42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AYN RAND SCREENPLAY!, March 15, 2003
This review is from: Love Letters [VHS] (VHS Tape)
"I think of you, my dearest, as a distant promise of beauty untouched by the world-a promise to be reached in spite of the terror and ugliness around me. If I never see you again, my last thought will be that I had fought for you and lost-but I had fought." So reads a letter penned by a British officer on the Italian front, in the 1945 movie "Love Letters." The story was based on a little-known novel by an obscure author, Chris Massie. The screenplay was written by Ayn Rand.
The movie, directed by William Dieterle, stars Jennifer Jones as the mysterious Singleton and Joseph Cotton as British officer Alan Quinton. Victor Young composed the lush, romantic music score, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
"Love Letters" contains scenes of an emotional intensity found in no ordinary story-scenes that no one short of a Victor Hugo or an Ayn Rand could have conceived. I can never forget Jennifer Jones seated before her cottage fireplace, dazed, as the love letters she treasured go up in flames-a knife in her hand, blood smeared across her dress, and her husband dead at her feet. Or her scream, years later, as she sees red berries crushed against her white dress, and remembers.
Seeing "Love Letters" is like discovering a new work of fiction by Miss Rand-for the movie departs so radically from the unfocused novel it was based on that it almost constitutes an original work. She took a few suggestions and situations from Chris Massie's sprawling, unfocused book, and developed them entirely along her own lines: intensifying the moral conflict inherent in one man writing another man's love letters, and building events logically to a stunning climax.
It was she who conceived of the central event of the movie, the horror of which Alan Quinton first learns of in the basement of a London newspaper. Following up mysterious hints about the woman he is trying to trace-the unknown woman he wrote love letters to-he searches through the back issues that the office boy brings him, until he finds the article he is looking for, yet dreads to find: "Officer Murdered; Wife Held." He sits there for hours, reading it over and over, stubbing out one cigarette after another in dead silence. "Who was the murderer?" the office boy asks him, as he finally walks away. "I was," he says.
It was Ayn Rand, who in 1945 was just mapping out the plot of "Atlas Shrugged," who invented the central situation of the screenplay: the irony of an impossible love, in which a woman cannot be told that she is her own rival who is stealing her husband's love away. And it was Miss Rand who invented the horrendously powerful climax-in which we see the murder of the man who "tried to get happiness by stealing another mans soul"-with Singleton sitting before the fireplace, staring dazedly at the knife in her hand, her hands and dress smeared with her husband's blood-as the camera zooms in on the words of a burning letter: "I think of you, my dearest, as a distant promise of beauty untouched by the world ..."
Miss Rand, believe it or not, brings this tragedy to a benevolent conclusion.
"Love Letters" is full of joy, tragedy, idealism, and ultimate triumph. I urge everyone who wants to preserve a glorified view of life, to try to see it.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Cotton/Jones Classic, February 24, 2004
This review is from: Love Letters [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Josephy Cotton and Jennifer Jones appeared together, I believe, in either four or five movies. This is probably the least known of their movies together. As I once heard a TV reviewer remark, Cotton brought out the best in Jones, who was twice nominated for the Best Actress Oscar when teamed with Cotton.
Cotton plays a sensitive, sincere WWII soldier who, while in France, writes love letters on behalf of a shallow, callous fellow soldier. The Cyrano-like gesture brings only torment, madness, and death after the woman falls in love with the latter soldier.
After being wounded in combat, Cotton is sent back to England for the duration of the war. He quickly finds out that the soldier he wrote the letters for was killed shortly after marrying the girl to whom the letters were addressed. At that point, the movie shifts gears into a murder mystery, with the guilt-ridden Cotton attempting to discovery what happened--and what role he played in the events.
While Cotton is a bit stiff in the role of Alan Quinton, he does ably exude a quiet, calm determination to piece together the truth. The ever-radiant Jennifer Jones plays a mysterious woman known only as Singleton, who may or may not be the key to unraveling the mystery.
Highly recommended for fans of an old-fashioned murder myster/love story.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
FOR THE TRUE ROMANTICS!, July 31, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Love Letters [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This was Jones' third major film and she is ethereal and breathtaking! She is starred with Cotten who would be co-starred with her more than any other leading man and they do make a fine team!
The film is a 'moody' and 'gothic' piece which is enhanced by the performances of the leads. Particularly refreshing is the fact that Jones' performance holds none of the 'facial contortions' that marred many of her later portrayals. She truly deserved the Oscar nomination that she received for this film and in my opinion, should have won over Joan Crawford's tepid and overrated portrayal of "Mildred Pierce" that year.
This film is great to watch on a rainy day, cuddled up in front of the fireplace with your sweetheart. Truly a film for the true romantics....from its cinematography to the 'haunting' musical score.
It is one of the best from the "Golden Era" of Hollywood!
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