In The Woman I Love, Miriam Hopkins is torn between the charismatic soldier she meets by chance in a theater, and the steadfast love of her husband. Miriam meets Louis Hayward during an air raid, and they each get swept away by the romance and danger of the war. But, instead of telling him that she's married, or giving her real name when he asks, she lies and lets him believe she's a single woman.
Louis meets Paul Muni, a fellow flier, and they quickly become friends. No one else in the airforce really likes Paul, so he especially appreciates Louis's friendship. Have you guessed what will happen yet? If you haven't, I won't spoil it for you, even though the movie does tell you fairly early on.
If you like these types of tearjerker romances set among war-torn Europe, you'll like this one. It has all the elements in place, but I would have liked it better if the cast was reversed. I think Paul Muni is incredibly handsome, and I'll never understand why he wasn't cast as a romantic lead. The one movie I ever saw him in that could have been considered a romance turned into a crime drama halfway through. Paul is given plenty of scenes to make the audience feel sorry for him, which is probably the point of the story, and as much as I don't really like him, Louis does everything that's asked of him in the acting department. It's not his fault he's not as handsome as Paul Muni. Very few men are.
Miriam Hopkins isn't given much to do, besides act stupid and have bad judgement, but that's not too much of a detriment to the overall film. It's a romantic drama, so you can't expect everyone to be smart! For me, though, the best part of the movie was Adrian Morris. Not only did he look like John Candy, but he moved and sounded like him, too! It's as if John Candy used a time machine and made a movie in 1937, so if you're a fan of his, check out the first ten or fifteen minutes of this movie.
