Love Letters (1945)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

William Dieterle

Writers:

Christopher Massie (novel)
Ayn Rand (writer)

Release Date:

26 October 1945 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Romance

Plot:

Allen Quinton writes a fellow soldier's love letters; tragedy results. Later, Allen meets a beautiful amnesiac who fears postmen...

Plot Keywords:

Love | Love Letter | Murder | WWII | Male Female Relationship

Awards:

Nominated for 4 Oscars.

Cast

Jennifer Jones	...	Singleton
Joseph Cotten	...	Allen Quinton
Ann Richards	...	Dilly Carson
Cecil Kellaway	...	Mac
Gladys Cooper	...	Beatrice Remington
Anita Louise	...	Helen Wentworth
Robert Sully	...	Roger Morland
Reginald Denny	...	Defense counsel Phillips
Ernest Cossart	...	Bishop
Byron Barr	...	Derek Quinton

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for language including sexual references, and for some thematic elements.

Runtime:

101 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

West Germany:16 | Finland:S | USA:Approved (PCA #10072)

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.

Goofs:

Continuity: Dilly Carson relates to Allan Quinnton that she found Singleton sitting by the fireplace with a bloody knife and a letter from which Dilly quotes the signature line, "I think of you my dearest as the distance promise of beauty". But during the climactic flashback, we see the letter with that very line burning in the fireplace.

Quotes:

Singleton: I think very few people are happy. They wait all their lives for something to happen to them - something great and wonderful. They don't know what it is but they wait for it. Sometimes it never happens. What they want is the kind of spirit I found in those letters. A spirit that makes life beautiful. I love that man. I loved him more than my own life. I still love him. So you see, I couldn't have loved Roger Moreland, the man I killed.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Blue Velvet (1986)

"Love Letters Straight From Your Heart."

This modern re-working of the Cyrano De Bergerac tale has one interesting twist, the Christian character is killed off in the first reel and he's not a nice guy to begin with.

Joseph Cotten, a sensitive and romantic soul, is persuaded by an army buddy to write love letters in the friend's name to a girl he's trying to impress. It works real good, they get married.

But after Cotten is wounded and is invalided out of the British Army, he discovers that the man he wrote the letters for has been killed and his wife charged and convicted of the crime. The wife has also lost all memory of the event.

As fate would have it, Cotten and wife Jennifer Jones do meet and fall in love and they marry. That's how it's worked in these Hollywood romances. But you don't care when the players are as sophisticated as Joseph Cotten and as luminescently beautiful as Jennifer Jones. You don't even mind that these two American players don't even try to adopt British accents.

Love Letters was a great big hit for Paramount back then, helped no doubt by the title song which was also selling a lot of records. Dick Haymes had the big hit record of Love Letters. Perry Como and later Andy Williams did well by this most romantic of ballads. It's a personal favorite of mine.

If your taste is films about war time romances, this is the movie for you.