“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
The line that is ubiquitous with the movie Love Story is also perhaps the most mocked line in the romance movie genre. A line that sounds sweet and poetic -and certainly in context- but is meaningfully empty and kind of just flat-out false when applied to anything beyond a very narrow scope of subjects that comprise what we might call ‘love’. Even just two years later, Peter Bogdanovich had Ryan O’Neal (who delivers the line in its second usage in this film) respond to the quote with “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard” in the film What’s Up, Doc?
Bogdanovich and O’Neal had no qualms making fun of it then, because the movie’s power in spite of it was already assured. Love Story was the first monster hit of the 1970s. It was the highest-grossing movie of 1970 and one of the highest-grossing movies of all time up to that point (it is still in the top fifty adjusted for inflation). It is said to have revived the Hollywood melodrama for the new generation and indeed spawned several imitators in the following decade -it is a critical movie in the history of the romance genre, several aspects of it palpable in a ripple effect through the years since. And there is something very effective to its sincerity, its earnest if perhaps romanticized take on the class divide, and its passionate performances from relative newcomers O’Neal and Ali MacGraw.
Their characters come together much sooner than expected, the pair meeting at Radcliffe College, Harvard and not particularly getting along in part due to their different upbringings. Jenny Cavilleri (MacGraw) is a sharp working-class girl with a forthright attitude who doesn’t suffer fools. Oliver Barrett IV (O’Neal) is the privileged though conscientious scion of a wealthy family playing hockey at the college in spite of his father urging him towards Law. Jenny and Oliver form initially a very Benedick and Beatrice dynamic before realizing more honestly their feelings and becoming a couple, ultimately contending with each other’s families and their class differences, yet marrying after they graduate. But of course there is tragedy in their fortunes, one of the most famous elements of the film.
It’s understandable why young people gravitated towards this movie and its central romance. It came in the midst of the New Hollywood era though itself bore little of the New Hollywood ethos -again its story and sincerity were very classical in tone, just delivered in a modern context with new and modern stars. And O’Neal and MacGraw certainly represent well that modern generation on screen, in the natural cadence of their composure, language, and chemistry -which is very good by the way. It’s not hard, they are both beautiful young stars. But the script by Erich Segal (who also wrote a book to release concurrently with the film) brings them together fairly quickly and heightens the tenor of their affections in some places to a degree that might be unbelievable if these actors didn’t find convincing ways to ground this relationship. Both characters carry some weight by virtue of it, mostly related to presumptions and expectations and the actors play that tangibly -O’Neal especially, who conveys the struggle of existing in his father’s shadow while trying to break free of it. His family has passive-aggressive issues with Jenny, not just for her lack of status but her Italian heritage (a reminder of the lingering threads of Italian-American discrimination), while her father, played by John Marley, is far more open to him with less in the way of reservations.
The class theme may be a little bit obvious for a movie that clearly strives to be a kind of contemporary Romeo and Juliet, its lovers drawn from star-crossed backgrounds. But there is a reason it is a popular theme to bring up for a romance story, and in fairness Love Story doesn’t cast it as something operatic or even as intensely as something like Titanic. It is interested in the nuance of a middle-class girl partnered with an upper-class boy. And the boy being the upper-class one is notable too, relatively distinct for these kind of stories outside of straight-up fairy tales. Curiously, he is conscious of his privilege -always already a bit isolated from his family and wealth- and is more than willing to give up some of his comforts for Jenny. The two of them marry in a very nondescript fashion, in the house of Jenny’s father with just a few witnesses and vows taken from poetry -Whitman for Oliver and Elizabeth Barrett Browning for Jenny. It is a Catholic ceremony too, notable given the associations especially in this time that Protestantism had with class.
Of course in this, the struggle and adjustment is mostly taken on by Oliver -and his is the perspective the movie adopts most frequently, as might be expected from a male writer and a male director -Canadian Arthur Hiller, who would have an extensive career after Love Story but never equaling it. While his relationship to his background is nuanced and humanized by this it does leave Jenny a little bit lacking as a character -with comparatively few personal flaws and insight into her inner life. MacGraw plays her as though she is pretty fully rounded though, and definitely epitomizes the baby boomer modernity of the character in sensitivity and attitude. The most engaging part of the movie is the period of struggle and relationship strain of Oliver and Jenny’s early adulthood -which is where the famous line first comes in, in the context of Oliver storming out in the heat of an argument related to their failure to conceive, only to walk around the city for some hours and come back penitent. We see too the rhythms they start to develop -walks by an open ice rink symbolic of Oliver’s earlier life ambitions -routines cut short far too soon.
If Love Story is iconic for anything other than its famous quote and its exquisitely beautiful musical theme by Francis Lai, it is for the fact that it ends in bitter tragedy, and spends its entire third act building up to it. This section really is the height of melodramatic cliché, from Oliver's finding out about Jenny's terminal diagnosis before she does right up to her tragic death. Oliver carrying that with him while maintaining some level of normalcy with Jenny makes for a decent acting showcase for O'Neal, but it leaves MacGraw as once more the passive character of the film, whose own feelings about her mortality are diminished. It again paints her as the accessory character to Oliver rather than her own full part of the story and relationship, which is not only regressive but narratively stagnant. But of course the big issue with this diagnosis and all of the consequences of it -that was being made fun of as far back as the movie was released- is how we don't actually know what it is she is diagnosed with. Presumably it is some form of cancer but the script refuses to make that clear. It's bizarre because there isn't any reason not to openly identify what her condition is, beyond some ancient romantic storytelling trope. This isn't a story about the eighteenth or nineteenth century though (where authors had the excuse of a lot of causes for death being medical mysteries). It is very out of place in the 1970s, and the writing around specificity here is very awkward and noticeable.
The death itself is also quite overwrought, for as much as O’Neal and MacGraw endeavour to sell the emotional weight of it. Famously, Jenny’s deathbed scene shrouds her in the most opulent lighting and the prettiest make-up in spite of the apparent direness of her medical condition. There’s not even a drop of sweat on her brow. There’s sentiment to the moment, but it would ring stronger if it wasn’t again so focused on Oliver and his pain. Jenny has largely accepted her fate by this point, the scene’s function is to comfort him, assure him that he was never a barrier to her happiness and that she has no regrets about their short time together. He is absolved essentially of any complication in their marriage, while she is made to die with no nuanced feelings about it. It’s not quite a fridging in the strictest sense as it is not done with solely the purpose of advancing his arc, which comes to a close here as well -but it is near enough as to be just as irritating. In spite of the aesthetic criticisms around Jenny here, the beat is played with a good romantic atmosphere and the emotionality is played strongly -its substance just leaves a lot to be desired. So too does the final invocation of that line which doesn’t make a lot of sense as spoken to Oliver’s father, who can’t hide his ambivalence to the loss of his daughter-in-law.
What Love Story needed was a woman’s touch on the script to make its themes more equitable and its story better rounded. It’s male point-of-view is in this context is a hindrance to its efficacy -even Shakespeare permitted both Romeo and Juliet their distinct lenses. There is still charm to the movie, its 70s cinematic techniques are competent -making them extraordinary by modern Hollywood standards- and the actors give it a lot, especially MacGraw in spite of the deficiencies in her character. It’s earnestly sweet in places too. The title is fitting, Love Story is indeed pretty archetypal -which is both a strength and weakness for it. It works alright, is even very good in places; but it falls short of its obvious aim for the high echelons of that genre. A love story, purely and only.
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