This is How Movies Should Be Made

Highly Overrated But Still Good

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Copyright 22 July 1944 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at the Capitol: 26 October 1944. U.S. release: October 1944. Australian release: 26 April 1945. 10,444 feet. 116 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Lana played Theo Scofield, a New York playgirl, who "spends her winters in Miami and her summers in Reno," the latter while waiting for the next divorce of her much-married mother who tells her daughter "the first marriage, at least, should be romantic." On this theory, Theo marries Tom West, a fighter pilot on furlough, who is later grounded to handle an important war job in a laboratory. After their baby is born, Theo devotes herself conscientiously to being a model wife and mother. She tries hard at first, but has little faith in her ability to make a good wife. She misses her carefree youth, her string of boyfriends, the glitter and glamour of being loved by a lot of men instead of just one. When she runs into Miles Lancing, an ex-beau, Theo is annoyed because he doesn't act as romantic as he once did. So she dons a sexy gown and heads for the Officers' Club to find him and recapture his attention. But when she returns home that night she finds Tom angry because this was the night they were to celebrate their baby's first birthday. More misunderstandings and reconciliations follow. COMMENT: For once you can get a fair idea of a film's quality from the Synopsis. Believe you me, this talking bore of a story isn't any more lively in the rendering than the reading. True, it's stylishly directed and has lush production values. Lana Turner looks most attractive in cinematographer Ray June's flattering close-ups. And she wears enough costumes, gowns and ensembles to make every female in the audience green with envy. When she starts perambulating through the sets that look as if furnished by Diamond Jim while she strums out an apparently endless series of bogus emotional problems, every feminine heart will flutter - and every male vocal chord will start screaming for the end title.Trimmed of half its running time this Marriage Affair is passably entertaining. I once saw an expertly cut 65-minute version on TV. But as for 117 minutes of Mrs Lana T., leave her to the girls.

There's so much wrong with this movie, yet it managed to hold my attention till the end (albeit barely). To begin with, the plot here is thin. In fact, this is not a movie about plot. This movie is, quite simply, the story of a marriage, with all its highs and its lows, and in this film the lows of the marriage are the result of wife Lana Turner, who doesn't quite take marriage seriously. Perhaps it's because her mother didn't take marriage seriously, and that's what she learned marriage was like.Another problem with this film is that it is just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Is spouses talking too much grounds for divorce? It should be!The most interesting scene in the film is the uncomfortable dinner. I'll not give it away, but it's a gem, though it could have been done even better.The acting here is mixed. Lana Turner is ravishing, living up to my expectation that in that era she was one of the two most beautiful women in the world (along with Sophia Loren). And, although in later on-camera interviews I found she was hardly a 100 watt bulb, she was a darned good actress...and is here. I recently discovered John Hodiak. He's a good actor, but I think (as was later proved) that he was better as a supporting actor than in carrying and entire film. Too bad his life was cut so short.In terms of supporting roles here, James Craig is good as the also-ran lover...watch...I should say listen to his performance...was his voice an intentional imitation of Clark Gable's? I can't quite decide about the performance of Frances Gifford. More interesting was her own life -- check it out on Wikipedia.I always thought Hugh Marlowe was a likable supporting actor, but clearly not destined for the big time (and he ended up in t.v. soaps). It's interesting to see Natalie Schafer ("the millionaire, and his wife"), here just as dumb acting as she was on Gilligan's Island...was it really acting? Herbert Rudley was also destined for television, and his performance here shows why. Keenan Wynn's role is not worth mentioning (and that particular skit is the dumbest 5 minutes of the movie). Not sweet or touching. Just dumb.Robert Z. Leonard was the director here, and it's hard to believe that the man who directed a masterpiece like "The Great Ziegfeld" could hobble together a film this poor. Ah well, maybe the stretch from silent films to 1944 was just too long. If you want a reason to watch this film, Lana Tuner's beauty will do it. But don't expect a great deal beyond that.

this is truly a collectors item. turner is at her most beautiful, all baby doll pout and velvet sincerity. production values are high. its a cult film that merits rediscovery. a big hit in 1944, it grossed 2 million at the box office, in the days when a hit was really a hit. audiences loved lana in her dimpled heyday and this film screens like a valentine to her sensuality. don't miss it. they don't make stars like lana anymore. gore vidal is on record as saying that he saw this film while young and that it had an impact on him. he mentioned it years later in myra breckinridge. tennesse williams worked on an early draft of the screenplay, and privately referred to it as a celluloid brassiere for miss turner!

The product of a broken home who has been raised by her cynical, much-married mother, Lana Turner enters into the kind of hasty wartime marriage everyone in 1944 was being warned against. And the man she chooses is stable, romantic and old-fashioned. Uh-oh. This picture shows how 'women's films' and 'soap operas' could sometimes tackle modern life's most important moral and ethical situations. Turner's character wants to commit herself to her marriage but realizes she hasn't the experience or the emotional tools to be a good wife, nor does she have the example of her parents' happy marriage to follow. MARRIAGE IS A PRIVATE AFFAIR explores that dilemma and does it very entertainingly. Too bad Lana didn't take the film's theme to heart!As the newlyweds, Turner and John Hodiak have a wonderful sensuality and seeming spontaneity together during the scenes that take place on their honeymoon as they are first getting to know each other. And the movie presents a very interesting moral complication when it introduces the threesome that are Hodiak's closest friends from childhood. Consisting of a married couple and their male pal, Hodiak idealizes them but Turner recognizes the sexual tensions that will eventually threaten that marriage. For those who assume that '40s films never dealt with sexual issues, this picture might be a refreshing surprise, especially since it came from MGM, Hollywood's most conservative studio.And for those who generally think of Lana Turner's late films when you think of her at all, her work in this and other early '40s pictures might surprise you too. Looking ravishingly pretty with a lush but trim body, in these years Turner actually seems to look at and listen to her fellow actors, and speaks her lines with expression and emotion, a real contrast to her sluggish, lazy late work.