Love Affair is just one of a long list of films released in 1939, when the stars aligned to create one of Hollywood's best years.

The film reteamed the previously successful Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. Dunne was cast in the role of Terry, an art collector and amateur nightclub singer, while Boyer, naturally, took the role of Michael, an international playboy. Michael and Terry meet on an ocean liner to America, and of course they fall in love, but find complication in that they are both kept lovers. Hours before the ship docks, they pledge to meet at the top of the empire state building in six months when they’ll both be respectable, single working people.

Without ever seeing Love Affair, you’re most likely already well acquainted with the plot. Along with a slew of other American films from the 30s, it was remade for melodrama in the 50s, this time starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr and re-titled An Affair to Remember. It was an instant box office smash and was revived four decades later in Sleepless in Seattle.

However, An Affair to Remember is almost purely a scene for scene replica of the original. And while Boyer alone is no Cary Grant, together the French Boyer and American Dunne display a sexual tension never even sensed in the more refined and repressed Kerr and Grant.

Dunne adds warmth and shine to Terry, not only with her magically magnetic ability to bring the playful side out of her costars and dialogue, but for her incredible pipes. Unlike Kerr, who, as far as I know, had to be dubbed in all of her films, Dunne’s voice is always her own and it is pitch perfect.

Yet, what’s so unique to Love Affair is its light tone despite sometimes tragic consequences. Like the pink champagne cocktails that the lovers drink, the film stays light and bubbly. Monochromatic film, soft lighting, gauzed lenses, and dry ice fog, lend dreaminess to a plot that would otherwise play as mere melodrama and Dunne and Boyer fool around in front of the camera like it's all just so damned amusing.