Love Affair can best be described as a feature length soap opera. It has all the cliches of an average episode of a daytime drama, complete with scandal, sex, infidelity, romance and blackmail. The only thing it is lacking is a cliffhanger inviting viewers to come back tomorrow for more of the same. The problem with Love Affair isn’t the formula, though, it’s the execution of it. With all this drama and depravity it is painfully dull, failing to bring any real excitement to the stage. The cast is game, especially a young Bogart who is still trying to find his voice in films at this point, but the results are disappointing all around.
Carol Owen (Dorothy Mackaill), a wealthy socialite has decided she wants to take a flying lesson, and not just any flying lesson but one shepherded by Jim Leonard (Humphrey Bogart). Jim doesn’t care for taking on passengers so, when Carol insists on him, he intentionally flys in such a way to leave her very queasy. Later, on the ground, she gives him a lift in her car, getting even by driving crazily through downtown traffic, proving to be just as much a daredevil on the road as he is in the air. Inexplicably the two begin seeing each other.
Meanwhile, Carol’s finance manager, Bruce Hardy (Hale Hamilton), is also in love with her. He had proposed several times but is always rebuffed, yet he persists. He also has a mistress, Linda Lee (Astrid Allwyn), an aspiring actress who happens to be the baby sister to Jim Leonard. Linda has a producer named Georgee Keeler (Bradley Page) who is promising her a big role if she can get money out of Bruce. Jim distrusts Georgee and wants Linda to settle down to a ‘real’ job. He has plans to market his own airplane engine and, if he can get financing, move the two of them to Detroit where all the manufacturing takes place. Naturally she wants nothing to do with this. The rest of the film is a series of on-again-off-again romances and a blackmail scheme that fizzles out almost as quickly as it starts.
Bogart practically carries this film which is really saying something as he is miscast here. This is well before Bogart would find himself typecast in gangster roles, something he was far more adept at. Here, he is asked to play a fast talking genius engineer who has invented a engine so revolutionary that it is the best engine in every way. Yet Bogart, try as he might, can’t quite sell us that he is smart enough to have designed this all by himself. He fares a little better in the romance aspect of the film but there is little real chemistry between him and Carol. Still, even miscast, Bogart is interesting to watch, far more so than anyone else here.
Nearly everything about this film is rote and cliché. As mentioned above it has about as much weight to it as a typical daytime drama, drawing the romance out by throwing in conflict after conflict to keep Jim and Carol from their Happily Ever After. When it does finally reach a climax of sorts, it attempts to add some excitement with a suicide attempt and a, for the time, exciting stunt involving a plane. But this is abruptly cut off before it really even begins. Everything about the ending feels rushed as if the writers needed to hurry and wrap things up. The ending needed time to breathe. Instead, one minute there is this amazing stunt, the next the end title card is on screen. This robs the ending of any real emotion.
The flight stunts are amazing to watch here but that is about it. Overall it is ludicrous and unsatisfying. This was never going to be a great film. The problems stem from the source material, a short story by Ursula Parrott, and a faithful adaption was never going to do much for this it. But it could have been better, not relying so much on manufactured drama and instead allowed the characters time to breath and have the drama flow naturally from that. Instead it is a forgettable affair that is better off left to Bogart completists and fans of the late Dorothy Mackaill who wish to see her during the waining years of her stardom.
Release Date: March 17, 1932
Running Time: 68 Minutes
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Dorothy Mackaill, Hale Hamilton
Directed By: Thornton Freeland
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