Love Letters (1945 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Love Letters movie poster

Love Letters is a 1945 film adapted by Ayn Rand from the novel by Christopher Massie. It was directed by William Dieterle. It stars Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ann Richards, Cecil Kellaway, Gladys Cooper and Anita Louise.

Alan Quinton (Joseph Cotten), a soldier in Italy during World 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, the importance of an older woman who may or may not be a predatory lesbian, and Alan's efforts to find out what the real story of the murder was.

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 and Edward Heyman for "Love Letters").

[edit] Rand's screenplay

Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten in a scene from Love Letters

Like everything Ayn Rand wrote, the screenplay strongly shows her personal philosophy. Rand said that the novel which she nominally adapted "was junk"^[1]. 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 saying things that reveal their personal views. Singleton, for example, says, "I don't like people who try to be what I want them to be."