Love Affair (1932)

***SPOILERS*** A young and boyish looking 32 year old Humphrey Bogart doubles as both flight instructor and inventor Jim Leonard a man with an idea-the perfect motor- who's time has yet to come. It's Jim who loses his interest in inventing the ultimate automobile motor when he falls heads over heels in love with "Gold Digger" with a heart of gold Carol Owens,Dorothy Mackaill, whom he took for a ride flying loops & circles and figure 8's at the beginning of the film. So smitten was Jim by the rich and classy Carol that he lost his interest in both flying as well as inventing and spent all his time trying to get her to tie the knot and settle down with him. We soon find out that Carol is not the poor little rich girl that she wants Jim to believe that she is . Carol-who doesn't known it- is in fact poor but not rich at all without even as much as a pot to pi** in with her family financial adviser as well as no so secret secret lover- who's always trying to get into her pants- Bruce Hardy "Harr Harr" Hardy,Hale Hamilton, having lost her family's money in the devastating 1929 stock market crash.There's also Jim's kid sister Linda Lee-obviously a made up name- played by Astrid Allwyn who involved with con artist boyfriend Georgie Keller, Bradley Page, who's using her to get very friendly with Hardy. That's to get him to finance a play with the money-$10,000.00-that he gave Jim at Carol's insistence to start up his motor producing company in far off-from NYC-Detroit. That plan on Jim's part ends as soon as it starts with him paying all his attention on Carol then on his job that like the stock market soon goes bust.***SPOILERS*** All this confusion comes to and end when Jim finds out that both Carol whom he was made to think was rolling in dough is dead broke and that his sweet and innocent as the morning snow little sister Astrid was as big if not a bigger gold digger then even Carol is. And is involved with the sleazy Georgie who's taking her , by promising her the world, for every dime that she has. It's then that Jim put an end to all this by cold cocking Georgie-with a solid straight right- and knocking some sense into his kid sister's head. As for himself he goes back to flying planes this time around with Carol doing the driving or flying. That almost has him drop from the plane that she's flying without a parachute and end up breaking his neck. That's until Jim took control of the aircraft and landed it safely.

a film with Bogart could not be bad. that is the start point to discover Love Affair , a nice movie who has only the sin to present too much pieces in a short time ignoring, in many scenes, the links between them. without be memorable, it is a decent film. interesting not exactly for the story itself - many movies from the same period are result of same clichés/solutions - but for the old flavor and for the actors. Jim Leonard is a special role by Humphrey Bogart, clear, innocent, precise, vulnerable and that is a great virtue of film. Dorothy Mackaill has a beautiful role as the poor rich/poor girl who represents, in fact, the portrait of a world. a story who has inspired solutions for the complicated plot . and that represents the real important thing in its case.

... in this rather muddled tale involving a love quadrangle. The four corners of this quadrangle (in order) are engineer Jim Leonard (Humphrey Bogart) who is the protective brother of chorus girl Linda, who is the secret mistress of Bruce Hardy, who is the financial adviser and suitor of poor little rich girl Carol Owen (Dorothy McKaill) who falls for Jim Leonard. As Jim Leonard says to Carol, "Can you read blueprints?". If you can, you might have a chance of following this busy little precode film. Add in one more important character - a sleazy guy who wants to star Linda in a revue financed by Hardy's money. What really hurts this movie is that the subplots don't really gel that well into one well integrated plot of a movie. Also there are some lines that you wait to hear that you never do. For example, when Carol brings Jim over to her mansion for a party the serious upright young man is obviously disgusted by Carol pretending to auction off her servant Kibbee like he was a piece of furniture to her drunken guests to offset her losses in the stock market. Jim walks out without saying goodbye. However, the next time the two meet Jim soft soaps the entire affair. I really wanted him to tell her off. What saves the film are the fine performances and the fact that the subplots are interesting enough even given the lack of motivation for the players' actions. It's truly interesting to see Bogart playing a rather shy very scrupulous engineer - what a great smile he has! Dorothy McKaill is quite good as bored rich girl Carol who is trying desperately to fill up her day with fun things to do when her real problem is that she's lonely in spite of her busy social life. She really had a great voice and did good work here. It's a puzzle to me why she didn't really do that well in talkies. I'd recommend it to fans of McKaill and/or Bogart and to anyone interested in films of the early 30's.Best precode moment - Jim has spent the night with Carol and is standing at the base of the stairs wearing the clothes he had on when he got there last night - a tuxedo. He's surprised by Carol's butler Kibbee. Jim then tries to stutter through an explanation of why he is there at 8AM in formal attire. Kibbee plays the part of the father figure that pretends to be convinced of his grown daughter's chastity when he knows otherwise and this is one of the few times you'll ever see Bogart behaving like a tongue tied teenager on film.

On Humphrey Bogart's first trip to Hollywood, he got his first leading man role in this B picture Love Affair. The first thing you ought to realize is that this film has absolutely nothing to do with the classic Love Affair later in the decade with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne or the two remakes that followed. It's not half as good any of those films.In fact Bogey is second billed to Dorothy Mackaill as a spoiled heiress who finds out she's been living her extravagant lifestyle courtesy of her late father's best friend and financial adviser Hale Hamilton. It comes as quite a shock to Mackaill. She considers a show business career as a way for an income.Bogart is a test pilot who is also an aeronautical engineer and he's designing an ultimate airplane motor and is looking for investors. Mackaill is willing to do it, besides she likes what she sees in Bogey.Considering the cynical roles that Bogart later made a specialty, it's a bit disconcerting to see him as this highly moral and self righteous character in Love Affair. The part doesn't wear well on him.Love Affair is your average B program second feature, nothing terribly special about it.