Loving (1970)

A commercial illustrator (George Segal) lives in the Connecticut suburbs with a wife (Eva Marie Saint) and two small daughters. His career is going well, not great, but well. But it's clear he hates his job and his life, he's a womanizer and drinks too much. How long before he self destructs? Based on the novel BROOKS WILSON LTD by J.M. Ryan (a pseudonym for John McDermott), this still under seen jewel is one of the best films of the 1970s. As directed by Irvin Kershner (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK), this is an incisive (but not without humor) look at a middle class "artist" whose drinking and womanizing is a form of denial. That he isn't an artist but just mediocre and he hates himself for it. Segal was a fertile actor duing this period doing the best work of his career in movies like BORN TO WIN, OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT and this film. As the wife, Saint grabs a role that in the hands of a lesser actress would be an uninteresting stereotype and floods it with intelligence and emotion. There's a world of experience playing out on that face. Luckily, Kershner doesn't condescend to his characters, we don't feel superior to them and perhaps we even see our own lives reflected. With Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Roy Scheider, David Doyle, Janis Young, Diana Douglas, Nancie Phillips, Edgar Stehli, Betsy Von Furstenberg and Sherry Lansing, who would go on to become CEO of Paramount pictures and president at 20th Century Fox!