Love Affair (1939)

Love Affair
Directed by Leo McCarey
Written by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart based on a story by Mildred Cram and Leo McCarey
1939/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Terry McKay: What are you trying to say, Michel?

Michel: I’m trying to say that it would take me six months to find out if I’m worthy to say what’s in my heart.[/box]

This latest viewing of Love Affair has solidified my love and appreciation of Leo McCarey.

The story is a familiar one.  Michel (Charles Boyer) is a suave playboy who is sailing to New York to marry an heiress.  Terry is another pleasure lover who is returning from a buying trip in Europe to marry her boss.  Aware of each other’s circumstances, they begin a shipboard flirtation.  This develops into more with time and after a visit to Michel’s grandmother (Maria Ouspenskaya) en route.  Since each needs time to think and tie up loose ends, they agree to meet on the observation platform of the Empire State Building in six months. But the course of true love never did run smooth …

By all rights, I should find this an insufferable melodrama.  Certainly the choir of singing orphans does not bode well.  But McCarey keeps the tone so light and Dunne is so superb and natural that I was a soggy mess by the end.   I just believed that this was the way these kind of people would fall in love and deal with adversity.  Ouspenskaya has very little screen time but is utterly charming.  Warmly recommended.

Love Affair was nominated for six Academy Awards:  Best Picture; Best Actress; Best Supporting Actress (Ouspenskaya); Best Writing, Original Story; Best Art Direction; and Best Song (“Wishing” by Buddy G. DeSylva).  McCarey remade the story as An Affair to Remember in 1957 with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.  The 1957 version is an important reference in Sleepless in Seattle (1993).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlshkRQWfr8

Clip – Making a date for the Empire State Building