Le sourire aux larmes

In the 70s, I worked offshore in the North Sea and I got to run the projector when we viewed films after coming off shift.

Of the many different films we watched, only two caused the men to linger behind and talk about them. One was 'Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and the other was 'Griffin and Phoenix'.

'Cuckoo's Nest' had an obvious appeal to the mad, bad and sad men who lived and worked on an offshore construction site. It was essential to be mad to work there.

We were Cajuns, Texans, Spanish, Lebanese and men from all over the world. We worked a minimum of 12 hrs a day for months at a time building platforms and somehow surviving each other as well as the job and the sea and the weather.

'Griffin and Phoenix' touched us all for one reason: It was real. On one plane, it is a straightforward love story with moments of deep sadness and even humour. However, the Reality we were affected by was not the story itself or how it was filmed. The thing that got through to all of us, was Peter Falk's anguish.

The very things that made the world warm to Columbo; the rumpledness, the ordinary-ness, the hidden cleverness - Were all there in this film.

It made us really feel that it was ourselves up on that screen; That it was our agony; our dilemma; our fate.

I don't know why it is not shown more often, although I suspect it may be that it would 'interfere' with the Columbo image.

Whatever the reason, I recommend that you seek it out if you want to see acting that transcends acting and becomes universal truth. No bullshit: Some of us cried. We didn't cry when friends got killed in horrible accidents or even when a few of us got the worst news you can get from home

But, some of us cried over this film.

It has been too many years since I last saw this film, but both Jill Clayburgh and Peter Falk are, in my opinion, perfectly cast as the two friends dying. I can barely remember any of the details, but the heart rending part at the end really stuck and even now, after all of this time, still moves me. If I recall correctly, Peter Falk returns to his car after Phoenix (Jill Clayburgh) dies and discovers he has a flat tyre. He proceeds to get the car jack out of the boot and something, I cannot remember what just makes him flip and he smashes all of the car windows. If I were in his shoes under those conditions, I would probably do the same thing. I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong about the ending, but that is the way I remember it. If you ever get the chance to see it, do so and if possible, try to record it. I hope I get the chance to see it again someday.

When I first saw this film on TV I was going through a bad time because of an expanding personal catastrophe. Although in no way really similar to the situation in "Griffin and Phoenix," my own problems -- and my somewhat romantic nature -- made me sympathetic to the situation realistically and lovingly created by Peter Falk and Jill Clayburgh.

It has become one of my favorite films of the kind. If it is in some respects not always happy, it is thus more true to life. Love is in some aspect always tragic, even when it ends happily in marriage; but love, if it is truly that, is unending and undying. I feel this motion picture should share that fate.

... that is a love story with a very grown-up attitude toward death. Falk and Clayburg are excellent together. A TV movie classic that has been repeated a number of times--but, alas, not lately (to my limited knowledge)

Both are dying, but neither knows the other is, and some dramatic misunderstandings are the result. I won't say any more--except to note that the ending is a classic.

Man! How to get lost in a movie!!!

I saw this on its original broadcast, and its impact remains with me today, over 20 years later.

Two human beings, each painfully aware that the end is near, find one another. The ending has stayed with me as the perfect finale to a film, better than most big budget theater films!!!

One does not think of Falk as a romantic lead, and this film indicates that we, as an audience, have lost much as a result...