Crazy Love

Burt Pugach was a successful lawyer in nineteen-fifties New York when he met the much younger Linda Riss. The relationship ended once Riss learned that his claim to be divorced was a lie. When she became engaged to another man, Pugach hired men to throw lye in her face; she lost her sight permanently and he served fourteen years in prison. What the documentary is actually about is what came next: after his release, the two married and grew old together. Dan Klores does not sell this as a love story, and he does not hand the audience an easy verdict either. He lets both of them talk at length, and what they say often fails to line up. No firm answer arrives to the question of why Riss stayed, and the film does not go looking for one. The testimony of people around them, of reporters and neighbours, shows how the case turned into a sensation in the New York press.