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Saturday, Feb 21, 1998
Two for the Seesaw
Two vaguely miscast actors play two vaguely outcast characters making Two for the Seesaw a delightfully offbeat sixties film. Shirley MacLaine's a nice Jewish girl-too nice, and to the wrong people. Her Gittel Mosca, née Moscowitz, is a would-be modern dancer who can't dance because she's busy being a doormat for every wastrel in Greenwich Village. Robert Mitchum, as an Omaha lawyer far from the heartland in New York City, fell out of some film noir into a William Holden role-straight-man to a loony lover. But he's the real loony here, and watching him struggle with emotions-capital E is the more interesting for his poker face and the long shadow of the Mitchum swagger. He picks Gittel up off the floor but doesn't know where to put her. Bright, unrelenting psycho-dialogue and a camera that slyly pretends the screen's a stage help retain the "seesaw" effect of the original Broadway play.
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