While serving in Italy during the war, Allen Quinton (Joseph Cotten) finds himself a regular Cyrano de Bergerac as he writes letters for his buddy, Roger Moreland. Writing to Roger's girl, Victoria, Allen finds himself able to say things he has never been able to say before...not even to his fiance, Helen.
Allen doesn't quite understand it, because he finds himself caring about and falling in love with this woman he has never met; furthermore, each time Victoria writes in return, it is obvious that she is in love with the man in the letters...a man who really doesn't exist, because the "Roger" the letters are supposedly from is completely different from the Roger who is. Allen, fully aware that Victoria is in love with his words, feels badly about the deception and pledges to write not one letter more. Not long afterwards, Roger is transferred back to England, and he and Victoria are married.
Several months later, Allen is injured and sent back to England to recover. Obsessed with the woman he had written love letters to, Allen does some investigating and discovers that Roger had been murdered about a year prior and that his wife had been found guilty of the crime. Wanting to find out as much as he can about Victoria, Allen makes the acquaintance of Singleton (Jennifer Jones), a young woman with no memory of her past. It doesn't take long for Allen to learn that the lovely amnesiac and his beloved Victoria are the same person.
Will Victoria regain her memory? Will she discover that the writer of the letters was Allen? Will she realize that it was Allen---not Roger---with whom she fell in love? These are the questions that play out in the balance of this touching film.
Being totally honest, I have to say that this could have been a 4-star film. The story is interesting...and also very sweet and tender. Plus, I always enjoy Joseph Cotten. Jennifer Jones, however, is the problem for me. Plain and simple, I don't like her at all. I'm not sure exactly what it is, probably the whole David Selznick/Robert Walker thing, but I just can't stand her. For me, she ruins every movie I've ever seen her in (including Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, which stars my #1 man, William Holden). Because of Miss Jones, this film became a 2-star film; therefore, averaging 4 and 2 stars, I came up with 3. I kept thinking I wished Gene Tierney had been cast in the part (don't know if it was the right studio for that)...or Ginger Rogers, with whom Joseph Cotten had paired so beautifully the year before in I'll Be Seeing You. However, with David Selznick the producer of the film, that was simply not going to happen. If you are a Jennifer Jones fan, though, I think you will love this movie. It is a film for which she received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination.
This film may be difficult to track down, as I don't believe it's out on DVD, nor have I seen it on YouTube. I caught it on TCM recently, so perhaps they will air it again in the near future.
Happy viewing!!
