Expiration Watch: TWO FOR THE SEESAW

There's a lot to be said for blunt, literate dialogue between two characters--something more common to plays, books, and high-caliber TV dramas than today's big-studio releases. Equally refreshing are movie romances minus the pinches of Hollywood fairy dust that often cloud the screen, especially if you prefer to see relationships with some semblance of real life. Functioning as a kind of companion piece to Billy Wilder's The Apartment, only less witty and with a narrower scope, Two for the Seesawthrives in its carefully observed portrayal of two lost souls learning to trust each other in 1962 New York.

The details are what sell it. From the Oscar-nominated location photography to the peeling paint inside the cramped and sagging downtown dwellings, this is a world that's been lived in. Not that the film is some gritty kitchen sink drama soaked in gin and reeking of broken childhoods. But director Robert Wise seems to have taken great care to dispense with movie shorthand and actually show what living in New York was (and still is) like for the average striver. Accounts are regularly tallied, dollars saved, geographical integrity honored. Given the film's pedigree--from the director of West Side Story, starring Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine, shot in gorgeous widescreen black and white--such fidelity comes as a refreshing surprise.

Read more �