Five favorite in-transit romances

Posted 22 April 2008 in blog Five Favorites

I’m watching tons of movies, but strangely have little to say about any of them. Regardless of quality, regardless of depth, regardless of amenability to my vast array of kinks and quirks. I’m working on beefing up a few things deeper in the site, never fear, but I’ll also take the opportunity to inaugurate a new feature — since we’re speaking of kinks. And for the first installment, you get six!

As I wrote, reviewing Letty Lynton:

Oh, I do love a shipboard romance! Just think of it, it takes weeks to cross the Atlantic, and as Robert Montgomery soon proposes, all there’s to do is:

Breakfast, tennis, shuffleboard, soup, lunch, deck chairs, cocktails, dinner.

And Crawford notes:

That leaves only the night.

Nothing better suited to Hollywood romance than three weeks out of time, away from life, falling in love with a stranger, spending days idly and nights actively.

This goes, too, for other modes of transportation, particularly train travel. Some swoon-inducing favorites (and it should come as no surprise if Charles Boyer is king of this particular kink):

PENNY SERENADE
1941, George Stevens

Film:
R | S | S*

About to be parted by a job assignment sending him to Japan, Cary Grant & Irene Dunne marry on impulse right before she sees him off at the train station. They say their tender goodbyes, but before you know it the train is moving and she’s still on it… By the time Irene gets off (pun?) a cunningly placed sign tells us the train has made it 100 miles away from New York. That’s like a good two hours, right? A child is conceived on the train, just so there’s no mistake about what goes on.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS
1941, Gregory La Cava

Film:
R | S

For the second time in 1941 alone, Irene Dunne totally does it on a train. However respectably she may have conducted her personal life, she more than made up for it in cinematic wantonness. She’s a small-town girl heading to the big city, and has always romanticized train travel: easy prey for wolfish Preston Foster. All right, there’s no, like, babymaking to confirm my pervy theories, but enough goes on in his private compartment to leave her rather pathetically sighing ‘I love you’ by the time they reach the station. Good thing there’s Robert Montgomery to pick up the pieces of her broken heart — and come to think of it, they probably fall in love in a Central Park carriage ride which sort of counts.

FLESH & FANTASY
1943, Julien Duvivier

Film:
R | S

Charles Boyer dreams of a beautiful woman whose screams at his peril wake him in a cold sweat. The next day, aboard a cruise ship, he meets that very woman: Barbara Stanwyck, in the flesh (or soon to be?). He tries to persuade her it is fate; she’s cautious, knowing more than she lets on, and with a past that goes much further back than his nightmares. Still, one can only take so much shuffleboard, and they’re off on a fling in no time.

LETTY LYNTON
1932, Clarence Brown

Film:
R | S

Lonely hearts (and poor little rich kids) Joan Crawford & Robert Montgomery meet on a trans-Atlantic voyage and, as a first, slowly fall in love (it takes the whole trip for him to propose). Though she comes with a dark past they share a momentarily joyous New Year’s Eve, racing down the halls and banging on other passengers’ doors, reveling in their new love.

HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT
1937, Frank Borzage

Film:
R | S

If Kate & Leo aren’t quite your thing then Charles Boyer & Jean Arthur ought to be, on a liner headed to France to clear his name of a crime for which her completely evil husband has framed him. I’m sure they’re preoccupied, but they’ve got plenty of time to kill too, eh? The ship hits an iceberg and death is imminent: Jean refuses a “ladies and children first” lifeboat to stay and die in Charles’ arms. They sit and chat while the ship sinks, which must be Old Hollywood code for run to high ground and make sweet, sweet love.

LOVE AFFAIR
1939, Leo McCarey

Film:
R | S

The grandest of them all! Charles Boyer is a loafer playboy who lives by seducing one rich girl after another. He targets fur & pearl-clad Irene Dunne on a cruise bound for New York, little realizing she’s hardly independently wealthy but rather on a “buying trip” for her fiancé. Bonding over pink champagne, they speak frankly about life and love, share intimate moments while visiting his grandmother, and acknowledge their attraction by the end of the second night. A whole week then goes by unaccounted for before the ship docks — I say it’s not called *Love Affair* for nothing, and my imagination can cover that missing week very nicely.