Love Story 1970 Watch Online

[Doris Joo]

Love Story is a 1970 American romantic drama film written by Erich Segal, who was also the author of the best-selling 1970 novel of the same name. It was produced by Howard G. Minsky,[4] and directed by Arthur Hiller, starring Ali MacGraw, Ryan O'Neal, John Marley, Ray Milland and Tommy Lee Jones in his film debut.

The film is considered one of the most romantic by the American Film Institute (No. 9 on the list) and is one of the highest-grossing films of all time adjusted for inflation.[5] It was followed by a sequel, Oliver's Story (1978), starring O'Neal with Candice Bergen.

Jenny reveals that she has a scholarship in Paris arranged for after her Radcliffe graduation. Oliver is upset that he does not figure in Jenny's plans and proposes marriage. She accepts his proposal and he takes her to the Barrett mansion to meet his parents, who are uncomfortable with her Italian-American and blue-collar background. Oliver's father says he will cut him off financially if he marries Jenny.

They visit her father, Phil, a widowed baker in Cranston, Rhode Island, who wants Oliver to get along with his father. Phil wants a Catholic wedding but Oliver and Jenny marry themselves with him reciting "Song of the Open Road" by Walt Whitman and her reciting "Sonnett 22" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Jenny works as a teacher but without his father's financial support the couple struggles to pay Oliver's way through Harvard Law School. Oliver graduates third in his class and takes a position at a high-powered New York City law firm. They are ready to start a family but fail to conceive. After Jenny undergoes three blood tests, Oliver is told that she is terminally ill.

Oliver attempts to continue as normal without telling Jenny of her condition, but she confronts her doctor and finds out the truth. Oliver buys tickets to Paris, but she declines to go, wanting only to spend time with him. Oliver seeks money from his estranged father to pay for Jenny's medical care. His father asks if he has "gotten a girl in trouble". Oliver says yes, and his father writes a check.

From her hospital bed, Jenny makes arrangements with her father for a Catholic funeral. She tells Oliver to not blame himself, insisting that he never held her back from music and Paris and it was worth it for the love they shared. Jenny's last wish is for Oliver to embrace her tightly as she dies.

The movie was originally written as a screenplay but Erich Segal was unable to sell it. Howard Minsky, who was head of the motion picture division on the east coast for the William Morris Agency, who represented Segal, believed in the project. According to Arthur Hiller, "He gave up his job and made an arrangement with Erich Segal because he had such faith in that project. He mothered it all the way through. If it hadn't been for him, it would never have been a film."[7]

Minksy says he had Segal rewrite the script seven times. The changes included altering the female lead from being Jewish to Italian-American, deleting the character of the girl's mother, and minimising swearing and nudity.[8] [9]

The script was read by Ali MacGraw, who wanted to make it. She had just made Goodbye Columbus for Paramount Pictures, then under Robert Evans. Paramount had signed MacGraw to a three picture deal and agreed to make the film as a vehicle for MacGraw.[7] In May 1969, Evans announced that he wanted a "sensitive young actor" like Beau Bridges or Jon Voight for the lead and Larry Peerce, who had made Goodbye Columbus, would direct.[10] Evans later said Peerce took the job because he "desperately needed a gig" but the director was always unhappy working on the project and pulled out after a month.[11] He was replaced by Anthony Harvey, who had made Lion in Winter, but Harvey quit the project after collaborating with Segal. Eventually Arthur Hiller, who was making two films at Paramount (The Out of Towners and Plaza Suite) agreed to direct.[12]

In September 1969 it was announced Hiller would direct and that Harper and Row would publish a novelised version of the script in February of the following year.[13] According to Evans, Paramount had suggested Segal adapt the screenplay into a novel to help promote the film. Minsky says he was the one who suggested this.[8] Peter Bart, then an executive at Paramount, claims he suggested it. Segal says that he wrote the novel at the same time as the screenplay with considerable input from Gene Young of Harpers who was editor.[6] The book was published in time for Valentine's Day in 1970, and became a best seller.[14] [8][9]

According to press reports, the lead role of Oliver Barrett IV was refused by Jeff Bridges, Michael Douglas, Beau Bridges, Michael York and Jon Voight.[12] Evans says that Michael Sarrazin, Peter Fonda and Keith Carradine also turned it down.[15] MacGraw recalls auditioning opposite Christopher Walken, Ken Howard and David Birney.[citation needed]

