mark.waltz Rivaling fellow dark haired British leading ladies like Vivian Leigh and Merle Oberon, Pakistani born Margaret Lockwood is a treasure. American classic film fans mainly knew her as the heroine in Hitchcock's classic mystery, "The Lady Vanishes", she swept into my top list of favorites with a series of delicious scheming roles in Gainsborough melodramas such as "The Wicked Lady". Alternating between man killers and heart breakers, she is finally coming into her own thanks to the release of a good majority of her films in formats of DVD that we can watch here. Once you see her, you'll never forget her.In this sleeper, she's a nice girl, a concert pianist who finds that she has a terminal illness. Determined to enjoy life, she fights this dark victory to take a trip that she fears may be one way passage. Along the way, she wins the hearts of many, particularly the handsome Stewart Granger (along with James Mason her mist regular leading man).Yes, this is a trite, often repeated plot, similar to an American melodrama, "The Other Love", which starred Barbara Stanwyck. Handsome Granger seduces the audience with his trim physique clad only in tight swimming trunks. Excellent supporting cast and a romantic and often humor filled atmosphere makes this a sweet formula women's picture that adds a World War II setting to increase the timeliness of when this was made.This is just more than romance and tragedy; there's also a bit of social drama too as Granger deals with possible blindness. Patricia Roc and Hugo Walling are both great supporting cast members involved in the individual dramas of these beautiful young people who are facing individual tragedies with their individual forms of dignity. Lockwood proves herself to be more than just a beauty; Even at her coldness, she was absolutely seductive. Whether kitten or black widow spider, she is not somebody whom you can turn your eyes off of.

writers_reign Travelling by train to Cornwall to shoot location footage Stewart Granger shared a carriage with director Leslie Arliss who asked casually what Granger thought of the script. Unaware that Arliss had a co-writer credit Granger replied succinctly 'crap'. I have little time for Granger as an actor, finding him both smug and wooden but I can't fault his critical faculties, or at least not in this case. Someone involved in the writing had clearly been blown away by One-Way Passage and thought they could do just as well. Boy, did they get a wrong number and it wasn't Cornish Rhapsody. For the record One-Way Passage featured a doomed shipboard romance between two people returning by sea to America, she to die of an incurable disease, he to be executed. The perpetrators of Love Story give us a terminally ill Margaret Lockwood opting to spend her last few months in Cornwall where she meets soon-to-be-blind Stewart Granger neither, of course, revealing the truth to the other. Tom Walls and Patricia Roc are also along for the ride and acquit themselves as well as can be expected under the circumstances. It was probably designed as escapist fodder |(it was produced in 1944) but ironically it is the audience who seek freedom.

alphabettysoup this lovely and stylish film, shows the highly underrated talents of Ms. Margaret Lockwood. She is the Pianist, with a secret, who falls in love with a man, also hiding a secret. she makes the biggest sacrifice for him, "when you love somebody set them free." the cast is incredibly likeable, and good acting all round

Copelius The first time I saw "Love Story" it was in London fifty years ago, and till now, when I take this movie into consideration, I unceasingly hear - together with the accurate, majestic and melancholic theme of Hubert Bath "Cornish Rhapsodie" - the sea-mews flying and crying on the cliff! In my opinion, "Love Story" is a masterpiece of poetry: a simple film that was able to speak to the heart of a generation of people concerned in the most terrific war, and who understood the charm of hope and of life.