- Love Letters (1945 film)
Infobox Film
name = Love Letters
image_size = 200px
caption = Promotional movie poster for the film
director =William Dieterle
producer =Hal B. Wallis
writer =Ayn Rand
starring = Jennifer JonesJoseph Cotten
Ann RichardsCecil Kellaway Gladys Cooper Anita Louise
music =Victor Young
cinematography =Lee Garmes
editing =Anne Bauchens
distributor =Paramount Pictures
released =August 17 1945
runtime = 101 min.
country = USA
language = English
amg_id = 1:70501
imdb_id = 0037885"Love Letters" is a 1945 film adapted by
Ayn Rand from the novel "Pity My Simplicity" byChristopher Massie . It was directed byWilliam Dieterle and stars Jennifer Jones,Joseph Cotten , Ann Richards,Cecil Kellaway ,Gladys Cooper andAnita Louise .The movie was nominated for
Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Jennifer Jones), Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture and Best Music, Song (Victor Young andEdward Heyman for "Love Letters").Plot summary
Alan Quinton (
Joseph Cotten ), a soldier inItaly duringWorld War II , has been writing letters for his friend Roger Morland (Robert Scully ), a man who admits he "never had any standards, manners or taste." He has never met Victoria Remington, but regards her as a "pin-up girl of the spirit," to whom he can express feelings he's never expressed in person. He realizes that Victoria has fallen in love with the letters and is concerned that Victoria will be disappointed by the real Roger.When he returns home, Alan learns that Roger has died. When he tries to look up Victoria he is told that she has also died, and he learns that Roger's death was a murder. At a party he meets and falls in love with a mysterious woman named Singleton (Jennifer Jones), who may hold the key to these deaths, but is suffering from amnesia. The subsequent plot follows Singleton's effort to regain her past, and Alan's efforts to find out what the real story of the murder was.
Rand's screenplay
Like everything Ayn Rand wrote, the screenplay strongly shows her personal philosophy. Rand said that the novel which she nominally adapted "was junk" [Barbara Branden, "The Passion of Ayn Rand", p. 192] . But the influence of Cyrano de Bergerac, a play which Rand loved, is obvious. Rand combines the idea of ghostwriting love letters for a friend with her conviction that even well-intended deception in love has disastrous consequences. For example, in "
Atlas Shrugged ", Hank Rearden says to Dagny Taggart, "But there are no white lies, there is only the blackness of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all."The dialogue is characteristically Randian, with characters revealing their personal views through direct statement. Singleton, for example, says, "I don't like people who try to be what I want them to be."
References
External links
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