Wonderful character development!
... View MorePlease don't spend money on this.
... View MoreThe movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
... View MoreStrong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
... View MoreThis high-power weeper is notable for its photography. Made shortly after sound arrived in movies, Born to Love has some interesting images courtesy of cinematographer John Mescall. Rapid pullbacks and moving close-ups often look like the camera was mounted on a square-wheeled dolly. When done at a less frantic pace, they're much smoother and easier on our eyes. Mescall's stationary camera images of London's celebration at the end of World War One , complete with an example of his tilted camera style, are the best images in the movie. Film buffs of pre-code talkies will get something out of this very dreary story.
... View MoreNot uninteresting pre-Code soap suds, wherein Yankee nurse Bennett, in London (nice historical touch: a bus advertising "Chu Chin Chow") meets Captain Joel McCrea, they have a torrid romance and pledge their troth, and while carrying his child she hears he's dead. We know he's not--he's second-billed, and there's an hour to go--but she thinks he is, so she marries Paul Cavanagh on the rebound and we wait for the fireworks that will erupt when McCrea returns. Connie's histrionic- -she gets to love, yell, sob, scream, and put on a phony British accent, even though she's playing American--and Paul Stein's camera likes to linger on her overemoting. But Joel McCrea was certainly the personification of solid masculine American values circa 1918 or 1931, and his sincere underplaying nicely complements her overplaying. The screenplay doesn't hate her for having a child out of wedlock, and the happy ending isn't that happy. So, by 1931 standards, it's an adult movie. Just not a very good one.
... View MoreConstant Bennett is a beautiful Red Cross nurse and Joel McCrea her lover in "Born to Love." The story held my interest but it is truly a turgid melodrama with some very old-fashioned, over the top acting from Bennett.Bennett and McCrea meet during World War I in London, fall in love, have sex; he leaves for battle and is later presumed dead. Pregnant, she marries Paul Cavanagh, Sir Wilfred Drake, who comes off like a nice guy at first. When McCrea turns up again, Bennett is determined to be loyal to her husband. But when he realizes she's seen McCrea and is still in love with him, the jig is up. In the divorce, Sir Wilfred gets full custody of the child. And here's where the going gets rough for the viewer, not to mention the characters! McCrea is adorable; Cavanagh is the type of leading man one doesn't see anymore. He comes off as very unattractive in this, though in his 32-year career, this often wasn't the case. As for Bennett, one has seen her to much better advantage. This is one of those creaky movies that's interesting from a precode and artifact point of view, but you can see these two stars in better films.
... View MoreI saw the last part of this on TCM; it was Joel McCrea day.It didn't really fit -- this is Constance Bennett's movie, 100%, and that's the problem. This has to be one of the worst performances of her career. Even making allowances for 1931, she is very histrionic and melodramatic, in all the worst, most silent-movie-cliché ways.Technically, Paul L. Stein's direction is fine (for 1931), but it appears from this he was not an "actor's director". Oddly, Ms. Bennett's next film, "The Common Law," re-teamed her with director Stein and costar McCrea. It is better; not memorable, but at least she isn't painfully bad in this one.
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