The Goodbye Girl

A romantic comedy set in one New York apartment. Paula is a former dancer living with her ten-year-old daughter. The actor she has been with leaves for Europe, and on his way out he has sublet the apartment to someone else. The new tenant, Elliot, knocks on the door one night wanting to move in. He has the agreement and he has paid, but there is a mother and a child inside. They come to terms: they will divide the apartment. From there the film is about the weeks two strangers spend in the same place. Elliot is cast as Richard the Third in a stage production. What the director asks of him is absurd, and that section is the funniest part of the film; it is also about how much of his dignity an actor will hand over. Neil Simon wrote the screenplay and the dialogue is the real strength. Marsha Mason plays Paula, Richard Dreyfuss plays Elliot and Quinn Cummings plays the daughter. Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the part and was at the time the youngest winner in that category. Herbert Ross directed. An enjoyable production for anyone who likes the dialogue comedies of the 1970s and narratives that smell of the theatre. Seen from here, some scenes at the start of the relationship read as uncomfortable.