1114 Love Affair

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hearthesilence
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1114 Love Affair

#1 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Aug 08, 2011 11:21 pm

Love Affair

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Golden-age Hollywood's humanist master Leo McCarey brings his graceful touch and relaxed naturalism to this sublime romance, one of cinema's most intoxicating tear-wringers. Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer are chic strangers who meet and fall in love aboard an ocean liner bound for New York. Though they are both involved with other people, they make a pact to reconnect six months later at the top of the Empire State Building—until the hand of fate throws their star-crossed affair tragically off course. Swooning passion and gentle comedy coexist in perfect harmony in the exquisitely tender Love Affair (nominated for six Oscars), a story so timeless that it has been remade by multiple filmmakers over the years—including McCarey himself, who updated it as the equally beloved An Affair to Remember.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration by The Museum of Modern Art and Lobster Films, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with film critic Farran Smith Nehme about the movie's complicated production history
• New interview with Serge Bromberg, founder of Lobster Films, about the restoration
• Two radio adaptations, featuring Irene Dunne, William Powell, and Charles Boyer
• Two shorts directed by Leo McCarey, both starring silent comedian Charley Chase: Looking for Sally (1925) and Mighty Like a Moose (1926)
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author Megan McGurk

Jonathan S
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Re: Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)

#2 Post by Jonathan S » Thu May 24, 2012 5:38 am

hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Aug 08, 2011 11:21 pm
Thought this would be worth mentioning...

The Museum of Modern Art's restoration of this film (done with support from the Film Foundation) is screening at Lincoln Center on Sunday, August 28 at 12:30 p.m. This restoration has not been issued on DVD (at least here in the U.S.) so it's definitely worth catching.
Can anyone recommend a DVD of this film, or at least suggest what's the best available? I thought the Editions Montparnasse DVD Elle et lui might be some sort of official release, as it's part of a RKO series that was presumably licensed, but the one screenshot I've seen looks decidedly soft.

I've heard the Alpha is not too bad, though perhaps that's only in comparison to their totally unwatchable product. I'm not expecting anything brilliant - just something with decent contrast and definition like the copy the BBC screened a decade ago (the only time I recall the film ever on UK TV).

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swo17
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Re: Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)

#3 Post by swo17 » Thu May 24, 2012 10:27 am

The Alpha is pretty bad too, if memory serves. I mean, perhaps it's in the upper 50% of Alpha releases but that's not saying much.

tomvolkamer
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Re: Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)

#4 Post by tomvolkamer » Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:41 am

I’m very happy to report that I have sent an email to MoMA to ask about a potential dvd/Blu-ray release of the restored print of Love Affair and they got back to me announcing a 2020 release on both formats! Rejoice! :-)

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Aunt Peg
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Re: Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)

#5 Post by Aunt Peg » Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:44 am

tomvolkamer wrote:
Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:41 am
I’m very happy to report that I have sent an email to MoMA to ask about a potential dvd/Blu-ray release of the restored print of Love Affair and they got back to me announcing a 2020 release on both formats! Rejoice! :-)
\:D/ \:D/ \:D/ \:D/ \:D/ \:D/ \:D/

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andyli
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Re: Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)

#6 Post by andyli » Fri Jan 11, 2019 4:57 am

From which label, may I ask?

bbqamazing
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Re: Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)

#7 Post by bbqamazing » Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:40 pm

tomvolkamer wrote:
Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:41 am
I’m very happy to report that I have sent an email to MoMA to ask about a potential dvd/Blu-ray release of the restored print of Love Affair and they got back to me announcing a 2020 release on both formats! Rejoice! :-)
This is really great news. I recently saw Love Affair for the first time (on a recommendation from Kenneth Turan's book Not to Be Missed). I was moved to tears by the final scene. Let's hope that this release turns out to be done well. Has anyone seen the restoration?

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swo17
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Re: Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)

#8 Post by swo17 » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:39 pm


pistolwink
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#9 Post by pistolwink » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:53 pm

It's great to have this classic rescued from innumerable public-domain travesties, but also—one of the bonus shorts, Mighty Like a Moose, is hands down one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

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Finch
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#10 Post by Finch » Mon Nov 15, 2021 3:42 pm

I imported the French disc only a month ago (but getting the Criterion just the same). You're all welcome! :wink:

I love this film (though I could have done without the childrens' songs) but feel like Criterion could have bundled the Grant/Kerr remake with it (I mean, why would Twentieth Century block it if that was the reason for the later film's omission)?

edit: the restoration is really good considering the shape of the materials.

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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#11 Post by pistolwink » Mon Nov 15, 2021 4:55 pm

Forget the 1957 film, what I really wish I could forg— I mean, what we really need is the 1994 Warren Beatty/Annette Bening remake!

