Hey, look what’s on television! Loving (1970)

“Loving” falls into place within a long line of literary works (from Allen Ginsburg, John Cheever and John Updike, among many) and films (like “The Ice Storm” and “The Stepford Wives”) painting sinister portraits of life in suburbia.

Darker than any of Dante’s nine circles of Hell, every bi-level and split-level -- all seemingly located in Connecticut -- hides a pit of desperate drinking, screwing, social climbing and scandal. In “Loving,” George Segal plays a freelance commercial artist burdened with the educated white-guy, middle-class blues: endless work deadlines, conflicted feelings about commercialism vs. art, a cramped house his family has outgrown, an affair with a younger woman in the city. He lies to clients, is a serial flirter and one drink always leads to a dozen more. It’s a life skidding off the Merritt Parkway until the inevitable crash occurs during a neighbor’s cocktail party.

Segal’s character acts like such a jerky frat boy that it’s impossible to muster any sympathy for him – why is he cheating when he’s married to a doting Eve-Marie Saint for Christ’s sake – and when he reaches the embarrassing end of his downward spiral, it feels like redemption for the viewer.

The end comes at a December cocktail party (suburban parties are also pivotal to the plots of Cheever’s “The Swimmer” and “The Ice Storm”) that seems to include most of the characters in the movie, including the girlfriend from the city and another girl Segal’s character tried to hit up earlier. Feeling no pain and rejected by the girlfriend when he corners her in a pantry, he leaves the party with a neighbor who’s been dropping hints about her availability. After a quick encounter in a car backseat – we see their silhouettes behind a snow-covered back windshield and the exhaust from the idling engine – they move on to where it’s warmer, a playhouse belonging to their host’s daughter. What they’ve forgotten is that their creepy host has closed-circuit cameras throughout his property, including the playhouse, connected to his television.

When a bored partygoer starts going through the channels, guess what he comes across? Drunken, half-dressed groping in a playpen, surrounded by stuffed animals as nursery rhyme songs play on a child’s record player (providing a soundtrack of double-entendres: “Did you ever see a lassie go this way and that way” and “pussy in the well”).

Like the partygoers who gather around the television, I unexpectedly came across this scene a million years ago on the Channel 7 4:30 weekday movie at my wife’s parent’s house (we weren’t married yet). Thankfully, her father left the room a couple of minutes earlier (I don’t think he was watching the movie but had fallen asleep on the couch) and I watched alone, dumbfounded. It’s cringeworthy and compelling at the same time.

Two other points about this film. Sterling Hayden channels Captain Ahab in look and attitude during his brief role as a conservative Midwestern trucking magnate building a new headquarters in Manhattan. When Segal visits the construction site to finalize a deal, it’s the skeletal beginnings of the World Trade Center where the scene takes place. As they speak, with the Brooklyn Bridge framed in the background, it’s a reminder that some folks had a spectacular view from their offices.

The film’s director, Irvin Kershner, started his career making quirky, independent dramas like Loving. Within ten years his career had taken a complete about-face and he was directing “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Never Say Never Again” and “RoboCop 2.”

Loving gets some airplay on TCM usually when the channel features a George Segal retrospective, which often includes two other movies where he suffers with the educated, white-guy middle-class blues: “Blume In Love” and “California Split.”