TWO FOR THE SEESAW (1962) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Robert Wise
Robert Mitchum, Shirley MacLaine, Edmon Ryan,
Elisabeth Fraser, Eddie Firestone, Billy Gray
A New York free spirit and a lawyer from Nebraska hook up in a romantic melodrama based on William Gibson's play. Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine play the mismatched couple, and there's something about the way they play off each other that tells you they don't quite connect. Both are wounded and maybe a little damaged, and even when they're getting close, they keep circling, eyeing each other, as if they were gauging the space between them. It's not quite a two-person story, but it might as well be, and the two stars are practically the whole show, though why Mitchum's character would even consider going back to Nebraska and leaving what he's got in New York is a little hard to fathom. Not when what he's got in New York is Shirley MacLaine.
