Kirk Douglas, still pumped up from Spartacus, fills out an array of knit shirts and chews a thoughtful pencil as a "serious" architect trying to balance his personal integrity with his suburban lifestyle (materialistic wife, snot-nosed kids -- the full disaster, as someone once said). Into his fading dreams comes the stunning Kim Novak... bruised, hurting, and longing for love so much she's practically falling out of her cashmere sweater. They sneak away to a beachside roadhouse for martinis and you can guess what happens next.Except you can't, really. Some commentators on this board have called this a soap opera, but in fact the strength of the movie is that it avoids cliché at every turn. The illicit lovers elicit only sympathy (sorry, edwagreen, you really need a remedial writing course) as they encounter every real-life obstacle that adulterers are prey to -- socially awkward patio parties, lies stretched to the breaking point, shameful discovery -- and eventually spread damage and heartbreak to each other and those they care about most.And so the great Richard Quine takes Evan Hunter's overcooked potboiler of a novel and turns it into a small classic -- full of a delicate sadness "worthy of Ophuls," as critic David Thomson put it. The movie has its nostalgic charms: an L.A. with smogless skies and plenty of room for building a new house; Walter Matthau as a neighborhood wolf (his leering advice to his 9-year-old son is priceless); Barbara Rush as the wife (I liked one poster on the old AMC site who beautifully summed her up as a "tight package"); and Ernie Kovacks as a semi-sleazy writer who gets some life lessons from Douglas.It also has moments of quiet emotional truth and one is particularly poignant: Douglas and Novak meet accidentally at a kiddie park and haltingly talk through their situation, realizing how hopeless it is. When I was a lad, my parents took me to this exact same amusement park; it was on Van Nuys Boulevard in the Valley, next to Ho Toys Chinese restaurant, glimpsed briefly in the background. The intersection of my childhood and adult perspectives in this scene fairly blew my mind... "Strangers" is a perfect time capsule of Los Angeles in 1960, but it's also quite timeless.

Kim Novak again proved what a miserable actress she could be. Other than "Jeanne Eagles" and "The Eddy Duchin Story," Miss Novak just couldn't act.Kirk Douglas looked tired in this film. Is it any wonder, "Spartacus" was the same year!The story is typical suburbia infidelity among the rich. The real surprise here is Walter Matthau, who finds out about the Douglas-Novak affair and attempts to illicit sex from the latter. Matthau was excellent here as a cad.Other acting kudos should go to Ernie Kovacs as a chain-smoking novelist who understands about the philosophy of life. Barbara Rush has her moments as the neglected wife of Douglas.We don't know where this film is going. As an architect in the film, Douglas's character needed to build more.

This film deals with a man named Larry Coe, (Kirk Douglas) who is married and has children and a lovely wife Eve Coe, (Barbara Rush) and Larry is a successful architect. One day Larry takes his child to a bus stop and he observes a very beautiful blonde named Maggie Gault, (Kim Novak) who is a neighbor and as the story moves on they run into each other and begin to have a very serious relationship. Maggie is also married and has a child and a husband who never has time to make love to her. Maggie & Larry begin to fall madly in love with each other and are constantly seeing each other. This film shows clearly what goes on between a man and woman who committed adultery and the many problems that occur in their lives and how it really upsets entire families and children. This adultery makes couples decided to get divorces from their wives and husbands or do they go back to their wives and husbands like nothing ever happened and everything becomes happy and glorious for the rest of their lives. My theory is this, if you love someone very much, make sure you don't leave this man or woman and take on a new life together. You will never regret it.

This film is nothing but a beautiful Technicolor soap opera, but wow, what great-looking stars -- the gorgeous Kim Novak, with a figure that would knock your eyes out, and virile, well-built, flat-bellied Kirk Douglas! The acting, at least by Kim Novak, leaves a lot to be desired -- she always seems to be in some kind of a mental fog, and delivers her lines lifelessly, without feeling.But this movie is not to be missed, if for no other reason than the unintentionally funny scenes between Kim Novak ("Maggie") and her cold fish of a husband, "Ken". In one scene, Maggie is going out for a clandestine meeting with Kirk Douglas ("Larry"), poured into a tight, revealing red dress that practically screams, "I'M HAVING AN AFFAIR!". Her prissy husband is sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper, oblivious. Maggie tells Ken she's going out with a girlfriend or something like that (yeah, sure), and when Ken fails to notice the obvious, she says to him in that smoky voice, "Suppose I'm going to meet a man. It happens", to which Ken replies, glancing up briefly and rattling his newspaper, "Not to someone like you". That hilarious bit of dialogue alone makes this movie worthwhile!