Movie Review: Two For The Seesaw (1962)

Genre: Romantic Drama  

Director: Robert Wise  

Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shirley MacLaine  

Running Time: 119 minutes  

Synopsis: Nebraska lawyer Jerry Ryan (Robert Mitchum) is aimlessly hanging around New York, depressed and almost penniless after his wife Tess decided to divorce him. He spots kind-hearted but sassy dancer and seamstress Gittel Mosca (Shirley MacLaine) at a social event and initiates a turbulent romance. After securing a job at a law firm, Jerry leases a dance studio for Gittel, but also insists that she continuously demonstrate a need for his presence. She is wary, since Jerry is still emotionally attached to Tess.

What Works Well: This stage play adaptation boldly strides into often unspoken and complex dynamics within romantic entanglements. Jerry and Gittel spar over the need to feel needed, ghosts of relationships past, economic and emotional dependency, hurtful actions as poor substitutes for robust communications, and navigating unknown pathways towards maturity. Despite the passion, both Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine avoid histrionics, guided by the steady hand of Robert Wise and accompanied by an evocatively jazzy André Previn music score.

What Does Not Work As Well: Too long by a good half hour, this is an exhaustingly talkative trudge, stage-bound and mostly confined to a couple of claustrophobic apartments. Despite not holding back on expressing themselves, Jerry and Gittel overstay their welcome, their initially refreshing honesty trapped into repetitive beats and eventually ripening into mold.

Key Quote:

Gittel (to Jerry): You do all the giving. What I have to give, you don't want. And what I want, you can't give. 



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