It is only when art is made private - when Terry accompanies the grandmother when Michel sees his painting in Terry's bedroom - that is truths are revealed. Art helps them express their personal essences apart from their public reputations, but it also must go through the public mart before it can express private truths - Terry becomes a nightclub singer, then an orphanage instructor Michel paints on billboards, than for clients. it is at this point they begin the inexorable, but slow and obstacle-laden, road from public to private, from an agog dancing hall to a solitary apartment. It is also the place we first learn that the protagonists are artists.
The first appeal of the grandmother's house is its quiet, its distance from the world. His developing relationship with Terry is similarly framed, the audience on the boat eagerly watching it like a soap opera. The film opens with various global radio gossips announcing Michel's engagement: his personal life is conducted in public, complete with groupies, autographs, paparazzi. This is part of a wider dialectic about public roles and private desire. The romance narrative is framed in terms of art: Michel is a failed/abandoned painter and poet Terry is a singer - the transformation scene occurs over the grandmother's piano player (her artform on his territory). It is, ironically, his own painting that reveals the truth to him (his artform in her territory).
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This is what makes the final scene so truly moving - two lovers who really need to be together are reunited, yes, but also, Michel finally comes to full moral awareness, full maturity. Because he is French, and a playboy, he is cynical about women and their motives, can't take anything on trust. Terry's failure to meet the appointment is a personal affront: he never once asks why she mightn't have made it. Charles Boyer, well, he's French, isn't he? So whereas Terry is completely transformed by the visit, Michel has more difficulty in letting go of his ego. Maybe this is because Irene Dunne's persona, in films like 'Cimarron' or 'Show Boat', was based on moral transformation, on the difficult negotiation of the road to adulthood through life. However, he needs more life lessons than Terry. This transformation is believable because the raw material was pretty good to begin with: Michel might seem almost intolerably playboy material, the archetypal French lover that only exists in non-French imaginations, all corny lines and cynical intention, but the trip to the grandmother's suggests his true value. The first and third part work so well because the characters are so sympathetic, we watch them believably transform from amiably superfical loafers to genuinely loving adults. This plot is divided into three parts: the meeting and developing relationship of the central couple the trip to Michel's grandmother and the heartrending sequence of planned happiness, fate, despair, betrayal, hope.
It is moving because of its beautifully simple plot. This is one of the most moving films from Hollywood's Golden Age. Reviewed by the red duchess 9 / 10 Heartbreakingly moving and multi-layered.
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