Dear Heart

Directed by Delbert Mann, Dear Heart details the bond that eventually forms between a womanizing greeting-card salesman (Glenn Ford’s Harry Mork) and a lonely postmaster (Geraldine Page’s Evie Jackson) at a New York City hotel. It’s a promising setup that’s employed to mostly underwhelming and often interminable effect by Mann, as the filmmaker, working from a script by Tad Mosel, delivers a slow-moving drama that’s been suffused with a whole host of ineffective, time-wasting attributes – with the picture’s myriad of problems compounded by the absurdly overlong running time and oddly off-putting central performances. (This is, in terms of the latter, especially true of Page’s mannered work as the less-than-sympathetic Evie, and it’s impossible, ultimately, to understate just how obnoxious and unlikable the character eventually becomes.) The static, stagy bent of the movie’s midsection does little to alleviate the distressingly arms-length vibe, and although Mann admittedly does include a small handful of affecting scenes (eg Harry and Evie share a drink within a crowded restaurant), Dear Heart‘s proliferation of seriously oddball elements, including Evie’s narrow escape from a rapist (!) and Harry’s ongoing encounters with Michael Anderson Jr.’s unreasonably quirky Patrick, paves the way for a climactic stretch that’s hardly able to pack the heartwarming and romantic punch Mann has obviously intended – with the end result is a palpably disappointing misfire that feels like it could (and should) be so much better.

*1/2 out of ****