Chance Meeting

(The quote above is from a review of a concert where Robert Shaw conducted Bach's mighty B-Minor Mass, then followed it with some spirituals for encores.)

A lot of water has crashed over the dam in sexual relationships since this movie was released 53 years ago. Yes, the sexual frankness is a bit higher than we expect, about at the level of "West Side Story" (a woman in her slip sitting up in bed), but the notion that two people can simply fall in love and move mountains to maintain that love seems pretty quaint to us today. You will groan at some of the clichés the lovers spout in the process.

And speaking of "West Side Story", oh, my, there's a lot of "Romeo and Juliet" here as well. There's also a bit of "A Farewell to Arms", but I won't specify what, so's not to spoil.

Well, the film satisfied a craving in the audiences of its day, and we can watch it even today with interest, though it's not particularly compelling anymore. There's good pacing, good film-making, very plausible visuals, and a great crescendo of almost Hitchcockian excitement toward the end, but the plot also depends on some very weak twists to pull it through, I'm afraid.

I stopped the film about ten minutes from the end, and asked myself, "It appears they'll either make it, or they won't. Do I care?" And yes, I had to admit, I was invested in it at that point. I cared. And so I played it, willingly, to the end.