Film Review: A Study on "Love Affair" (1939) - [Essay #3 - Feb 2021]

Carpe Diem: A Study on "Love Affair"

*Super Spoilers*

________

“Do you ever think it’ll take the place of baseball?” - Terry McKay

                                                               ________ 

Table of Contents:

1. Summary

2. Production History

3. Acting

4. Wardrobe

5. Sound

6. Cinematography

7. Editing

8.     Conclusion

*Reading time approx: 15 minutes 30 Seconds

*Published February 20, 2021

*Watch the Film

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*Featured on IMDB

*Written by Bolivar T. Caceres                     

*Edited by Mike Gates

 

 

"Improvisation techniques result in characters that aren't mere imitations of the actor's personalities. These qualities arouse every emotion in the audience's heart."

    On the surface, Leo McCarey's 1939 film Love Affair appears to be a cliché display of love at first sight. Love Affair uses this cliché to clarify that no venture comes without risk and that, despite this, one should still live and love today with unending faith. The film encourages the audience to seize the day despite what one considers "fate." Carpe diem!

                          

 

Summary:

    Socialite Michel Marnay's escapades with women are so renowned that the news of his engagement with Industrial heiress Lois Clark surprises the newscasters, the international radio stations announcing his travel from Nepal to New York City on the Nepali to meet his fiancee. What they don't see behind Michel's promiscuity, behind his playboy lifestyle, is an idle painter searching for his muse. 

    Out of all the Nepali patrons that recognize him, Terry McKay dares to taunt, cajole, and humanize him. It's their chance meeting when a gust of wind takes Marnay's love note from his fiancee's best friend through a porthole that leads to the change Marnay privately sought. "You saved my life, you know, I was bored to tears," jokes in her cabin, giving us a sense of dissatisfaction with his rapidly approaching marriage. 

    Following some dinners together, a few rounds of pink champagne, and an endearing stopover at Madeira to meet Marnay's grandmother, a passionate late-night kiss authenticates their feelings for each other. They plan in six months to meet at the empire state building to commence their engagement. McKay returns to singing, headlining in Philadelphia. Marnay finally applies himself to paintings and thrives. Six months pass by without a hitch, and Marnay waits for his bride-to-be on the 102nd floor on a thunderous night. 

    It is another six more months of trials for both characters before Marnay and McKay cross paths by providence. Upon spotting his most personal painting in her apartment, he learns about the terrible accident she suffered on the night of their planned reunion. In this moment of illumination and proven love, the estranged couple finally shares a kiss that marks their new beginning. Marnay is no longer a playboy but a lover and a painter, and the sanguine McKay paralyzed from the waist down is a wife-to-be and a music teacher at an orphanage. Following melodramatic and exaggerated gothic tropes, Love Affair shows that risk is what really breathes life into love.

Production History:

    Two years before the release of Love Affair, Oscar-winning director Leo McCarey decides to take a hiatus from filmmaking, bewildered at the Academy choosing “The Awful Truth” over His depression era drama, “Make Way For Tomorrow” for best 1937 picture. At this time, McCarey is primarily known and revered for slapstick and screwball comedies, but like Marnay, McCarey searches for inspiration. While on vacation with his wife, McCarey begins to write his first romantic drama, a story of lovers meeting on a cruise.

    Upon completion, author Mildred Cram polishes the story's structure, helping to blend the martial drama with the best of McCarey's humor. Screenwriters Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart write the final screenplay rapidly, with Love Affair getting its release in 1939. This hastiness leads the film's direction to experimentation and the story's scenes to grow naturally. In fact, the actors are given a new script daily. It takes McCarey eight-teen years and Cary Grant to remake a fully cultivated story with An Affair to Remember. Without all the preparation, the organized script, the big-names, the advanced technology, Love Affair's modest components still join to produce an honest film with personable

characters. 

Acting: 

    Rewrites are common in many productions, with new pages every morning. This is the scenario for the actors in Love Affair. Their sole solid ground is a duo set: the outline of each character's journey and the film's shoe-string premise. From their Love Affair grows like a classic McCarey comedy with the zealous use of spontaneity. 

 

   Improvisation techniques result in characters that aren't mere imitations of the actor's personalities. These qualities arouse every emotion in the audience's heart. The audience laughs, sympathizes, cries, and roots for the characters as if they are dear loved ones. 

    A novice to this process, Charles Boyer has sincere and witty scenes. It is in the final scene where his expertise stands out. He smoothly transforms Marnay's surprise, after finding his beloved painting in McKay's apartment, to sincere endearment, being loving and consoling. 

   At the time of Love Affair's release, Dunne is familiar with McCarey's directing style, working with him on The Awful Truth (1937). She uses her improvisation skills to find a temperament wavering between humor and solemnity. She makes McKay a witty and memorable singer, but also an honest person. "You have an honest face," Marnay tells her. She shows a particular knack for emphasizing facial expressions over dialogue, a technique that is less common at the time. Dunne uses this attribute mostly in the first act of the film, where she flirts and rejects Marney with self-conscious smiles, emphatic nods, and an admirer's fragile confidence. 

    The joy and fear of living in the moment burst through in the narrative of Love Affair. Therefore, it is evident that improvisation is necessary to Love Affair and its characters, for it helps to elucidate the ideas of fate and faith that dominate each character's journey. 

