"Love means never having to say you're sorry." So said the advertising materials for Love Story. So said the lead characters of the source novel and resulting film. So said audiences who fawned at the mouth and made the movie a hit with its memorable score by Francis Lai and its overwrought sentimentality worn on the sleeve.

After all the nostalgic memories are set aside from their halo around the film, what's left to judge its impact is a genre flavored mix of tragic romance, domestic melodrama and a coming of age story as framed by Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal), a put upon Harvard scion from a wealthy family. Revealed in flashback Love Story is his account of falling for Jenny Cavalieri (Ali MacGraw), a Radcliffe undergraduate with a middle class background, who is his true north and the center of his life.

Based on best selling novelist Erich Segal's memory of being a Harvard undergraduate and modeled on two of his fellow students, Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones, Oliver is a young man troubled by the legacy of an overachieving family. Haunted by the demands of his father, Oliver Barrett III (Ray Milland), a businessman with a corporate attitude towards family affairs, the younger Barrett is equally at odds with what will make him happiest in life. What he knows for sure is that being the fourth in a line of Oliver Barretts before him, all of them movers and shakers, is a burden he finds attractive inasmuch as he can fulfill expectations but terrifying since it's an ideal he can never achieve. Struggling for clarity and direction during his senior year's ice hockey season and law school application process he collides with serendipity, changing his life forever.

Trying to find books at the library he meets Jenny and is instantly changed under the nurturing combination of her no-nonsense honesty, encouragement and affection. In short order they become lovers and then, much to the chagrin of his parents and to the surprise of her widower father Phil (John Marley), they marry and start a future together.

Seen as an affront to the social station of the Barrett family, Oliver's father disowns him and his new marriage in a fit of pique thereby leaving the newlyweds to struggle without the considerable resources of the Barrett name to draw upon. Very quickly they founder under Oliver's law school expenses, Jenny's new teaching career and a borderline lifestyle lacking in all the material comforts they'd considered their right as young adults. Studying by day he works odd jobs doing menial labor in the afternoons and evenings and ultimately graduates into a New York City law firm. All this development is supported by her three years of effort teaching grade school, coaching musical groups, working as a camp counselor and unsuccessfully trying to bring her husband and father-in-law together after their unfortunate falling out.

As Oliver's legal career takes off in Manhattan the younger Barretts world seems to be on the rapid road to recovery and happiness. They find themselves once again surrounded by the comforts of their preferred upper middle class station and begin thinking seriously about starting a family when tragedy strikes.

Diagnosed with an undisclosed cancer, Jenny is given but a short time to live that includes the awful strain of costly medical expenses. Forced to ask his father for money under the strain of mounting debts, Oliver conceals Jenny's illness from his family and soldiers on, frightened and quietly suffering. Then Jenny dies leaving the two Barrett men to affect a tentative reconciliation as Oliver walks the baseball fields of Central Park, ending his love story with the untimely death of his life partner.

Needless to say the film was a box office smash. Legions of fans developed around the tragic love story, glorying in the New England backdrop and the feisty repartee between Oliver and Jenny while others were swept away in the recognition of how suddenly illnesses kill without notice. Lai's score became a strong selling soundtrack album, Segal's novel saw renewed sales and climbed the book charts just as Arthur Hiller's journeyman career as a TV director turned movie maker bore the most remarkable fruit of his professional efforts with positive critical and commercial recognition.

Despite all this excitement that developed in front of the film on the path to its eventual saturation of the theatrical marketplace, what remains Love Story's core feature is the relationship between Oliver and Jenny that made stars of Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw. Both went on to even more commercially viable films and star turns with an equal number of good and bad luck streaks to complicate their personal lives. Yet neither one ever lived up to the hoped-for excellence many saw as the suggestion of remarkable acting talents showcased by their unique combination in Segal's syrupy tragedy.

As physical types O'Neal and MacGraw were ideal for 1970. Her: tall, thin, model good looks with a wide smile, chin dimple, black hair, olive-shaded white skin and an aggressive line delivery peppered with profanity. Him: beefy, athletic, ruggedly handsome with classically American features, bushy blonde hair, pink hued northern European features and a sad quality about his person to suggest a range of quieter, vulnerable emotions than simple anger and happiness. Together they were the couple of the times and while their combination on-screen may not have been alchemy, it was certainly the sort of fantasy that encourages people to seek out the attainment of true love.

Given its commercial success and resonance as a sign of the times, Love Story was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. It competed for the top honor with Airport, Five Easy Pieces and M*A*S*H before all four lost their bid for Oscar recognition to the George C. Scott epic Patton with its overwhelming battle sequences and portrait of a well known hero.

Seeing Hiller's film over 30 years after its initial release it's not nearly as ridiculous as might be suggested through its marketing campaign and cultural memory that's still remembered on the video and DVD box covers. Instead of languishing in the hell of, "Love means never having to say you're sorry," one is faced with a quickly moving storyline that belabors very few of the plot points on the way to delivering a powerful wallop. Of course it's too bad the movie announces its central conflict in Jenny's destruction as the film's preamble with Oliver sitting alone in Central Park but it was somehow necessary to introduce the flashback structure and forewarn the awful price paid for happiness by the movie's two leads.

Still, Love Story is an enjoyable picture. Through its length there are occasionally ingenious shots that interrupt its rather conventional scenes of conversation, conflict and lovemaking. Plus there are strong location sequences in New England and New York City that add to the historical quality of representing the late '60s and early '70s, be those considerations fashion, hair style, monetary value or on-screen fantasy. It's the imprint of its times and contains the hopeful seeds of erotic love, forgiveness and the once in a lifetime thrill of life affirming joy.