Liebesrausch auf Capri

An unhappily married industrialist and a pianist engage in a passionate romance after they are presumed dead in a plane crash. It gets off to a slow start, with the early scenes feeling more like a travelogue than a drama, as the lovers take a tour of Italy. However, things start to get interesting about half way through as the plot thickens. Fontaine and Cotten are charming as the lovers who find a second chance for happiness. A young and pretty Tandy plays Cotten's long-suffering wife. Given all that has transpired, the ending seems contrived and unsatisfying, perhaps restricted by the censorship in effect at the time. Rachmaninov's second piano concerto is effectively used as Fontaine's signature piece.

Eerily similar in storyline and backdrop to William Wyler's 1936 masterpiece, Dodsworth. It's not so much the script or the direction that doom this film, it's the premise and its execution. Don't get me wrong; I like the film. However, it could have been much better. As other reviewers stated, the actors, their chemistry were excellent. It's the character development that's faulty.

Whereas in Dodsworth the triangle is played out logically, along the lines of solid character development so that the hero ends up in Naples with the other woman; in September Affair (1950), love takes a back seat to 1950's morality, or "family values" which state that if you sin, you must pay.

To represent this on the screen, the screenwriter uses the deus ex machina device of having the wife morph from shrew to martyr, not by showing us, as a film should do, but by telling us, in a letter no less, that she won't agree to a divorce. But when we actually see her, she doesn't seem all that bad a person. She's not like the woman in the letter and she's not the woman Cotten makes her out to be. With Ruth Chatterton (star of Dodsworth), the character development progressed faultlessly. In September Affair, the wife's character arc is unbelievable. Which is she? A shrew or a noble, long-suffering wife? If the latter, the film couldn't end with Joseph Cotten walking away from that sort of woman. He would have lost favor with the audience.

That means forcing credibility to depend on us buying the unbelievable character arc of the wife who somehow morphs from meanie to martyr.

He goes back to his wife and I'll bet the first thing she does is revert to her original persona (you can't escape that easily) — her Ruth Chatterton ways, emasculating Cotten out of spite, and he'll end up with no way back to the woman he loves, who loves him because she's also foolishly played the martyr to the point of NO return.

The film is a cop out. No film should hinge on the changes in a minor character; it should be the leads whose actions set the course. In fact, the ending even goes against common sense:

1) the wife's new persona has accepted the split, so has the son. That he's alive is enough for her.

2) As for Joan, he loves her and Joan loves him. They've taken it to another level — like John Huston and Mary Astor in Dodsworth, a level the wife can't understand. They are clearly superior in their maturity, their lifestyles, their tastes.

Why not let them fade into the Florence sunset together, she with her piano, him with his engineering projects?

This is one of my very favourite films. It is about two people who are approaching early middle age having a chance at real unconditional love - and taking that chance. The casting is so wonderful and the setting is just beautiful. Although, it is an American film it has the ambiance of the post war realism of a an Italian film (Never Take No For An Answer also has this realism). The film is romantic and yet it is unsentimental. Both Joseph Cotton and Joan Fontaine are so very convincing as the lovers. On visits to Italy my wife and I have visited most of the films location. When there I just cant stop myself from singing September Song.

Two years before Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck tripped the light fantastic in Roman Holiday, Paramount was already exploring the possibilities of shooting in Italy with September Affair. One only wishes that Paramount had splurged for color the way 20th Century Fox did in Three Coins In A Fountain.

Using the Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson as a theme, a pair of mature individuals have a mid life fling in Italy. What Joseph Cotten and Joan Fontaine are handed is a one in a million chance to escape their lives and responsibilities when they miss an airplane flight going to the United States and their families and friends think they've died.

Cotten is an engineer who is going through his usual midlife crisis as his marriage to Jessica Tandy has grown stale. Fontaine is unmarried and has not seen America since 1938. She's devoted herself to preparing for a career as a concert pianist. I wish the film had devoted some explanation as to why she was stuck in an enemy country during World War II and what she did to survive. They meet on the plane, but don't reboard when it comes down in Naples for repairs that obviously were not successful.

In order to support them. Cotten pre-dates a check to Francoise Rosay who is Fontaine's mentor for a large palazzo in Florence. Pre-dates to before the crash and when the estate is being tallied up, Tandy notices it, but let's it slide through.

It's an idyllic setting for lovers, but pretty soon conscience calls and it practically shouts when Tandy and their son Robert Arthur visit Italy.

September Affair is a wonderful picture about mature people for mature people. Cotten and Fontaine have a wonderful chemistry and Jessica Tandy's performance is pure poignancy. It holds up very well after 60 years.

Just wish it was in color.

All the comments about this film are favorable except for Mr. Neil Doyle's. I wonder what grumpy pill he took when he watched this or maybe he just isn't a romantic guy. Not one person said his review was "helpful."

This film is well-acted, scripted, and an interesting premise. The music is fabulous and the setting great. Like another reviewer said, Joan Fontaine's facial expressions say as much or more than the words she was given to speak. She is one excellent actress and Joseph Cotten is a veteran actor who once again turns in a fabulous performance.

I unconditionally recommend this movie to all classic movie lovers to fans of Joan Fontaine and/or Joseph Cotten and to all romantics everywhere.