Hiller says "we tested eight or nine different actors and Ryan was the best. He didn't bowl us over at first. Then I saw some footage of a film he was just completing at 20th Century Fox and I thought it would be wonderful. He just had that empathy and feeling that was so necessary."[7] According to a contemporary account, O'Neal was tested on the recommendation of Erich Segal, who had worked with him on The Games; he was paid $25,000.[16] Evans later claimed he insisted O'Neal be cast because he made the best test, over the objections of Hiller who wanted Walken.[17]

Bill Cleary, former Harvard and 1960 U.S. Olympic hockey star (and later Harvard's hockey coach/athletic director), was Ryan O'Neal's hockey stand-in during key hockey scenes where skating and hockey-playing ability were required. Hockey scenes were filmed in three days at Harvard's former Watson Rink, which was rebuilt and is now known as Bright-Landry Hockey Center. Other hockey players in the film were played mostly by actual Harvard and Boston University hockey players, including Joe Cavanagh and Mike Hyndman.

Filming Love Story on location resulted in damage to trees on campus. This experience, followed by a similar experience with the film A Small Circle of Friends (1980), caused the university administration to deny most subsequent requests for filming on location.[20]

Jimmy Webb wrote a score for the film that was not used. Burt Bacharach was approached to do the score but pulled out when Robert Evans requested a score similar to that of Frances Lai. Eventually Lai was cast.[12]

Arthur Hiller recalled, "We thought we were making a nice little movie. Well, all of us thought that except the producer who kept saying, "Arthur, believe me, this will be big." And I said, "Yes Howard, you're the producer, you have to feel that way." But he was totally right."[7]

Overall, Love Story received positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected reviews from 30 critics and gave the film a score of 63%. The critical consensus reads: "Earnest and determined to make audiences swoon, Love Story is an unabashed tearjerker that will capture hearts when it isn't inducing eye rolls."[23]

Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and called it "infinitely better than the book," adding, "because Hiller makes the lovers into individuals, of course we're moved by the film's conclusion. Why not?"[24] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times was also positive, writing that although "the plotline has been honored many times... It's the telling that matters: the surfaces and the textures and the charm of the actors. And it is hard to see how these quantities could have been significantly improved upon in Love Story."[25]

Newsweek felt the film was contrived[24] and film critic Judith Crist called Love Story "Camille with bullshit".[26] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "I can't remember any movie of such comparable high-style kitsch since Leo McCarey's Love Affair (1939) and his 1957 remake, An Affair to Remember. The only really depressing thing about Love Story is the thought of all the terrible imitations that will inevitably follow it."[27] Gene Siskel gave the film two stars out of four and wrote that "whereas the novel has a built-in excuse for being spare (it is told strictly as the boy's reminiscence), the film does not. Seeing the characters in the movie ... makes us want to know something about them. We get precious little, and love by fiat doesn't work well in film."[28] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "I found this one of the most thoroughly resistible sentimental films I've ever seen. There is scarcely a character or situation or line in the story that rings true, that suggests real simplicity or generosity of feeling, a sentiment or emotion honestly experienced and expressed."[29] Writer Harlan Ellison wrote in The Other Glass Teat, his book of collected criticism, that it was "shit". John Simon wrote that Love Story was so bad that it never once moved him.[30]

Love Story was ranked number 9 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions list, which recognizes the top 100 love stories in American cinema. The film also spawned a trove of imitations, parodies, and homages in countless films, having re-energized melodrama on the silver screen, as well as helping to set the template for the modern "chick flick".

Love Story was an instant box-office smash.[31] It opened in two theatres in New York City, Loew's State I and Tower East, grossing $128,022 in its first week.[22] It expanded into another 166 theatres on Christmas Day and grossed a record $2,463,916 for the weekend, becoming the number-one film in the United States.[32][33] It also grossed a record $5,007,706 for the week[34] and grossed $2,493,167 the following weekend.[35] It remained number one at the US box office for the next four weeks, before finishing second behind The Owl and the Pussycat for one week and then returning to the top of the box office for another six weeks.

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