One of those early examples of a middle-aged male lead and a barely-out-of-her-teens romantic interest.
The more things change, the more they stay the same!
Great movie nonetheless.
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Nothing to see here, move along.
It made me a bit uneasy. She was so very young and innocent and he a worldly, 40ish, mature man. He kept talking about moving to their flat in London but never exactly proposed marriage. Borderline creepy.
But then, it's probably because Ray Milland played the charming bad guy so well.
That was so common in the movies in those days - pairing a young woman with an older man. For example, in High Society, Grace Kelly has three men in love with her. And she is 15 years younger than the YOUNGEST of the 3. And I am also reminded of something Fred Astaire said. He said he stopped making movies because he kept getting older, and his costars kept getting younger.
shareWhat about the age gap between Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon?
shareThere is nothing in Milland's character that would have suggested he would not have married Gail Russell's character and considering the moral code of that time, it is likely he would have married her as living together without benefit of marriage was highly disapproved of.
"Do All Things For God's Glory"-1 Corinthians 10:31
I try doing this with my posts
Roderick isn't grooming Stella and she's not a gold-digger after a rich husband. So I think that the age difference is OK in this story. There was a 25 year age gap between Bogart and Bacall in some other 1940s movies. And they married in real life as well as having onscreen romances.
shareMilland was 36 and Russell was 18 when the movie was shot in the spring of 1943. There was nothing immoral or illegal about the relationship between their characters in the movie. If it was consensual and made both of them happy, that's all that mattered.
share