September Affair a Radical Romance for 1950
Joseph Cotten, Joan Fontaine Star in Adult Story of Adultery
May 25, 2009
Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Would you start over with a new love in an exotic location and if you did, what might happen?
The movie turns the idea into a polemic by complicating the simple premise with the reality that, regarding affairs of the heart, somebody usually gets hurt – and it’s not always one of the lovers involved.
Tender, Mature Relationship Between Cotten, Fontaine
What makes this Hollywood romance special is just how maturely it treats the central relationship between stars Joseph Cotten and Joan Fontaine.
Before the mid-1960s, Hollywood too rarely reflected reality in dealing with adult relationships, especially illicit ones.
September Affair doesn’t pretend marriage is, or should be, forever. In fact, it says life is messy and complicated.
Affair actually does something unthinkable for its time: it depicts two people, not married to each other, engaged in a sexual relationship and living together. In this respect, it grafts a European sensibility onto a very American couple.
Pretty radical stuff for 1950.
Creative Team Includes Major Movie Figures Wallis, Dieterle, Solt
The film has a fine pedigree. Prolific producer Hal Wallis packaged the movie, and hired William Dieterle – perhaps best known for his romantic pictures – to direct. The screenwriting credit went to Robert Thoeren, based on his story. But among the uncredited screenwriters were Andrew Solt, who that same year co-wrote the outstanding Bogart vehicle In a Lonely Place, and a superstar screenwriter of old Hollywood, ex-newspaperman Ben Hecht.
The film marks the fifth of six collaborations between Dieterle and leading man Joseph Cotten. They’d worked together just two years earlier on the supernatural romance Portrait of Jennie.
Here, Cotten plays American industrialist David Lawrence, opposite Joan Fontaine in a nicely underplayed performance as the American expatriate concert pianist Manina Stuart.
Future Oscar Winner Jessica Tandy in Featured Role
The cast includes Jessica Tandy as Cotten’s dutiful but uninspiring wife, Katherine. It’s fascinating to see Tandy, smooth skinned and soft-spoken, nearly 40 years before her Oscar-winning role in Driving Miss Daisy.
Jimmy Lydon, now remembered as the movies’ gawkiest teenager in the Henry Aldrich pictures of the forties, plays a young U.S. serviceman who meets the lovers one night in a café. And France’s Francoise Rosay plays Manina’s friend Maria, who constantly reminds the couple of their sinful ways.
The setup is simple:
Manina and David Lawrence meet amiably on a flight to New York from Rome. But when engine trouble forces their plane down in Naples for repairs, they decide to kill time by touring the area. At lunch, they listen to the bittersweet standard September Song, written by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson and sung by Walter Huston. It perfectly mirrors their growing May-September relationship.
September Song and another uber-romantic musical theme,Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, underscore key scenes throughout this very Hollywood romance.
Plane Crash Changes Everything
When they miss the repaired plane’s takeoff hours later, the couple decides to spend a few days sightseeing. “Let’s be unconventional,” the suddenly spunky Manina tells David.
Thanks to the beauty and mystery of Capri and Pompei, and a natural ease between them, David and Manina fall quickly in love. But it’s a skittish romance at first, because David is married – although he’d come to Europe to take stock after his wife refused him a divorce.
Over breakfast a few days later, they discover the plane they barely missed in Naples crashed – and they are presumed dead.
So they embark on a love affair, renting a villa together in Florence, setting up house and generally being blissful. But they also continue to struggle with their decision not to come forward. The rest of the story centers on the dual crisis of conscience, spurred to some degree by Manina’s Italian friend, Maria:
“It won’t work, Manina,” Maria declares. “What you’re doing is selfish, cowardly and wrong. A poor foundation for happiness.”
Manina stares her down. “Cowardly because we have the courage to start again? Or selfish because we don’t want to hurt anyone? Or wrong because we’re happy?”
Disappointing Resolution Doesn't Ruin Film's Romantic Atmosphere
There are some contrivances, including when Katherine and teenager David Jr. decide to travel to Florence. And some key scenes play flat when they should pack more of a wallop, including moments between David and Katherine and David and his son.
The resolution is a bit unsatisfying, betraying the premise and conforming to the social boundaries from which David and Manina struggled to escape. But mostly this very romantic film is a superior entertainment for its time and place – as the tumultuous fifties were just beginning and barriers were bracing to be broken.
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