1939 American romance film directed by Leo McCarey
Love Affair is a 1939 American romance film, co-starring Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne, and Maria Ouspenskaya. It was directed by Leo McCarey and written by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart, based on a story by McCarey and Mildred Cram. The film follows a French playboy and an American former nightclub singer who fall in love aboard an ocean liner. Controversial on concept, the official screenplay was re-tooled and rewritten to appease Hollywood censorship and relied on actor input and improvisation, causing long delays and budget extensions.
The movie became a sleeper hit in 1939, showing McCarey's versatility after a long career of comedic films, and launching the surprising team-up of Dunne and Boyer. The film received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Its popularity was later dwarfed by McCarey's 1957 remake An Affair to Remember, which spawned its own remakes with 1994's Love Affair and a few Indian adaptations.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.