I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

In giving Love Story 6 stars I am very conscious that I am judging it by today's standards rather than the standards of 1944 when the film was released. Soppy and melodramatic it may be, but nevertheless there there is a lot to enjoy and appreciate in it. I was particularly interested in the Cornish setting, with some quite spectacular coastal scenery which is well photographed in black and white. Margaret Lockwood is excellent as dying pianist Lissa, but I'm afraid I found Stewart Granger very hard to swallow. Someone else described him here as wooden and supercilious and I can only agree. The supporting cast are all very good and in the background of the story is WW2, which at the time of the film's release was still in full swing. As a piece of romantic escapism I can imagine it would have been very popular with British audiences who were carrying on with a stiff upper lip and enduring terrible privations and the constant fear of death,,either their own or that of loved ones. The music, Herbert Bath's Cornish Rhapsody, is memorable and very well played. Something of a curiosity, it is well worth a look.

Travelling by train to Cornwall to shoot location footage Stewart Granger shared a carriage with director Leslie Arliss who asked casually what Granger thought of the script. Unaware that Arliss had a co-writer credit Granger replied succinctly 'crap'. I have little time for Granger as an actor, finding him both smug and wooden but I can't fault his critical faculties, or at least not in this case. Someone involved in the writing had clearly been blown away by One-Way Passage and thought they could do just as well. Boy, did they get a wrong number and it wasn't Cornish Rhapsody. For the record One-Way Passage featured a doomed shipboard romance between two people returning by sea to America, she to die of an incurable disease, he to be executed. The perpetrators of Love Story give us a terminally ill Margaret Lockwood opting to spend her last few months in Cornwall where she meets soon-to-be-blind Stewart Granger neither, of course, revealing the truth to the other. Tom Walls and Patricia Roc are also along for the ride and acquit themselves as well as can be expected under the circumstances. It was probably designed as escapist fodder |(it was produced in 1944) but ironically it is the audience who seek freedom.

This 1944 Gainsborough melodrama was not a costume production, yet LOVE STORY retains and builds upon many of the trademark Gainsborough elements. The film was made as a sort of morale booster/romantic escapist drama in the midst of World War Two. Looking at it today, it does seem outdated and melodramatic in many ways, yet it is still remarkably poignant in it's theme of "When you love someone, you set them free".Lockwood and Granger star together in this film, a year on from the smashing success of THE MAN IN GREY. However, Miss Lockwood is no wicked, social-climbing villianess here. Instead she's a charming pianist who learns that she has a heart condition that will soon lead to her death. Determined to make the most of what little time she has, Lockwood's character Lissa Campbell checks into a Cornish hotel. There she meets Kit Firth (Stewart Granger), a former RAF pilot who is also harboring a painful secret. He is going blind. The pair quickly fall in love, yet both cannot bring themselves to tell the other the truth. Granger's childhood friend Judy (Patrica Roc)also begins to cause trouble between the pair, as she's secretly in love with Kit.The plot is melodramatic, yet it's quite entertaining. The performances are generally good, with Lockwood showing she could play a sympathetic heroine as well as she could play a scheming bitch (THE MAN IN GREY). Granger makes an attractive lead, while Roc gets quite an interesting role. Roc was usually the second lead to either Lockwood or Phyllis Calvert in the Gainsborough dramas, yet her Judy is not the tearful milksop of THE WICKED LADY. She is a strong, independent, caring yet jealous and manipulative friend of Granger, who will do almost anything to covet his affections. Roc gets some nice catty scenes with Lockwood, and she pulls them off well.While the script descends into slush at times and some of the location work is rather ordinary (not to mention the "faking" of Miss Lockwood's concert scenes), LOVE STORY is generally an entertaining melodrama with quite a few virtues. I prefer my Gainsborough dished up with a dose of Mason and played out in Regency-era England (or Italy, in the case of the delicious MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS), yet LOVE STORY is a worthy entry in the Gainsborough romantic cycle.

this is the first film i saw more then 50 years ago..it was the first british film shown in montreal after the war in 1945...I would like to see this film again..but it is not showing on t.v.and they dont'have it in the video store..the music I have never forgot..a memorable film ..a great love story ..it made me a fan of stewart granger..margaret lockwood and patricia roc.