LOVE AFFAIR (1939)
A film review by Edwin Jahiel
Copyright 1995 Edwin Jahiel
(1939)
By Leo McCarey.
One of Hollywood's best romances. It created a memorable couple (Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne) who perform superbly. Character actress Maria Ouspenskaya too has one of the top old lady roles ever filmed.
A shipboard romance later turns into near catastrophe through misunderstandings and an accident. Humor and pathos mix, separate, re-mix, in this smooth but un-slick, carefully crafted but not artificial, moving but un-hokey gem, enhanced by the beautiful old French song "Plaisir d'Amour."
The same director remade his own film in 1957 as "An Affair to Remember," with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr and a nice, sentimental song. This version became recently popular again after it was "quoted" in "Sleepless in Seattle." It is fine but the earlier movie is unbeatable. Then came the third edition, the 1994 "Love Affair" with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening - a fiasco, which, if anything, makes the original look even better, not that it needs any help.
(Edwin Jahiel)
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