Natalie and Steve Never Better

gregorybnyc

This film has always struck me as Natalie Wood and Steve

McQueen's best work in movies.  Both would go on to successes

and failures, but neither would seem as natural and as unaffected

on screen again.  

The story of a good working-class Italian girl in New York who gets

pregnant by a man she hardly knows, is very strong stuff for 1963.

So is their decision to have an abortion.  Roe vs. Wade was nearly

a decade in the future.  Mulligan shows a very gritty, dirty, New York

which has emerged from the 50s as a crumbling relic of a city,

nowhere as clean and shiny as it is today.  McQueen is a callow

young musician, not looking to settle down with anyone, let alone a

single pregnant girl, even if he is at fault.  

The trip to a bad neighborhood to get the abortion is chilling, and

Wood's absolute terror is genuine here.  McQueen being

reluctantly honorable is very sexy here.  The rest of the film with her

facing down her overly protective Neanderthal brothers and getting

her own apartment, follows the young lovers as they try to do the

right thing.  Steve's poster--"Better wed than Dead," is a sweet

coda.  

I loved this movie.  It struck this teenager at the time, as a very

sophisticated film.  Natalie Wood is incandescently beautiful in

black and white and still the loner, McQueen's intensity is a bit

more subtle than usual.  Good supporting cast.  This was an era

where the final black and white movies were being made--TO KILL

A MOCKING BIRD, BIRD MAN OF ALCATRAZ, THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, PSYCHO were the last gasp of this

medium.  

Long overdue for DVD release.

score /10

gregorybnyc 13 May 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0082880/