Russian born filmmaker Anatole "Tola" Litvak was by America's entry into the Second World War a middle aged man, yet the newly-stamped American citizen served in the four-year conflict with the United States Army, rising to the rank of colonel. Litvak's fluency in several languages made him invaluable to the armed forces' combat photography unit in Normandy, where he oversaw documentation of the "D-Day" landing of allied troops on June 6, 1944. Litvak also collaborated with Frank Capra on the Academy Award® winning Why We Fight (1942-1945) series of inspirational short subjects. While Litvak's first postwar films back in Hollywood - Sorry, Wrong Number and The Snake Pit (both 1948) - had nothing to do with his military experience in Europe, he would return to the theme of Americans abroad with the Academy Award® nominated Decision Before Dawn (1951) and the U.S.-French co-production Act of Love (1953). Act of Love was adapted from the Alfred Hayes novel The Girl on the Via Flaminia, the story of an American soldier who pursues a relationship with a desperate and displaced Italian girl in US occupied Rome at the end of World War II. (An American-educated Brit, Hayes served with the army in World War II and stayed on in Italy to script Roberto Rossellini's Paisan [1946] before decamping to Hollywood.) To bring this tragic, offbeat romance to the big screen, Litvak had novelist/screenwriter (and former army warrant officer) Irwin Shaw change the novel's setting to Paris, simply because he preferred working there. Shortly after the novel's 1949 publication, Gary Cooper had paid $40,000 for the rights and $10,000 to Hayes personally, hoping to star in a film version with Montgomery Clift. Cooper eventually sold his interest to Litvak and when Act of Love went into production in December of 1952 the star of the film was Kirk Douglas.

After playing a trapeze artist in MGM's The Story of Three Loves (1953), Douglas was advised to take an eighteen-month working vacation in Europe for income tax reasons. In addition to Act of Love, the actor signed on for Edward Dmytryk's The Juggler (1953), to be filmed in Israel, and Mario Camerini's Ulysses (1954), slated to shoot in Italy. From the outset, the plan for Act of Love was to film both English and French language variants, with Douglas to appear in the version marked for American audiences. Douglas used his considerable clout to star in both versions and set about learning French. Training two hours a day, six days a week, Douglas mastered the language quickly but found that most liberated Parisians preferred to speak English. Despite his engagement to actress Pier Angeli, Douglas fell in love with his Dutch assistant and press agent, Anne Buydens, whom he married in 1954. Seen in a small role in Act of Love is an all but unrecognizable 17-year-old Brigitte Bardot, whom Roger Vadim made an international star with ...And God Created Woman in 1956.

When Act of Love opened in New York in February 1954, it had to compete with Alfred Hayes' own Broadway adaptation of his novel, then in previews at the Astor Theater, starring Leo Penn (father of actors Sean and Christopher Penn) and Betty Miller as the tragic lovers, and featuring a young actor named Andy Milligan, destined for Psychotronic immortality as the writer-director of such Grade Z spookshows as Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970) and The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972).
v Writing for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther summed up the consensus of the national critics when he observed of Act of Love that "so long as the vacillating romance is kept on the agitated plane of emotional irresolution between the boy and the girl, there is a wonderful - almost satanic -- sense of fatal irony in the film," whose ending was deemed too tragically sentimental. Anatole Litvak scored a bigger commercial hit with Anastasia (1956) starring Ingrid Bergman and would remain in Europe for the rest of his life. He died in Paris in December 1974, at the age of 72.

Producer: Anatole Litvak
Director: Anatole Litvak
Screenplay: Irwin Shaw; Joseph Kessel (screenplay and French dialogue), Alfred Hayes (novel "The Girl on the Via Flaminia")
Cinematography: Armand Thirard
Music: Michel Emer, Joe Hajos, Michel B. Rosenstein
Film Editing: Leonide Azar (French version); William Hornbeck
Cast: Kirk Douglas (Robert Teller), Dany Robin (Lise Gudayec/Madame Teller), Gabrielle Dorziat (Adele Lacaud), Barbara Laage (Nina), Fernand Ledoux (Fernand Lacaud), Robert Strauss (Sgt. Johnny Blackwood), Marthe Mercadier (the girl from the terrace), George Mathews (Henderson), Richard Benedict (Pete), Leslie Dwyer (the English sergeant), Sydney Chaplin (a soldier), Brigitte Bardot (Mimi).
BW-107m.

by Richard Harland Smith

Sources:
The Ragman's Son: An Autobiography by Kirk Douglas (Simon & Schuster, 1988)
Let's Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving, and Learning by Kirk Douglas (Wiley, 2008)