Cinderella Liberty

The sailor John Baggs's service records go missing and his ship leaves without him. He is given an open-ended shore leave and starts waiting in Seattle. In a pool hall he meets Maggie, a woman who lives by prostitution and is raising her son alone. Baggs attaches himself first to the woman and then to the boy, and finds himself inside a family he never planned. Mark Rydell directed it from Darryl Ponicsan's novel. The telling does not slide into romance; nobody is rescued and nobody suddenly improves. Seattle's rain, its cheap hotels and the area around the port build the texture of the story. Marsha Mason was nominated for an Academy Award for the part, and John Williams's score was nominated too. James Caan plays a man who knows that good intentions on their own are not enough.