The Other Love

Women's films, as they were called in the '40s, seldom offered a star a more glamorous way of leaving this world than THE OTHER LOVE, with BARBARA STANWYCK checking herself into a Swiss sanitarium to be treated for tuberculosis and promptly falling in love with her young doctor, David NIVEN against a background of Alpine beauty.

Stanwyck has got to be the healthiest patient in Hollywood history and she gets even more glamorous as she moves toward impending doom. So does the music by Miklos Rozsa. And as if one leading man isn't enough, the script has her leaving the safety (and boredom) of the clinic to go chasing after a tough motorcyclist (RICHARD CONTE) for one last fling.

It's syrupy romance straight from the pages of a Cosmopolitan magazine story--but no, in this case, straight from the pages of a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, who gave the world ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, but also turkeys like ARCH OF TRIUMPH.

Stanwyck's fans will be too busy admiring her wardrobe to view the plot with any skepticism at all, but others might find it just a little too pat and contrived, even for this genre of pulp romance.

The Other Love (1947)

A torrid but never horrid romantic movie, what was called then a "woman's picture" and is now in the category of "chick flic." Which is what makes it worth watching right there--it's dripping with love and longing and ideals gone astray. It's set in a sanitarium the Swiss Alps and is grand as well as comforting. And it stars Barbara Stanwyck as a world famous pianist, and she pulls every scene up a notch. The men are less compelling: David Niven is necessarily dry and reserved (and no great contribution to the romance), and Richard Conte is supposed to be the Italian love idol but in fact he's dry and reserved, too, unnecessarily.

The plot is based on a short story by the uneven but legendary German writer Erich Maria Remarque (who is neither a woman nor French), whose work is the basis of several movies, notably the pacifist WWI novel, "All Quiet on the Western Front." I say all this because the one clear flaw in this movie is the plot, the Remarque part of it. In a way, the idea of going to a t.b. clinic to get better or die (the two options equally likely back then) and having an arrogant famous woman face her mortality, sounds like a no-brainer. And her back and forth, her rebellion, her falling in love (tepidly) or falling in lust (still rather tepidly) is great stuff not quite exploited. And there is no real turn of events. It plays itself out, beautifully but inexorably.

That is, this is a really warm, gorgeous movie, with photography by Victor Milner, who had just finished two cinematic masterpieces ("It's a Wonderful Life" and Stanwyck's previous film, "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers"). And the music is great (of course), led by Miklos Rozsa, an old world high romantic composer. You want to be there, and you relate to Stanwyck's dilemma. It's a great movie in its bones, but never quite getting off the ground. Yet it is about stuff that matters: acceptance and deception in the face of death, from several sides. And it is, in fact, about true love of some highly idealized, self-sacrificing kind.

Famed concert pianist Karen Duncan (Barbara Stanwyck) is recuperating in a Swiss sanatorium from a respiratory illness under the supervision of loving Dr. Tony Stanton (David Niven). She befriends fellow patient Celestine Miller (Joan Lorring). Playboy Paul Clermont (Richard Conte) crashes his race car barely avoiding Karen on the road. Her illness is more serious than she suspects. She is shocked by Celestine's unexpected death. Stanton tells her that she must rest but she ignores his advise and runs off to live her life with Clermont. It's a bit slow. With Stanwyck, it holds out a possibility of something more. I was hoping for a good twist or something different. In the end, it doesn't really give more than a straight downward slide into a romantic melodrama.

David Niven and Barbara Stanwyck were both actors of quality, but they share absolutely no chemistry together in this sudsy melodrama about a concert pianist with TB. The rugged Richard Conte, a racing driver with a taste for the high life, is a much better fit for Stanwyck's screen presence, but isn't really given enough time to make his mark. Naturally, Stanwyck looks gorgeous throughout, despite her life-threatening illness...

When this was first released in the end David Niven plays the piano and says something like 3 mistakes and Barbara doesn't answer he goes over the her holds her hand and finds she has died. This was cut out after it was released the second time a few years later.