Love Story Arthur Hiller

The premiere for Love Story took place at Loews's State I theatre in New York City on Wednesday, December 16, 1970.[22]

Critical reception

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".

Box office

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.

It went into general release in the United States on June 23, 1971, expanding into an additional 143 theatres in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis, grossing $1,660,761 in five days and returned to number one at the US box office for another 3 weeks, for a total of 15 weeks at number one.[36][37] It was the sixth highest-grossing film of all time in U.S. and Canada with a gross of $106,397,186.

Adjusted for inflation, the film remains one of the top 50 domestic grosses of all time.[5] It grossed an additional $67 million in international film markets for a worldwide total of $173.4 million ($1.3 billion in 2023 dollars).[3]

Arthur Hiller later reflected, "We had been going through a period of individuality in the 1960s, what I call the ‘biker films, like Easy Rider (1969). If Love Story [had come] out a few years earlier, it would have been run over by the motorcycles. A few years after, it would be lost to special effects. Movies have their time of why they work and why they don’t."[38]

Hiller also said, "The message of Love Story really is what two people can give to each other for love alone. You know, people made fun of the phrase "Love means never having to say you're sorry." But think about it. All it says is that if you love somebody, you understand they're not perfect and they don't have to apologize for every little thing they do that isn't perfect. Its an affirmation of the human spirit... We hit at a time when if you disagreed with somebody, you hated them. That was the feeling in 1969 and 1970. Well, people were tired of that and were looking to say, hey, love is okay. You can be mad at somebody and still love them."[7]

Peter Bart, an executive at Paramount when the film was made, said "Love Story had become a sort of cinematic aphrodisiac. A kid would take his date to the film, they would cry together, commiserate about the tragedy, then they would go to bed, as though to celebrate their survival. Hence each night the lines seemed to grow longer as the boys kept pressing their luck."[39]

Accolades

American Film Institute

Television

The film was first broadcast on ABC television on October 1, 1972, and became the most-watched film on television surpassing Ben-Hur (1959) with 27 million homes watching, with a score of 42.3 by Nielsen ratings and an audience share of 62%.[46][47] The rating was equalled the following year by Airport (1970) and then surpassed in 1976 by Gone with the Wind (1939).[47]

Harvard College screenings

The Crimson Key Society, a student association, has sponsored screenings of Love Story during orientation to each incoming class of Harvard College freshmen since the late 1970s. During the showings, society members and other audience members mock, boo, and jeer "maudlin, old-fashioned and just plain schlocky" moments to humorously build school spirit.[48]