--- title: "Love Story" year: 1970 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/love-story" fi1m_score: 57 critics_score: 54 critics_reviews: 8 published: "2026-09-20T05:30:17.283374+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T05:30:17.571670+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Love Story (1970) Directed by Arthur Hiller · 1h 40m · MPA PG · Romance, Drama **Fi1m score: 57** · Critics 54 from 8 reviews *In a sentence:* Boy meets girl, girl calls boy Preppie, Francis Lai’s piano does the rest > Arthur Hiller’s tearjerker still knows which strings it is pulling, and Ali MacGraw’s sharp tongue, John Marley’s decency and Francis Lai’s piano get it a long way. But Erich Segal’s lovers are outlines, and a film this calculated ought to have more inside it. ## Synopsis Cambridge, Massachusetts. Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal), a Harvard hockey player from a rich family, goes into a college library to borrow a book and meets Jennifer Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw), a music student from Rhode Island who calls him Preppie and tells him he is stupid before she tells him anything else. He wants her. She wants to know why a rich boy is bothering. His father, Oliver Barrett III (Ray Milland), sits across a dinner table and disapproves without raising his voice. Hers, Phil Cavilleri (John Marley), a widowed baker, only wants her happy. When Oliver announces he will marry Jenny and pay his own way through law school, the elder Barrett cuts him off, and the pair write their own wedding and set up house with no money. ## Review Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) tells us in the film’s first line that a girl he loved is dead. Then Arthur Hiller goes back to the library where they met, and the next 100 minutes are spent bringing us to a place we have already been told about. Erich Segal adapts his own bestseller, and the design is the honest kind of tearjerker: announce the ending, so that every happy scene in the middle arrives with a shadow already on it. That is a trick, and not a dishonourable one. The question is whether there is enough between the first line and the last to earn the tears it is plainly counting on. The best of what is there is Ali MacGraw. Her Jennifer Cavilleri is rude, quick and unimpressed, a music student from Rhode Island who calls the rich boy Preppie and tells him he is stupid. MacGraw has been called a poor actress for decades and we would put it differently: she has one note, and it happens to be the right one for this part. Jenny is the only person in the film who seems to have come from somewhere. O’Neal plays Oliver as a pleasant, slightly stunned athlete who cannot believe his luck, which is fine for the courtship and thin for everything after. The fathers are better than the lovers. Ray Milland’s Oliver Barrett III sits through a dinner with his son and says almost nothing that could be quoted against him, and the disapproval comes off him like cold from a window. John Marley’s Phil Cavilleri, a widowed baker, says the name Oliver as if he is not yet sure he is allowed to, and his fumbling warmth is the one thing here we would call moving without qualification. Hiller made *The Out-of-Towners* the same year, and his comic instincts show: the scenes that live are the ones with a joke in them. Richard C. Kratina shoots Cambridge in autumn browns and winter whites, and there is a stretch in the snow, the two of them falling into drifts and throwing handfuls at each other, that Robert C. Jones cuts without a word of dialogue to Francis Lai’s theme. We were got at. We knew what was being done to us and our throats tightened anyway, and the reason is Lai: the theme is a plain, sad piano line that he brings back every time the film wants something, and it works the way a hymn works, by being sung again. Ten minutes later we felt slightly foolish, which is the usual price of this kind of film and the reason we do not rate it higher. The script will not do the rest of the work. Segal gives his lovers things to say and almost nothing to want beyond each other. The wedding they write for themselves, all poetry read aloud and earnest eye contact in a room rather than a church, had us looking at the floor. Kratina lights the interiors so flatly that every face has the glow of a knitting catalogue. And the tagline, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”, is delivered as wisdom when a moment’s thought shows it to be nonsense. The film knows this, we suspect, and says it with a straight face regardless. When the second half arrives it goes where the first line promised, with a tact that shades into vagueness. Sydney Walker’s Dr. Shapeley and Robert Modica’s Dr. Addison murmur in corridors and are never quite understood. It is decorous and it is a little cowardly. Reviewers at the time predicted the film would spawn many worse imitations, and it did, which says more about the market than about the film. It is a clean, brief, well-scored cry for a Saturday night, competently made and a little cold. See it for MacGraw’s mouth, Marley’s hesitations and Lai’s piano, and go in knowing that the film has told you the ending on purpose and will hold you to it. The PG certificate is right; there is nothing here to trouble a child except the thing you have been warned about. *Fi1m score 57, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews divide almost evenly, and the split runs along the calendar: critics writing in 1970 mostly like it, and critics writing since mostly do not. Where there is praise, it clusters on Arthur Hiller’s direction, which several reviews credit with giving Erich Segal’s thin story colour, detail and a sense of place. Ryan O’Neal draws the warmest notices among the cast, with John Marley and Ray Milland noted in support; Ali MacGraw is admired by some and doubted