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hearthesilence
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#12 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:13 pm

Screening at MoMA from Dec. 21 through 28:

From the moment an invisible breath propels a telegram meant for a notorious international playboy (Charles Boyer) into the hands of a nightclub singer heading into a loveless marriage (Irene Dunne), Leo McCarey’s 1939 masterpiece ranks among the greatest comedies and melodramas of the American cinema. The warmth and depth McCarey draws from his performers plays out against the transcendent themes of his mise-en-scène, which includes a vision of the Empire State Building as the closest thing to heaven on earth. Amazingly, this perfectly structured film was largely improvised, after censors abruptly rejected McCarey’s initial screenplay. We are proud to present a new and definitive restoration of this major film, a glowingly beautiful digitization based on the unique nitrate print in MoMA’s collection and realized in partnership with Lobster Films.

Proof of vaccination is required for on-site film screenings. Learn more about visiting us safely.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#13 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Feb 18, 2022 8:35 pm


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tenia
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#14 Post by tenia » Sat Feb 19, 2022 7:28 am

Quite sad to see yet another French-led restoration being much better served elsewhere than in France. By the look of the Criterion, you'd almost think these are 2 different restorations.

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Finch
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#15 Post by Finch » Sun Feb 27, 2022 11:11 pm

Top marks from Glenn Erickson, and I'm glad I'm not alone in finding the film absolutely divine apart from the cloying kids and their singing.

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Red Screamer
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#16 Post by Red Screamer » Thu Aug 18, 2022 2:55 pm

The shorts are a great addition to this release. Each one shows a different side of McCarey's accomplishment in silent slapstick, with Looking for Sally's stunts and bravura camerawork (including one impressive traveling shot that's repeated plus a layer or two in that great rediscovered McCarey/Chase short Plain and Fancy Girls from the same year) and Mighty Like a Moose's virtuoso display of comic timing and blocking. The latter is dense with jokes, well structured, and clearly the better of the two films—though I didn't yuk it up the way pistolwink apparently did!—while also bearing a striking resemblance to aspects of The Awful Truth. Does anyone here know if the somewhat mean-spirited physical cariactures shared by both shorts are characteristic of Chase's other work?

I would have appreciated some critical material on the film though, as Dave Kehr's capsule for Il Cinema Ritrovato a few years back gave me a better sense of what the film is doing than anything Criterion included here:
Dave Kehr wrote:A pivotal film in McCarey’s career, Love Affair both completes the trilogy on marriage begun by Make Way for Tomorrow and The Awful Truth, and introduces the spiritual themes that will shape McCarey’s great religious trilogy of the 1940s, Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary’s and Good Sam. God, so conspicuously absent from Make Way (how could any benign deity allow this loving, fully committed couple to suffer so mightily and finally be destroyed?), is everywhere present in Love Affair, though in various disguises, from the saintly old woman (Maria Ouspenskaya) who gives her blessings to the unlikely couple formed by her playboy grandson (Charles Boyer) and the American nightclub singer (Irene Dunne) whom he has met aboard an ocean liner, to the drunk wrestling with a Christmas tree (Tom Dugan) who rouses Boyer from a fog of despondency at a crucial moment in the plot. Above all (literally) towers the immense figure of the Empire State Building, “the nearest thing to Heaven we have in New York”, where the two lovers, having separated for six months to test the validity of their union), are to be reunited. With a visual flair more akin to the work of Frank Borzage than McCarey’s usual, straightforwardly realist style, the film makes of the building a recurring image of remoteness and inaccessibility (it appears out of a cloud, or reflected in a window pane) at the same time it is a promise of ultimate order and serenity, of a higher power watching over the characters and guiding them to fulfillment.

It is hard to imagine that this perfectly constructed film, with its balance of comedy and melodrama, its casual progression toward spiritual grandeur through a series of seemingly trivial incidents, had to be hastily rewritten (by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart) shortly after shooting began, when the French government objected to Boyer’s ‘loose’ character on the grounds that it would endanger French-American friendship on the eve of the war. Unlike Cary Grant, Boyer enthusiastically participated in McCarey’s improvisational methods, and Love Affair remained Boyer’s favorite among his Hollywood films.

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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#17 Post by bottled spider » Thu Aug 25, 2022 12:53 am

Welcome news. I've only seen it on a very poor quality DVD. So much more convincing than McCarey's remake -- the rapid blossoming of a flirtation into real love, their mutual concerns about gossip, McKay's need for a prospective husband to make something of himself even if he' independently wealthy, and her need to confirm their love is real and not a passing attraction, and hence their agreement to separate for a time are all believable here, yet somehow a bit contrived when it's Grant and Kerr saying the same things.

