my also-conservative friends and family, I had no reference point for truly and honestly grappling with the issue from the perspective of the women at risk. Rather, I had to witness it in the fantastic world of the movies that arrived to pierce my heart through a near-broken box set in my humble apartment. Mercy met me in my sweltering little living room at the Briargrove Apartments that night. I was 22.
“New York”
As the film closes, it again so closely mirrors reality in that we know Angie and Rocky are in love, but obviously have many problems yet to be worked out. Given prior scenes and their passionate dispositions, we know with certainty that this couple will be having some knock-down, drag-out shouting matches as they try to sort things out. We also know that, due to the failed abortion arrangement, she is still pregnant, so there is that battle for them to wage in the coming months that remains outstanding. Interestingly, we don’t know if they will marry, or if they will still be together long enough to have and rear the child. All the open-ended questions about their fate leaves them perched in our minds, eternally cheering them on to try to make a go of it because they are so young, beautiful, and need each other to survive the brutish world that they, and indeed we all, live in.
Back in Texas
Despite all the ways it moved me, when the closing frames nostalgically marking “The End” rolled, I still didn’t know the name of this film. Because this transformative viewing experience of mine happened with an old television set, and in a time before on-screen interfaces that displayed the programming became commonplace, I was woefully ignorant of what to call the piece of poignant art I had just witnessed. So, I made up my mind the following weekend to fish out my Grandparents’ print copy of TV Guide from the previous week and look it up at our family’s usual Sunday dinner out at their farmhouse after church. It perhaps goes without saying that I never breathed a word of my solitary movie epiphany to anyone until much later, when I felt more self-assured in my ethical, moral, and political stances. And I’m not just referring to reproductive rights, but a host of other progressive issues I wrestled with trying to accept all my young life.
Armed with a newfound crush for a grown-up 1960s Natalie Wood, and educated on how to be a good (if flawed) man by Steve McQueen, I have often measured — and perhaps still do — my nascent relationships against the test-case of Love with the Proper Stranger:
□ If I were in mortal danger behind a closed door, and my love interest could stop it, would they?
□ If I needed medical help and couldn’t afford it, would my love interest work harder to provide the money for that bill?
□ If I were romantically entangled with someone that had heavy cares and burdens, would I do what was necessary to break a door down and shelter them from harm?
□ Would I picket on the street outside, every day, like a lunatic, to prove my love for this person?
Because, if they would, and I would, then I might finally arrive at my own sort of love with the proper stranger.
Ways to stream Love with the Proper Stranger:
· Amazon Prime Video
· Kanopy
♥ DL
Dwain Leland is currently a healthy freelance writer, art lover, and professional fashion model who graduated with a Master of Liberal Arts from Stanford University in 2015. He is presently writing from an undisclosed location as he self-isolates during the COVID-19 pandemic, attempting to speak to open hearts by prying the lids off closed minds. ■
© 2020 Dwain Leland, exclusive of photography | All rights reserved.
