Contemporary audiences familiar with Nora Ephron’s beloved 1993 rom-com Sleepless in Seattle may not be aware of its source, this 1939 classic helmed by Leo McCarey, starring Charles Boyer as French playboy painter Michel Marnay and Irene Dunne as American nightclub singer turned fashion buyer Terry McKay.
The pair meet cute on a transatlantic voyage and fall in love, but face a major obstacle: namely, a fiancé and a fiancée await them in New York when the ship pulls in. And because Michel’s betrothal to an American heiress has made headline news, other passengers are noticing the shipboard couple’s nightly dinners and amiable companionship.
Forced to maintain their distance in order to stave off rumors, Michel and Terry make a pact: if the flame of love still burns bright after six months they will meet at the top of the Empire State Building and wed. Naturally, something else happens on the agreed date, which sends the story in a more melodramatic direction.
McCarey favored improvisation—as did Boyer—and it shows in the often natural-sounding banter between Boyer and Dunne, although some of the best lines are still clearly scripted (Terry tells Michel that her father liked to say that “the things we like best are either illegal, immoral, or fattening”).
McCarey himself remade Love Affair in 1957 as An Affair to Remember, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, although that version has less of the Catholic director’s spiritual overtones. Those are most notable in this original version during a touching scene in which the couple disembarks in Madeira to visit Michel’s grandmother and Terry kneels and prays before a statue of the Virgin Mary (the grandmother is played by Maria Ouspenskaya, who some will recognize from her key role as a gypsy woman in the horror classic The Wolf Man).
Nominated for six Oscars (including Best Picture)—no mean feat in Hollywood’s golden-est year, which also featured Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—Love Affair debuts on Blu-ray with a 4K digital restoration that occasionally looks soft but is otherwise fine (this is the best the film has ever looked on video).
Extras include a new interview with film critic Farran Smith Nehme about the movie’s complicated production history; a 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); and a leaflet with an essay by author Megan McGurk.
A classic rom-com that still sparkles like the lovers’ signature drink of pink champagne, this is highly recommended for classic film collections in public libraries. It would also make a great selection for a public film screening about different adaptations paired with Sleepless in Seattle.