Love With The Proper Stranger

Director: Robert Mulligan

1963 / 102min / DCP

Natalie Wood’s final Oscar nomination came for her performance as Angie Rossini, a Macy’s clerk who finds herself pregnant following a one-time tumble with irresponsible out-of-the-job musician Steve McQueen, who doesn’t even remember their tryst. Director Mulligan, fresh off his much-lauded To Kill a Mockingbird, shifts setting and style radically here, shooting on-location in New York City and with extensive use of handheld camera, giving a prolonged sequence that details Angie’s journey to the offices of a back-alley abortionist a stifling intensity. A sensitive, deeply human portrayal of two strangers forced into an uneasy intimacy through having to make a life-altering decision.