Love Affair (1939)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) By sheer happenstance, I happened to have Love Affair waiting on my DVR after watching An Affair to Remember and finding out that it was a remake of this film. Watching both at a few days’ interval only highlighted the similarities between both versions and what it takes to make it work. Both movies are easier than most pairs to analyze: after all, both are (co-)written and directed by Leo McCarey, and both share a structure that is almost scene-per-scene identical. Love Affair is in black-and-white, whereas An Affair to Remember is in Technicolor, but that’s not the most significant difference: Stars Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne are in the lead roles and while they’re certainly not bad or unlikable actors, they simply can’t compare to Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, who shoulders almost all of the remake’s added interest over its progenitor. Perhaps the best example of this difference can be found in the weepy last scene—a bit silly and melodramatic with good actors, but somehow almost convincing with superior ones. Oh, I liked Love Affair well enough, despite thinking that the first half isn’t as funny as the remake’s first half. It’s more even and less frustrating in parts when compared to the melodramatic remake. But even if the remake is flawed, it’s still far more memorable than the first movie. So it goes—Hollywood alchemy, unpredictable and striking at once.