by others. The reservations are about the material rather than the making. The later reviews call the characters flat, the tragedy contrived and the values regressive, and Empire wonders what anyone who knows the ending is meant to get from it beyond a cry. The spread could hardly be wider. Slant finds it close to unwatchable, singling out the over-lit faces and the wedding scene; Variety, at the other end, thinks it succeeds on every level. ### Reviews we read (8) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): Love Story is an excellent film that succeeds on all artistic levels, propelled by strong performances especially from Ryan O'Neal and solid support from John Marley and Ray Milland. Hiller's direction and the story of young love tested by terminal illness make it generally successful. [Read](https://variety.com/1969/film/reviews/love-story-3-1200422177/) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (80/100, inferred): The film is infinitely better than the book thanks to Arthur Hiller's direction, which adds color, character, personality, detail and background. Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal bring the leads to life and make viewers care about the tragic story. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/love-story-1970) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (70/100, inferred): The movie is a beautiful, romantic fantasy about perfect young love that ends in death, executed with seeming simplicity by Hiller and anchored by lovely performances from MacGraw and O'Neal. It is a sophisticated commercial entertainment that will likely spawn many inferior imitations. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/24/archives/screen-perfection-and-a-love-story-erich-segals-romantic-tale.html) - **The AV Club**, Tom Breihan (60/100, inferred): The piece presents Love Story as a conventional, old-fashioned romance that succeeded by offering boomers a reassuring myth of their own, praising its clean naturalistic filmmaking, locations, and music while criticizing the flat characters, regressive values, and contrived tragedy. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/boomers-got-a-sappy-square-old-fashioned-romance-of-t-1837672379) - **The New Yorker** (60/100, inferred): The film is a calculated tearjerker pushed as clean and wholesome entertainment, succeeding in conveying emotional commitment within a contemporary setting through Hiller's sensitive and restrained direction. It is contrasted with the even more promoted and successful novelization. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1970/12/26/the-current-cinema-22) - **Empire**, William Thomas (40/100, inferred): Erich Segal's bestseller is very much of its time and gave the world the line 'Love means never having to say you're sorry'. Ali MacGraw cannot act but dies prettily amid violins while the known ending makes the point of watching unclear unless one likes crying. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/love-story-review/) - **Time Out**, GA (20/100, inferred): The critic dismisses the film as a bland and clichéd tale of love and illness that feels dated even at the time of release, leading viewers through a turgid story of Harvard students whose romance ends in separation. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/love-story) - **Slant Magazine**, Jaime N. Christley (10/100, inferred): The critic deems the film one of the most unendurable classics, with atrocious direction, performances, and script that make viewing a form of self-harm. He singles out the visual style, over-lit faces, and the DIY wedding scene for particular scorn while noting the Blu-ray transfer preserves the original's flaws. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/love-story/) ## Details - **Director:** Arthur Hiller - **Director:** Arthur Hiller - **Writer:** Erich Segal - **Cinematography:** Richard C. Kratina - **Editor:** Robert C. Jones - **Music:** Francis Lai - **Producer:** Howard G. Minsky, Robert Evans - **Cast:** Ali MacGraw as Jennifer Cavilleri; Ryan O'Neal as Oliver Barrett IV; John Marley as Phil Cavilleri; Ray Milland as Oliver Barrett III; Russell Nype as Dean Thompson; Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Simpson; Sydney Walker as Dr. Shapeley; Robert Modica as Dr. Addison - **Runtime:** 1h 40m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 16 December 1970 - **Genres:** Romance, Drama - **Budget:** $2 million - **Box office:** $136 million ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, HU, IE, IN, IT, JP, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1971: Best Actor (nominated); Best Actress (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (nominated); Best Writing, Original Screenplay (nominated); Best Original Score (won) - Golden Globes 1970: Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama (won); Best Director (won); Best Motion Picture – Drama (won); Best Original Score (won); Best Screenplay (won) ## If you liked this - *Brief Encounter* (1945), Fi1m 90: The English weepie done with restraint, railway tea and a great deal left unsaid. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/brief-encounter.md) - *A Man and a Woman* (1966): Francis Lai again, and a romance that trusts its music even more than this one. - *Harold and Maude* (1971), Fi1m 81: Same year, same subject, turned inside out and made funny on purpose. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/harold-and-maude.md) - *Terms of Endearment* (1983), Fi1m 81: The illness picture with real people in it, and a mother worth arguing with. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/terms-of-endearment.md) - *The Umbrellas of Cherbourg* (1964): Young love, parental disapproval and heartbreak, sung all the way through in colour. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/love-story