Griffin and Phoenix, 1976

There was a 1976 movie that I saw probably that same year on television that had a huge impact on me.  

The movie is called Griffin and Phoenix, and it is a love story between two strangers, who both have cancer and only about a year to live.  It is a tear-jerker, for sure.  The acting is excellent with Peter Falk and Jill Clayburgh, an actress whom I liked a lot in the 70s, a star whose gentle articulate style could command any scene.  It's a romantic comedy, but, boy, aren't there some heartbreaking scenes of the two breaking up, fighting, and reconvening.  It's exhausting and desperate.  She has leukemia, and Griffin has an inoperable form of melanoma.  They both smoked, so the movie sends that message but not flamboyantly.  When each of them finds out that the other has cancer, they're both resigned to die instead of finding out more about cancer treatments.  So the context of their love is forged by each one's pending death.  To pack as much thrill in his shortened life as possible, Griffin spontaneously plans daring events to get more life into his hours.  They sneak into a movie theater and get caught, but run out before the management can reprimand them.  Then while at an amusement park, Phoenix, or Sarah, sees Griffin from afar, hand writes a notes in all capital letters, and gets the note to Griffin via a couple of young blonde school boys.  Griffin opens the note to see the words, "DID YOU SNEAK IN HERE TOO?"  Sarah is besides herself with the combined grief.  Her condition worsens and she is hospitalized and succumbs to her illness.  The next scene is of Griffin visiting her grave site.  On her gravestone is written in all capital letters, a personal note to Griffin, "P.S. HI, GRIFFIN.  THOUGHT YOU'D PROBABLY DROP BY," revealing what each meant to the other in their short-lived relationship.  Griffin meanders back to his parked car, a Chevrolet Biscayne, on the boulevard that frames the cemetery to find that it has a flat.  Slightly exacerbated, he lumbers to the trunk to extract the tire iron, jack, and spare, when he suffers another bout of crippling pain.  And this bout, at this time crushes his spirit.  He recovers and begins to smash the windows on his own car with the jack and pounded several dents into the hood of his car.  Unquenched, he looks up to see the cars parked in front of him and begins to make a violent statement by smashing the windows of those cars too.  We get it.  He's grieving for himself and for Sarah in a seemingly heartless, self-centered world.   Both are 34 years old, so they have age on their sides.  Though they're in a relationship and even live together at one point, they each have their own pain that neither sees.  We see it.  He finally gets the kite up by exceeding previously limitations from the pain set free a bit by his love for Sarah.  I mention this film, in part, due to the ending scene where Griffin smashes car windows parked along the curb of a busy street.  The ending is of a cigar-smoking handyman in white overalls painting over romantic graffiti on a very tall water tower, where Griffin had painted a heart with an arrow through it with the words, "GRIFFIN LOVES PHOENIX," inside the heart.  The cutesy ending seemed to concede death to love, conflicting with the drama of their battle for love and life.

Clayburgh was married to David Rabe, an American playwright and screenwriter responsible for John Grisham's 1993 movie, The Firm, starring Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, and Jeanne Tripplehorn.  So Rabe was no small-player in the arts.  Good for him; good for her.  

I shouldn't be too surprised by Peter Falk appearing in films with morose themes.  Along with Gena Rowland, he co-starred in the 1974 film, A Woman Under the Influence, directed by John Cassavetes, one of my all-time favorite actors.