APPOINTMENT FOR LOVE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 146, 10 April 1942, Page 14

APPOINTMENT FOR LOVE

(Universal)

HEN I queued up for a five o’clock session of Appointment for Love I thought for one wild moment that I must have come to a picture

passed by the censor "For Women Only." For, so far as I could see, I was the only representative of my sex in that throng of females pressing toward the box-office. Thus does M. Charles Boyer, the star of the picture, magnetically attract one sex and repel the other! Subsequently I did discover a few other men in the theatre, but they remained a tiny minority, and most of them seemed to wear a slightly selfconscious air. Personally I didn’t feel in the least self-conscious. I like Mr. Boyer, I have always liked him, and I don’t care who knows it; though I must admit that there have been occasions when I have liked him a good deal better than in Appointment for Love. Not being susceptible to his "boudoir eyes" and his sex-appeal, I am interested in him solely as an actor, and remembering his brilliant dramatic work in Marie Walewska, Algiers, Mayerling, and, yes, in Hold Back the Dawn, I think it is rather a pity that Hollywood should have seen fit to use his talents in a mildly crazy comedy. Too many other worthwhile stars have gone that way into artistic oblivion for one not to feel a twinge of uneasiness. Perhaps, however, I am worrying myself unduly on Boyer’s behalf. There is actually little in Appointment for Love to justify it. Granted that this is a rather light-weight vehicle for the star’s solid talents, it mevertheless moves smoothly and at a good pace, apart from one comparatively slow period about half-way through. The story gets off to a snappy start when Dr. Jane Alexander (Margaret Sullavan) goes to sleep at a performance of André Cassil’s successful new play. Under the impression that the beautiful lady has fainted, Playwright Cassil (Boyer) .stops the performance, wakes her up. When she tells him that it was boredom that did it, he promptly

falls in love with her, whereupon this very practical woman doctor expounds her conviction that love is just a matter of chemical attraction, jealousy merely the result of an over-supply of adrenalin in the blood-stream, and so on. Willing to take his chance with the chemicals, the playwright at length persuades her to marry him, only to find that his medico-wife has other even more disturbing theories about separate apartments, professional people leading their own lives, and a doctor’s place being in the hospital all day and most of the night. With these and other handicaps which crop up as the story progresses, neither the chemicals nor plain Mother Nature get much of a look-in. But of course they do eventually, thanks largely to a liftman who, in spite of his lugubrious manner, is one of the brightest spots of a show that is seldom dull. Such has been my preoccupation with Boyer that I have ungallantly omitted to make much reference to his partner, Margaret Sullavan. Yet she deserves a equal attention and equal praise. Indeed she is, by herself, a sufficiently good reason to see the picture. If, as is apparently the case, the majority of my fellow-men are unable to appreciate Boyer (are they jealous?), they are surely cutting off their noses to spite their faces when they include the charming and accomplished Miss Sullavan in their neglect.