Luv

Back in 1967 when Luv came out in theaters I went to see it and it is one of the very few times I just could not get into the film and walked out before it was over. 45 years later I watched it and did sit through it finally seeing how it ended and my opinion was raised slightly, but not enough to raise it to make it a classic. It's not one of Jack Lemmon's better films.

But it certainly is one of the weirdest I've seen, not funny but just plain weird. Lemmon plays an ultimate neurotic in this one who we meet as he is trying to jump off the Manhattan Bridge. Back in 1967 the walkway was still open for foot traffic. Just as he's about to take a swan dive into the East River along comes an old college friend Peter Falk who is a junk dealer and prowls the streets at night looking for items that thoughtless people might have thrown away.

Falk is unhappily married himself to a neurotic played by Elaine May who won't divorce him. What to do, but put these two neurotics together and see what happens. He saves Lemmon and takes him home and let's nature take its course. In the meantime Falk can pursue the fitness instructor of his dreams Nina Wayne.

Luv was a big hit on Broadway running 901 performances for three years and starred Alan Arkin, Eli Wallach, and Anne Jackson in the Lemmon, Falk, and May roles. On stage it is only a three character play and maybe they should have paid author Murray Schisgal to expand the play for the screen which Columbia Pictures didn't. It must have got a lot of laughs on stage to have had a three year run. But my laughs were few and far between.