Noite de Pecado

Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne couldn't catch a break in 1939. First LOVE AFFAIR turns out badly for the body of the movie, then here we have Miss Dunne, a waitress, in love with Boyer, a concert pianist-prince with Barbara O'Neil as his mad wife. He loves her too, but Miss O'Neil has bouts of sanity, during which she comes to Miss Dunne's apartment.

This is one of the prestige dramas that John Stahl directed every year or so for Universal during the 1930s. As in the other movie, the chemistry between the leads is marvelous. This movie is the lesser, which I attribute to the utter lack of humor of Stahl, as opposed to Leo McCarey. Of course, the fact that a reported 21 writers worked on this picture may have given the film maker so much material that any humor had to be cut. Once you get past the meet cute, in which Boyer tries to order apple pie with cheese, hold the pie, it's all a romantic heartbreaker with their unfulfilled love. And that it is.

I stayed with this hoping for something and it delivered squat. I actually got hooked in the beginning which would have made a very good movie...when Dunne is essential in getting coworkers "the girls" to support a strike against her boss, never seen, of a chain of restaurants. The first part of the film sets up a smart, working women facing the exploitation of the bosses....and she is pursued by the union rep, a handsome man. Instead she becomes tied up in a subsequent dreary plot with Boyer. The first part of the film is charming and interesting and she's an arresting character. Even he is mildly interesting. The slice of 1939 life they partake of is very well played: going to the piers where people are cooling off pre AC, helping a kid who's skinned his knee, lost his pants held up by rope. He's pushing his friend in a go cart. After setting up an interesting film they are caught in a storm. Held up in a church. Which holds up the film. Even that is passably interesting. Finally, we meet Boyer's mad wife who isn't so addled when away from her mother and her minder. She wants her husband. And Dunne as a good woman in a 1939 movie, isn't going to fight her for him. This is all trite. Had it been a light, romantic comedy built around striking women it would have been a good film. A film about a strong, smart woman leading a strike. As it is...I guess this is what is called condescendingly "a woman's film" like today's "chick flicks" and it's a bore.

This is not one of Stahl's best works.The movie lacks a center of gravity. Melodrama interferes with social topics(unions,strikes,meetings)and even a deluge,complete with a night in a temple.Besides,the Madeleine character appears too late and is hardly credible.She suffers from mental illness since she lost her child.And the unfortunate heroine tells her so:"you win because you're helpless". Charles Boyer plays the usual Latin lover,and Irene Dunne,the impossible love ,as she did in Fannie Hurst's famous tear-jerker. The ending is ambiguous:in his 1957 remake,the by now usual Sirk remake has ,it seems -I haven't seen it yet- ,a more definitive conclusion. All in all,watchable,because of the cast ,but ,not a great Stahl.

NB:I saw Sirk's remake yesterday (7/12/09).Stick with Stahl.

After Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne had been paired together in the fabulous Love Affair (1939), someone decided to pair them together again (that's the other film of theirs- Together Again (1944)), and this was the result.

It starts as a drama about women going on strike for unfair wages and there's a lot of time devoted to a working people's union, then Dunne meets Boyer and the next part of the film is devoted to their acquaintance, then there is a hurricane and they're forced to take refuge in a church, then there's drama involving Boyer, his unstable wife (gee, it's Barbara O'Neill! What a shocker! 😏) and his love with Dunne, but this being a Hollywood movie, the good couple wins- moralistically, of course. This was made under the production code, after all.

It's not that the film needed a couple of cuts- in fact, with all the plot changes, it should have been half an hour longer, or even two Dunne-Boyer films. It's that it jumps around too much and it's boring.

Dunne's working woman fair wages campaign is pretty much forgotten about after she falls in love with Boyer. Not enough time is given to Barbara O'Neill's character, other than to develop her as a crazy psycho b*tch, and remind us that O'Neill was so much more effective as Boyer's crazy psycho b*tch wife in All This, And Heaven Too (1940).

Dunne is no more or less annoying than usual- she sings a song while Boyer plays the piano, so her fans will like that. Me, I'm not overly fond of her singing, and so I just tuned out until she was done.

She and Boyer have chemistry that was just as good as what they had in Love Affair, and this film has a moralistic ending too, but what the ending of Love Affair is sweet and will bring a tear to your eye, the ending of this one is like "Well, now it's over and you can do something else now." The acting is pretty good, O'Neill is very over-the-top, but if you've seen AT,AHT, you know what to expect from her in a role like this.

Overall, not as good as Love Affair, but not quite as bad as Together Again. It won't kill you if yoy watch it, but it's disappointing.

Love Affair proved so popular a film that Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne were reteamed in When Tomorrow Comes at Universal Pictures.

Dunne who is usually chic and stylish plays a cafe waitress who gets to wait on Charles Boyer. No one there including Dunne realizes he's a world famous concert pianist.

Dunne goes on strike as the waitresses get organized. Boyer courts her when she's not on the picket line. They have a nice romantic interlude on Long Island when a hurricane hits.

Boyer is keeping secrets from her like the fact he's already married to Barbara O'Neil who has some mental issues.

There's a choice to be made by both of them that's obvious. What they do is for you to watch the film for.

Both keep up the same romantic standard set in Love Affair. When Tomorrow Comes won an Oscar for Sound Recording. Fans of the stars will approve