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Love Letters [VHS] 
Actors : Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ann Richards, Cecil Kellaway, Gladys Cooper
Director : William Dieterle
Studio : Universal Studios
by Universal Studios
Release Date : 1998-02-17
Publisher : Universal Studios
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
EAN : 9780783215112
UPC : 096898247436
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 15 reviews)
List Price : $14.98
Our Price : $57.74
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A classic long overdue for re-release |
Love Letters is a take off on a twist on Cyrano de Bergerac. The screenplay is vintage Ayn Rand: heartbreaking, yet joyously benevolent. It's actually adapted from someone else's novel, and the plot involves a murder mystery, amnesia, some really great melodrama. But Rand's adaptation brings so much more depth of meaning to it, and is besides so tightly plotted and perfectly crafted that the climax brings everything to a perfect resolution, no denouement necessary.
Jennifer Jones's performance is stunning, by far the best screen performance by any actress I've ever seen (the only others I can think of off the top of my head that are even in the same league are Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker). (In fact, Jones's performance is so brilliant that Joseph Cotten seems a bit bland by comparison, the film's biggest weakness.)
It's the best movie with which Ayn Rand had anything to do, and probably my favorite movie ever. I highly recommend it to anyone who believes that life doesn't have to be frustration and suffering, but can be achievement and joy. |
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What we have lost |
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Watching Cotton and Jones in either Love letters or Portrait of Jenny shows us how much we have lost within our movie making culture. Gone are acting and well wrtitten scripts replaced by special effects. I have watched each of these films over 50 times since I was a child of 12 (now 62) and am drawn into the depth of the characters. Those were the days of giants! Love Letters has as a side note a rather strong antiwar message, unusual for a film of that era. |
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What we have lost |
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Watching Cotton and Jones in either Love letters or Portrait of Jenny shows us how much we have lost within our movie making culture. Gone are acting and well wrtitten scripts replaced by special effects. I have watched each of these films over 50 times since I was a child of 12 (now 62) and am drawn into the depth of the characters. Those were the days of giants! Love Letters has as a side note a rather strong antiwar message, unusual for a film of that era. |
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JENNIFER JONES AND JOSEPH COTTON TRANSCEND AYN RAND |
This insanely romantic movie, fueled by Victor Young's repetitive but unforgettable love theme, has some of the same sort of overripe, unintentionally hilarious dialogue that makes "The Fountainhead" such an entertaining howler of a right wing melodrama, but Jones and Cotton, with their uniquely delicate emotional interplay, are an irresistable couple and their authenticity saves and sells the movie.
Though couched as a romantic melodrama (with elements borrowed from "Cyrano de Bergerac") Rand still manages to interlard some of her trademark loony political cant, mostly through the fey pronouncements of Cotton's old family retainer, Cecil Kellaway, a canny performer captured here at his most insincere. Rand's politics, with their weird blend of authoritarian longing and barely repressed Daddy issues (Elektra crossed with Phyllis Schlafly) are as cracked as the theory of trickle down economics, with which they share an unfortunate kinship, but they can't sink the picture. It's not too hard to put all that aside and hang onto the leads, that gorgeous music, and the impossible, operatic final moments. Go ahead, wallow.
I see that MCA / Universal is finally releasing a series of classic Paramount comedies this April, including "Midnight" and "The Major and the Minor." Maybe they'll continue their newfound largess and bring this enduring romance at last to DVD. Movie studios, after all, at their most insane, still make more sense than Ayn Rand ever did.
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Another Cotton/Jones Classic |
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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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