As a TV and movie fan in the '60s and '70s I had many favorite femme stars, and DIane Baker was one of them. This Chrysler Theatre episode gives her one of her best roles.
It's a potent script, worthy of a feature film, an concisely presenting a War story that covers more ground than most wartime romances on the big screen It's told from the woman's point-of-view: Diane Baker's whirlwind romance with noted war photographer Peter Falk, who brings an aggressive approach to seducing Diane, cast as a magazine reporter working for a kindly, knowing boss, guest star Arlene Dahl.
Story is told in flashback, with romance in a melancholy mood. The war ended, but so did the life of Falk's character Bara. Diane's grief is balanced by her strong memories of the times they had together, balanced by a key subplot of his holding a torch for Susie, a Jewis girl killed by then Nazis seven years before, his true love.
Grimness is suggested by a photoset Falk shot a Buchenwald death camp when it was liberated, bringing back his sorrow for Susie. But the show creates a bittersweet mood in its bookended scenes set in Mallorca in 1945, where Diane was waiting for Peter to return from his last assignment, to marry her. Tease of her contemplating suicide (in the traditinal Hollywood mode of walking out into the ocean completes the well-crafted piece.
Falk is no Bogie, but does a fine, very Peter Falk-style portrait of the doomed romantic hero, and Baker is a warm, subtle persona throughout.
It's a potent script, worthy of a feature film, an concisely presenting a War story that covers more ground than most wartime romances on the big screen It's told from the woman's point-of-view: Diane Baker's whirlwind romance with noted war photographer Peter Falk, who brings an aggressive approach to seducing Diane, cast as a magazine reporter working for a kindly, knowing boss, guest star Arlene Dahl.
Story is told in flashback, with romance in a melancholy mood. The war ended, but so did the life of Falk's character Bara. Diane's grief is balanced by her strong memories of the times they had together, balanced by a key subplot of his holding a torch for Susie, a Jewis girl killed by then Nazis seven years before, his true love.
Grimness is suggested by a photoset Falk shot a Buchenwald death camp when it was liberated, bringing back his sorrow for Susie. But the show creates a bittersweet mood in its bookended scenes set in Mallorca in 1945, where Diane was waiting for Peter to return from his last assignment, to marry her. Tease of her contemplating suicide (in the traditinal Hollywood mode of walking out into the ocean completes the well-crafted piece.
Falk is no Bogie, but does a fine, very Peter Falk-style portrait of the doomed romantic hero, and Baker is a warm, subtle persona throughout.
