One Is a Lonely Number (1972)

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

While very much clichéd, I thought I was going to see at first a prelude to 1979's "An Unmarried Woman" with Jill Clayburgh. The film begins with a professor of English leaving his wife and she struggles to understand the breakup.Men are not portrayed well here. There is the professor who has a 19 year old on the side, the suave employment agency guy who has more than hiring on his mind and the Monte Markham character, the guy who falls for our heroine only for us to discover that he is married. The only redeeming man of quality is veteran Melvyn Douglas, as an aged grocery store owner who knows the score having experienced life to it fullest with his now deceased wife. When Trish Van Devere thinks he has died, her visit to the morgue is memorable as we see the cold side of the attendant. To him, a dead person is rather a stiff.As the brassy blond experienced with divorce with her divorce league, Janet Leigh steals every scene she is in.The modern day ending of achieving freedom is overstated here.

***SPOILERS*** Very much like the 1978 women's movie "An Unmarried Woman" released six years later even down to it's dramatic and unexpected freeze frame ending "One is a Lonely Number" has to do with a young womens abandonment by her husband and being forced to go out in a world and face situations that she's lest prepared for.Right out of the blue English collage professor James Brower, Paul Jenkins, tells his startled young wife Aimee, Trish Van Devere, that he's divorcing her. The reason for James leaving Aimee is mental cruelty which was in her, thinking it's a piece of junk, throwing out a his rare 1st edition copy of "Paradise Lost" by John Milton! It later turns out that James left Aimee for totally different reasons; His affair with his cute and blond teenage secretary at the collage he teaches in.Out in the cold with bills piling up to the ceiling Aimee gets a job as a lifeguard at a local community swimming pool in San Francisco. Not at first realizing what she got involved in with the sneering and hot in the pants employment agent Sherman Cooke, Jonathan Lippe, Aimee is later shocked to find Sherman in the ladies shower, fully clothes, demanding that she take a cold shower together with him! It's as if by just doing his job, finding a job for Aimee, Sherman want's to bed her down as a reward! Threatened by an outraged Aimee to have him reported to the police for attempted rape as well as being spotted in the ladies shower by two unexpected visitors, a woman and her young daughter, Sherman makes a hasty retreat never to be seen again in the film.Aimee eventually gets her head together with the help of fellow divorcées Gert Meredith, Janet Leigh, and Madge Frazier, Jane Elliot, who've had experience in failed marriages with Madge going through her first and Gert her fifth divorce. Aimee also gets the very needed advice and attention that she so desperately seeking from a very unexpected source; The kind and friendly fruit & vegetable man Joseph Provo, Melvyn Douglas. It was Mr Provo, a widower after 39 years of being happily married, who set Aimee straight to what life, as well as good and cheap grade "A" #1 produce, is all about.Aimee does find out that not every man who's interested in her sexually and romantically is also interested in marrying her. This comes as a big surprise to Aimee when her new boyfriend Howard "The Duck" Carpenter, Monte Markham, reveals to her after a roll in the hay, or the sack, that he's actually married and happily at that! Becoming more and more independent and confident in herself Aimee eventually loses interest in her ex-husband James who's affair with his 19 year old secretary had already gone bust. This leads James, now feeling like a first class jerk, to drop his filing for divorce against Aimee wanting her back despite all the damage he caused her! But by then Aimee being a free soul with all the eligible and married men in town wanting to date and go out with her she tells James to go take a hike and get himself lost in the woods! Now free and full of confidence in both herself and her ability to overcome any obstacle put in her path Aimee now confronts the challenge that's been haunting her all throughout the movie! And Aimee, true to form, passes it with flying colors!

Until it degenerates somewhat into drippy man-woman chit-chat, "One Is a Lonely Number" has some wry comments to make on the life of a 27-year-old woman on the verge of being divorced. Trish Van Devere has a soft, fuzzy quality about her which is quiet and likable; when her husband of four years walks out on her without an explanation, she's forced to get a job and face the realization of being alone or dating again (neither of which seems to please her). Rather predictable narrative is spiked by a solid visual sense and good location shooting in and around San Francisco. The film comes from an unusual pedigree (executive producer David Wolper and director Mel Stuart worked together the previous year on "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" and screenwriter David Seltzer later wrote "The Omen"), and some of the sequences (such as the hurt spouse packing up her husband's leftover things) were expanded upon in later films such as "An Unmarried Woman" and "Kramer vs. Kramer". Alas, Seltzer's script, adapted from Rebecca Morris' short story "The Good Humor Man", falls too easily into convention, and when a ready-made prince (Monte Markham??) confesses to Van Devere he's married, one is inclined to groan. The material was probably much fresher in 1972, however this scenario has since become well-mined territory for a torrent of "women's pictures". What makes this one interesting are the performances (especially Janet Leigh's as a brassy man-hater) and the stinging sense of helplessness. We follow the work-a-day trials of this single woman as she is forced into a rather crummy job as a swimming pool lifeguard--secretly afraid of the high dive--and has to do things she doesn't want to do. It certainly has impact, but the movie's bracing quality is diluted by the soap opera. A near-miss. ** from ****

This is the story of Aimee Brower, a 28 year old woman who just recently divorced her husband. The movie takes us on what Aimee goes through trying to make some sense out of her newly found life, realizing that after all you can live by yourself.What I find interesting about the movie is that we get to see the female point-of-view of divorce on the early 70s, when women weren't expected to have a career of their own or something else besides being married.