The Model and the Marriage Broker

Thelma Ritter’s marriage broker enters this lovely, minor-key comedy doing what she does best: fixing up a parade of shy and lonely souls (including Zero Mostel) and stubbornly bottling up her own heartbreak in the process. When she runs afoul of—and later befriends—a young model in a state of constant romantic drift (Jeanne Crain), she’s forced to come to terms with her own past. From a potentially hackneyed premise, Cukor built a bittersweet, gentle portrait of loneliness and romantic disappointment with an undercurrent of world-weary cynicism.