 

Wardrobe: 

    Unlike other Love Affair components, the wardrobe and makeup are relatively routine and represents Hollywood Glamor's age. The reason for this is likely in service of the ever-changing script, as a necessarily steadfast component to keep the less predictable elements on track.

    Within this limit, the wardrobe department uses the wardrobe narratively. Marnay goes from smart suits to painter's overalls to traditional tweeds. Mckay's outfits take the same riches to rags descent. She is glamorous when she taunts Marnay. Her gown is showy, and she wears a fur shawl over her pearls. She wants people to know she's well-off. That quickly changes.

    The wardrobe design isn't particularly notable, but it's a reliable addendum to the film's more impromptu components. 

 

 

Sound: 

    Sound is a novel film element when RKO releases Love Affair (1939.) After the opening title sequence, a woman's hand turning book pages, evocative of silent era title cards, Love Affair doesn't hesitate to designate sound as a vital part of the story's structure and narrative. An undertaking suggestive of the first known sound film, the poignant and controversial Jazz Singer (1927).

    Regardless of the film's daily changes, Love Affair continues to utilize sound with its witty and sincere dialogue. "Now my life's an open book," Terry says, as she finishes telling her life journey from Kansas to a globe-trotting spouse of a businessman. "It's only one page," Marnay replies, sure that he will lengthen the story. "It's the only page," she mutters, peering out at the ocean in a state of uncertainty. 

    Love Affair isn't the first time Irene Dunne sings on the silver screen, singing in McCarey's The Awful Truth. However, it is the first time a director allows her to pick the songs she sings. Dunne chooses to have McKay sing "Sing my Heart" at the Philadelphian. Throughout the film, McKay and her students -- the orphan children -- sing "Wishing Makes it So" -- a popular song in 1939. At first, this song is a response to McKay and Marnay's discussion on wishing and having faith before the ship docked in New York City. It later becomes for both teacher and student the key to opening the door to living one's dreams; namely, trying to have some say in their fate.

    As early filmmakers had to adapt to sound, these initial risks and experimentations – like those seen in Love Affair – shape future films.

 

 

Cinematography:

    The sequence in Madeira, when Marnay and McKay visit Marnay's grandmother, best shows Rudolph Mate's careful Cinematography. It clearly visualizes McCarey's narrative, pulling us into an enchanting scene that offers our first glance at who Marnay really is.

    In the grandmother's chapel, McKay, in her large summer hat and stylish summer dress, walks cautiously to the kneeler. Like her, the audience admires the quaint chapel's beauty and how Rudolph photographs the simple scene. Marnay follows McKay into the dusky, gothically lit chapel that he visits with reluctance -- maybe it reminds him of a life he shirks -- but with McKay there, the meaning is different.

    There's angelic sunlight that comes in from the chapel's windows. It shines on McKay, who appears like a saint in prayer. A statue of Jesus on the cross looms over the scene in allusion to the faith that both lovers will need for their future. Marnay watches his muse pray and do the sign of the cross. This image inspires Marnay's best painting and closes the film's narrative by guiding both lovers back to this critical point. 

    

    We see many standardized cinematic practices of the time. Dialogue segments are broken-up into reverse two-shots by editors Edward Dmytryk & George Hively. Film Noir type lighting with thick shadows and dark highlights embellish every moment. McKay's medium shots are softly lit -- like she's always in the chapel's angelic light -- and her eyes have the classic cinematic sparkle. Marnay's shots are dreamy with supple and smooth lighting. These operations are present throughout the film, and without them -- and the editors' contribution -- the offhand feeling of the improvisation may have pulled the film in a more chaotic direction.

 

 

Editing: 

    On the Nepali, Marnay walks up to the second floor, reading his radiogram. There is not a cut as people pass by and up and down the stairs. Marnay is not the attention, but what is? A gust of wind blows the radiogram from Marnay and initiates a cut of him sticking his head through the porthole, searching for answers to this foreboding uncertainty. The editors wait until McKay is seen visibly through the porthole. When she is, they cut to Mate's porthole framing of Mckay. 

    Marnay explains his tryst in Como as evidence that the perverse love note is his. Almost in intimation to McKay's spirited taunts, the editors playfully cut between the soon-to-be lovers, as we learn that the tryst was not with Marnay's fiancee. Before McKay gives Marnay his radiogram, and the camera holds, McKay remarks about his lifestyle, ""Do you ever think it'll take the place of baseball?" 

    A cut is not wasted in Love Affair, and as it should be, editors Edward Dmytryk & George Hively's magic is unnoticeable. Their work shows every contributing artist's skills and glues an otherwise unplanned, spontaneous film. As with the wardrobe, sometimes a new venture needs the familiar.

 

Conclusion: 

        Facing the daily uncertainties of venturing in a new career direction, Leo McCarey, with his comedy knowledge and a well-picked cadre of seasoned artists, produces a film that emulates what living in the moment is truly all about: fighting for what you believe in and being willing to fail. At the end of Love Affair, laughing at the unpredictable year that passed, Marnay and McKay continue to strive for their love, the fates guiding their future.

Bolivar T. Caceres is a Bronx-based artist and writer. His poems appear on ShortEdition and Ariel Chart. He is also the author of the chapbook Outside My Garret Window, published in 2020. He currently writes for the quarterly film blog Film Studies Quarterly and the news blog New York Positivity. Connect with him on social media @BolivarTCaceres and at www.BtcArt.co.

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