Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Love Letters (1945) Film Review - Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten

Plot Summary - POSSIBLE SPOILERS - - - Romantic mystery/melodrama starring Joseph Cotten as Allen, a soldier off to war in Italy who has been writing love letters to a girl back in England named Victoria - thing is, he is writing them on behalf of his buddy Roger and Victoria has fallen in love with the letters AND the man who has written the letters (who she believes is her man Roger!). Oddly, Allen has fallen in love with Victoria too, a woman he has never seen or met. Well, Roger goes back to England and marries her, Allen is wounded in action and comes home only to find out that his friend Roger was killed in an "accident". Meanwhile, Allen has inherited a country house in Essex and arrives to live at the mysterious old house, complete with charming/eccentric (whichever way you want to look at it) old caretaker (Cecil Kellaway). Coincidentally, in a nearby village is where his love that he has never met - and his obsession: Victoria - happened to live - - but when he visits one day he is told she is dead. POSSIBLE SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS - - In London he meets and falls for a beautiful woman named just "Singleton" (Jennifer Jones) who has amnesia and can't remember anything about her past. But her friend Dilly knows the truth - which is told to Allen - Singleton is Victoria, who was in prison for a year for the murder of Roger and lost all memory of her past after the incident. Allen and Singleton fall in love and get married, though Allen is told that she must not be told the truth of her past, but the memories gradually start to come! How will this affect their romance, and will she ever find out that her Alan is the one who really wrote the love letters?!

Review - Okay, this film is about as soap opera-ish as you can get - very entertaining, though very predictable (though I may have seen this a long, long time ago and the memory of the film was somewhere in the back of my head). I liked the sort of mysterious background music and sweet, dreamy-eyed "Portrait of Jennie"-like acting style of Jennifer Jones in this. Neat house the Joseph Cotten character goes to live in in Essex. Joseph Cotten is one of my favorites, as is Jennifer Jones - I enjoy them paired with each other, they have a lot of chemistry together. Well, it seems rather far-fetched to think that a couple would fall in love just based on letters, yet they are both so attractive when they meet - why wouldn't they fall in love for real?! Rating - 8.5 to 9/10 stars