Love Affair

Love Affair, not to be confused with the 1932 film of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart, is a story most of us would be familiar with even if we hadn’t even heard of this film from the late 1930s. After all, it was famously remade in 1957 with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. That film, An Affair to Remember, served as inspiration fir, and features prominently in, the 1993 mega-hit Nora Ephron romantic drama Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, cementing them as the on-screen couple of the decade. They would make three films together over the course of a decade, but Sleepless in Seattle was by far the most popular of them. And it owes so much to Love Affair.

Love Affair began as a project for director Leo McCarey, who was growing tired of the genre that had made him famous, screwball comedies, wanting to tackle something more laid-back and honest. He was burned out on comedies and, at his wife’s suggestion, they booked a cruise around Europe to detox and help hi break through a bout of writer’s block. As their cruise ship returned to New York City, they stood out on the deck of the boat and watched the Statue of Liberty going by. He immediately pitched her an idea about two passengers who fall in love with each other on board a cruise ship despite both being engaged to other people. The story took form over the next several months and eventually became the movie we have now, Love Affair. 

Getting the film made ended up being a challenge as the recently enforced Hays Code rejected the script, stating that it was encouraging adultery. The screenplay was adjusted heavily until approval was granted to film, excising so much of the romance as to completely neuter the chemistry, then it had to be delayed again over fears of a coming war in Europe. These tensions led the French Embassy to express their concerns about a French diplomat and an American woman having an affair. The story, which at this time was a period piece set in the 1850s, was rewritten again to make it a modern tale, and any elements linking the leading lady to being a mistress of a small-town government official, as was in the original script,  were removed. This simplification of the plot would end up making Love Affair a better picture in some ways as it kept the focus on the characters themselves and not cluttering things up with real-world issues. It also had the effect of making it a shallower picture, removing much of the flavor of the characters.

Love Affair is the story of two people: Terry McKay (Irene Dunne) and Michel Marnet (Charles Boyer). Michel is a French painter and renowned womanizer who meets American singer Terry onboard an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic. Both are already engaged to be married but begin to flirt with each other during the voyage. This flirtation leads to more serious meetings over meals that they reluctantly have to give up because his reputation has caused the other passengers to take note and gossip.

At a brief stopover at Madeira, they visit Michel’s grandmother Janou (Maria Ouspenskaya), who bonds with Terry and confides in her that she hopes he will settle down with a woman he truly loves. Once the two arrive in New York Harbor, they make a pact to meet in six months’ time on the top of the Empire State Building. During those six months, their engagements are ended, but he is finding it difficult making a living on his own with his paintings in America. When the set date arrives, he is waiting for her at the planned rendezvous point, but as she is arriving outside the building, she is struck by a car and ends up in the hospital, perhaps paralyzed for the rest of her life. When she fails to make the rendezvous, he assumes she has intentionally not shown up and, after waiting all day for her, leaves brokenhearted. 

There is a structure to this picture that would be often revisited in romantic comedies over the years, one that may have been novel back in the 1930s but is now rather cliché. This is unfortunate but shows that when something works on screen, it will be cribbed off of and duplicated for time and all eternity, taking something wonderful and turning it into a genre trope. The biggest downfall for this is that many of these other films took elements from Love Affair and did them even better making it a lesser experience overall when watching this film after the fact. Consider the romance in Now, Voyager, where the emotionally fragile Bette Davis develops a romantic relationship with the “married” Paul Henreid. This works on a deeper level because we get so much more background on these two characters throughout the course of that film than we ever get from Love Affair. Yet the romance between them is basically the same. The difference is in how the material is handled, not what the material is. We can see this same sort of thing an many other romantic films.

The film is currently in the public domain, which means that anyone can release a copy of it legally. What that means for viewers is that most of the copies out there are of poor quality, sampled from a low-resolution 16mm print or poor-quality web video. Because of this, many people have been unable to get into this film thanks to grainy, blurry imagery and awful sound quality. Only in the last few years was a good-quality print restored for home video, and so if you are compelled to seek out this film, make sure you don’t try and watch one of the many poor-quality releases. The remaster makes a big difference in your ability to enjoy this film.

Love Affair is perfectly fine as a breezy romance to wile away ninety minutes of your time, but it isn’t any deeper than that. It did get an Outstanding Production Oscar nomination, but even in a weak year, it wouldn’t have stood a chance at winning it. 1939 was not a weak year. Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were both on that ballot. Ten films in total were nominated for Outstanding Production that year, and Love Affair is towards the bottom of that list. It’s not a bad film, it just isn’t all that good, either. It’s innocuous and it has its charm, but it’s shallow and ultimately forgettable. It’s really too bad, too, because the leads are so likable in it. They’re just given so little to make them more than just characters in a story. There is nothing there to help them leap off the screen and take on a life outside the narrow framework of what is on screen.

Academy Award Nominations:

Outstanding Production: RKO Radio

Best Actress: Irene Dunne

Best Supporting Actress: Maria Ouspenskaya

Best Writing (Original Story): Mildred Cram and Leo McCarey

Best Art Direction: Van Nest Polglase and Al Herman

Best Original Song: “Wishing” music and lyrics by Buddy DeSylva

____________________________________________________

Release Date: April 7, 1939

Running Time: 87 Minutes

Not Rated

Starring: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, and Maria Ouspenskaya

Directed By: Leo McCarey