Taglines: Wanted for desertion! Wanted for questioning!… Wanting only each other!
Act of Love movie storyline. Robert Teller (Kirk Douglas) arrives by bus at Villefranche, a small town in the French Riviera. Although briefly sidetracked by a fellow American tourist who thinks they have met, Bob goes directly to the Hotel Belle Rive and requests a specific room. A little later, a woman joins him at an outdoor café table so she can avoid being propositioned by U.S. Navy sailors on shore leave.
During their conversation, Bob recalls that he first visited France in World War II: During the U.S. Army liberation of Paris, Bob kisses Nina (Barbara Laage), one of many French women rewarding American soldiers with affection. Nina insists that he remember her name and gives him her address. After some time on the front, Bob returns to Paris and is put to work as a clerk in an Army office. Bob becomes reacquainted with vivacious Nina, who trades his German camera on the black market so he can pay to rent a private room in town.
When Nina decides to move to Cannes with an American captain with “good teeth,” she tells Bob he can rent her apartment over a café as long as he will share it with her friend, Lise Marie Elisabeth Greifonnet (Dany Robin), a beautiful and melancholy woman who has lost everything in the war. Nina hopes that the brash but war-weary American will fall in love with Lise. Lise, however, is resolutely unaffected by Bob’s charm, and resents that they must pretend to be married so that the owners, Adele La Caux, her husband Fernand and their war-embittered son Claude, will allow them to remain.
Like Claude, Lise is offended by the arrogant Americans who have overtaken their city, yet Claude sneers at Lise as another French woman who has sold herself to the Americans. Lise is unable to find employment with the U.S. Army and, when she follows up on a tip from two well-meaning women, suffers a humiliating interview with a Latin American official who dismisses her upon learning she will not date him. Destitute, Lise is about to pawn a necklace when she is caught in a police round-up of black marketeers, but she is quickly released. Bob is delighted when Lise returns to the flat, despite her distrust and sullen demeanor.
Act of Love (French title: Un acte d’amour) is a 1953 American romantic drama film directed by Anatole Litvak, starring Kirk Douglas, Dany Robin, Gabrielle Dorziat, Barbara Laage, Fernand Ledoux, Robert Strauss, Marthe Mercadier, George Mathews, Richard Benedict, Leslie Dwyer and Brigitte Bardot. It is based on the novel The Girl on the Via Flaminia by Alfred Hayes. A Parisian falls in love with an American soldier near the end of World War II.
Act of Love (1953)
Directed by: Anatole Litvak
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Dany Robin, Gabrielle Dorziat, Barbara Laage, Fernand Ledoux, Robert Strauss, Marthe Mercadier, George Mathews, Richard Benedict, Leslie Dwyer, Brigitte Bardot
Screenplay by: Joseph Kessel, Irwin Shaw
Production Design by: Noël Howard, Auguste Capelier
Cinematography by: Armand Thirard
Film Editing by: Léonide Azar, William Hornbeck
Costume Design by: Mayo, Gladys de Segonzac …
Art Direction by: Alexandre Trauner
Music by: Michel Emer, Joe Hajos, Michel B. Rosenstein
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: December 17, 1953 (United States), May 7, 1954 (France)
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