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hearthesilence
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#18 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:10 am

Red Screamer wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 2:55 pm
The shorts are a great addition to this release. Each one shows a different side of McCarey's accomplishment in silent slapstick, with Looking for Sally's stunts and bravura camerawork (including one impressive traveling shot that's repeated plus a layer or two in that great rediscovered McCarey/Chase short Plain and Fancy Girls from the same year) and Mighty Like a Moose's virtuoso display of comic timing and blocking. The latter is dense with jokes, well structured, and clearly the better of the two films—though I didn't yuk it up the way pistolwink apparently did!—while also bearing a striking resemblance to aspects of The Awful Truth. Does anyone here know if the somewhat mean-spirited physical cariactures shared by both shorts are characteristic of Chase's other work?

I would have appreciated some critical material on the film though, as Dave Kehr's capsule for Il Cinema Ritrovato a few years back gave me a better sense of what the film is doing than anything Criterion included here:
Dave Kehr wrote:A pivotal film in McCarey’s career, Love Affair both completes the trilogy on marriage begun by Make Way for Tomorrow and The Awful Truth, and introduces the spiritual themes that will shape McCarey’s great religious trilogy of the 1940s, Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary’s and Good Sam. God, so conspicuously absent from Make Way (how could any benign deity allow this loving, fully committed couple to suffer so mightily and finally be destroyed?), is everywhere present in Love Affair, though in various disguises, from the saintly old woman (Maria Ouspenskaya) who gives her blessings to the unlikely couple formed by her playboy grandson (Charles Boyer) and the American nightclub singer (Irene Dunne) whom he has met aboard an ocean liner, to the drunk wrestling with a Christmas tree (Tom Dugan) who rouses Boyer from a fog of despondency at a crucial moment in the plot. Above all (literally) towers the immense figure of the Empire State Building, “the nearest thing to Heaven we have in New York”, where the two lovers, having separated for six months to test the validity of their union), are to be reunited. With a visual flair more akin to the work of Frank Borzage than McCarey’s usual, straightforwardly realist style, the film makes of the building a recurring image of remoteness and inaccessibility (it appears out of a cloud, or reflected in a window pane) at the same time it is a promise of ultimate order and serenity, of a higher power watching over the characters and guiding them to fulfillment.

It is hard to imagine that this perfectly constructed film, with its balance of comedy and melodrama, its casual progression toward spiritual grandeur through a series of seemingly trivial incidents, had to be hastily rewritten (by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart) shortly after shooting began, when the French government objected to Boyer’s ‘loose’ character on the grounds that it would endanger French-American friendship on the eve of the war. Unlike Cary Grant, Boyer enthusiastically participated in McCarey’s improvisational methods, and Love Affair remained Boyer’s favorite among his Hollywood films.
That's funny because back when Love Affair was impossible to track down, Dave Kehr's NY Times review of the DVD reissue of An Affair to Remember led me to McCarey and convinced me to give An Affair to Remember a real chance. (Sleepless in Seattle had put me off from taking it seriously.) I grew to appreciate it over multiple viewings - it's not a perfect film, but the merits became clearer and I do think it's a great re-make. Love Affair is a masterpiece though - I think Kehr considers it the better film, and I agree with him there. But it's also a case where ranking one over the other feels needless to me - I never feel like I'm merely seeing a rehash or regurgitation of the former. I guess it's like hearing a great artist performing a famous record they did - the "original" will always be THE one, but that doesn't take anything away from the new interpretation.

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Drucker
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#19 Post by Drucker » Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:33 am

I coincidentally watched this for the first time the other day. I found it a bit challenging at first, given how magnetic I find Cary Grant in the re-make, and how muted Boyer feels early on. But as the film progressed I found myself enjoying it more and more. Almost as if the early parts of the film where Grant is effortlessly charming, I wasn't as sold as Boyer. But when the film required Boyer to be a little sadder, I found his performance more engaging than Grant, and think the way he approached that last scene was magnificent and really made the movie for me. I love McCarey's early films and have struggled with his less funny ones, so the opening may have taken me a bit more getting used to because of that, but at the end the film won me over.

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hearthesilence
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#20 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:47 am

IIRC McCarey's main motivation for the remake was Grant. Apparently Grant was his first choice to be cast in Love Affair, but he couldn't do it for some reason. Watching Boyer after Grant was initially tough for me too - it's really hard to compete with someone who's arguably the greatest of all film stars - but once I was able to forget that baggage, I did find Boyer to be really moving.

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movielocke
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Re: 1114 Love Affair

#21 Post by movielocke » Thu Aug 25, 2022 12:43 pm

The first time I saw this was on a murky VHS, so the bluray was a revelation, an incredibly impressive restoration. Nice to have the silent shorts as an option, though they're not great, it's fun seeing some of that early work. Makes me want to revisit an Affair to Remember (which I liked less than this the first time around), and Sleepless in Seattle (which I've always enjoyed as one of the better 90s romantic comedies)

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