Love Affair (1939 Leo McCarey)

"My father used to say in this life the best things are illegal, immoral or fattening." The original, and - as I predicted - almost half an hour shorter than his own remake An Affair to Remember. (There's a whole conversation there. Hitch also remade his own 30s film in the 50s and that's a lot longer too. Same applied to Imitation of Life. And A Farewell to Arms...)

Irene Dunne shines in this, Boyer supports charmingly. It's a very smooth film, e.g. closeup up of the couple's hand shaking good night - but they don't let go. When Dunne opens her balcony door and the reflection is the Empire State Building. Dunne running back up the stairs to kiss grandma goodbye; the closed lid of grandma's piano. Also, Dunne and Boyer silently pointing out their other halves to each other from the ship.

One of those films that has lapsed into the public domain and thus exists in a variety of shoddy copies, which is a shame as Rudolph Maté's cinematography looks suitably luminous. On the plus side it disguises the background paintings to some extent so that Madeira-on-Hollywood looks suitably realistic.

It's a classic. McCarey an underrated director who I'm trying to retrospect (if I may be allowed to use that as a verb). Made at RKO. With Maria Ouspenskaya, Lee Bowman, Astrid Allwyn, Maurice Moskovitch. Music by Roy Webb, who scored every film ever made at RKO.*

Of course Peter Bogdanovich discusses it with the director in 'Who the Devil Made It?' McCarey prefers Boyer's performance to Grant's, and worked out the story himself with Mildred Cram (the screenplay is credited to Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart). The scene with the little boy** was there for two reasons: with Dunne it displays a kind of turnaround humour, and with Boyer it underlines the character - "What do they say about me?" "I don't know. Whenever they start I have to leave the room." This is McCarey's 'ineluctability of elements' - events are linked together - one incident flows from another.

*Not actually true, just seems like it. (Though since writing this, every RKO film we've seen has been scored by Roy Webb.)
** Yes, we had seen him before - he's the young Parris Mitchell in Kings Row. His IMDB bio begins 'Scotty Beckett was one of the cutest, most successful child actors of the 1930s and 1940s. His descent into a life of alcoholism, drugs, and crime remains one of the most tragic of Hollywood stories...'