OVERSEAS COMMENTS

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22768, 21 July 1939, Page 18

OVERSEAS COMMENTS

“The Nearest Thing to Heaven,” released overseas as “Love Affair.” is praised by R.M., critic for “Punch.” “ ‘Love Affair’ (director: Leo McCarey) is an example of that very rare type of film, the civilised light emotional drama —if you understand what I mean by bunching those adjectives. Mr McCarey’s last film was ‘The Awful Truth,’ which was an example of that other very rare type, the civilised farce. I enjoyed this nearly as much, and I am all for Mr McCarey.

“He has to be well served by his players, of course, and he is. Here we have Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer as a cabaret singer (Terry) and a ‘great lover’ (Michel) who meet and fall genuinely in love on a boat, part, and are reunited at the end after prodigies of selfsacrifice by the lady. Perhaps this last part of the story is false and melodramatic, but I have never seen a manufactured ‘hokum’ plot more carefully and yet lightly, credibly, and amusingly treated. The two principals, on whom (naturally—remember the title) the whole story depends, give beautiful performances: another comes from Maria Ouspenskaya as Michel's grandmother, with whom they spend a day at Madeira. There is an episode in a chapel here which might easily have been dreadful in the customary slanting-sunbeams, choral-background-music manner; but it is saved. This picture is an unusual and very interesting treatment of an unpromising plot, %xtremely well acted and wittily and sensitively directed.”