My love affair with ‘Love Affair’
Susan King
Leo McCarey’s beloved Oscar-nominated 1939 romance “Love Affair” stars Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer as star-crossed lovers.
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I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Leo McCarey’s beloved 1939 romance “Love Affair” starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer as star-crossed lovers who meet cute on a luxury liner. Since they are both attached to others — Dunne is actually a “kept” woman — they agree to meet six months after they land in New York at the Empire State Building. For years, “Love Affair” was near impossible to see after the rights of the RKO production had been sold to 20th Century Fox for Carey’s scene-by-scene 1957 remake “An Affair to Remember” with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant.

But in 1977, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s film department lead by the late great Ron Haver presented a months’ long RKO festival featuring every film from the studio that still existed including “Love Affair,” which had earned six Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actress for Dunne (she had reaped an Oscar nomination for McCarey’s 1937 screwball masterpiece “The Awful Truth.”)

At the SRO screening, Haver told the audience not to leave after the movie ended. No one left. They were transfixed. Everyone was laughing at the romantic comedic first half while tears flowed freely in the dramatic and emotional second half. As the lights came up, Haver walked on stage to introduce the special guest. It was none other than Dunne who was in the audience. Then 79, svelte, beautifully coiffed and dressed to the nines like the movie star she was, Dunne stood up and waved at the loudly appreciative crowd who gave her a standing ovation.

Unfortunately, for the past 65 years “An Affair to Remember” has usurped “Love Affair” in audiences’ hearts. It’s in color, has a great theme song (McCarey earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing the title tune, which was a big hit for Vic Damone), and an undeniable chemistry of its beautiful stars. An “An Affair to Remember” also received got a big boost in its popularity with the release of “Sleepless in Seattle,” the 1993 Tom Hanks–Meg Ryan blockbuster which pays tribute to the 1957 version especially in its finale.

I was about 12 when I watched “An Affair to Remember” on television with my mother. As she sniffed, I was rolling my eyes telling her how corny and stupid it was. I enjoy the film more since I’ve gotten older, much older, but I still find its corn as high as an elephant’s eye. But “An Affair to Remember” is “Citizen Kane” compared to the misguided 1994 remake “Love Affair” with Warren Beatty, his real-life wife Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn as Beatty’s feisty grandma.

The original “Love Affair” has finally gotten its just due in the new Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. Let’s say, the film is a revelation. Because all the original materials including the negative were lost when the rights were sold to Fox what we have been watching all these years have been inferior copies of 16mm prints. Thankfully, McCarey had donated his personal 35mm print to the archive at the Modern Museum of Art.

MOMA and Lobster Films in Paris used his 35mm original nitrate print and a safety 35 mm duplicate negative for this 4K digital restoration. The original monaural soundtrack was remastered from the duplicate negative, with the nitrate print used for some sections. You feel like you are sitting in a theater 83 years ago watching “Love Affair” for the first time. It’s literally not the same film.

Dunne and Boyer (they would make two other films together) are extraordinary. Their chemistry is beautiful, sexy without being erotic. They are giddy but also mature lovers. The dialogue in the lighter first half-half is whip smart: “It’s not that “I’m prudish but my mother told me never ever to be a in a man’s rooms in any month ending in ‘r,” Dunne’s Terry tells Boyer’s Michel. And the tone switches beautifully and subtly when they visit Michel’s wise and wonderful grandmother-an Oscar-nominated Maria Ouspenskaya. The scene where Terry and Michel go into his grandmother’s chapel is beautifully shot by Rudolf Mate.

Though I had seen “Love Affair” about three times previously, this is the first time the tears dripped down my cheeks at the end when the lovers finally reunited. The disc also includes a chat with Lobster Films’ Serge Bromberg about the restoration. An interview with film historian Farran Smith Nehme who looks at the complicated production history of the film — McCarey ran into problems with the Production Code — and two radio adaptations both featuring Dunne.

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