Un amore splendido

I do love this film so and one thing it has that the original Love Affair did not have was that great title song, sung over the credits by Vic Damone. It was composed by Harry Warren and Harold Adamson and it's one of the great movie themes of all time. Guaranteed to put you in the mood for romance and tears.

This version with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr sticks pretty close to the original with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. Two people, each engaged to others, meet on shipboard and fall in love. It's one of those chemical things that no one can help.

Grant's a playboy who candidly admits he's never worked a day in his life and Kerr wants a bit more security than that. They agree to meet at the top of the Empire State Building in exactly six months to see if the sparks are still there. But something is always interrupting the course of history and romance.

Can't say much more than that, but as Kerr reminds Grant if they don't meet it will be for a darn good reason and if you see the film you'll agree she had one.

This was the second of three films that Grant and Kerr made together and this is easily the best of them. I don't think Cary Grant was ever more romantic on the screen and that is saying something.

Cathleen Nesbitt though old enough to be his mother, plays Cary's grandmother in grand old world style. Her part had previously been played by Maria Ouspenskaya and later on in the Warren Beatty-Annette Bening remake was done by Katharine Hepburn.

If your taste run to screen romances, this is THE film you do not dare miss.

This film has to be probably the best romantic film I've ever seen, even above Gone With The Wind, but on the same level as The English Patient (my favorite film of all time). I got intrigued by this film back in high school when my sister dragged me to see Sleepless in Seattle. I caught the references to this film that Meg Ryan made throughout that film and thought that I'd like to rent this film (Affair to Remember) to see what the commotion was about. Needless to say, with the whole "shipboard romance" aspect of it, and the promise to meet again in six months atop the Empire State Building of all places, I quickly became hooked. The scene on the French Riviera with Nickie's grandmother playing the piano, oh God is it beautiful! Cary Grant is so debonair and suave and Deborah Kerr is so ravishing and stunningly beautiful, that it always demands repeated viewing from me (at least three times a year). Seeing this film always makes me wonder if something like the kind of relationship that Nickie had with Terry in the film would really be possible. Would and could someone actually leave the person they were engaged to to marry a complete and total stranger that they just met days ago? I'd like to think that it could, but then I am nothing but a hopeless romantic. The final scene always tears my heart out, no matter how many times I've seen it, I'm always sobbing. Watching this film around Valentine's Day (even if you are single) is always a treat. It allows our fantasies to take flight so that we may think that we are actually the one meeting our beloved atop the Empire State Building in a thunderstorm. Watch with a box of Kleenex nearby. My rating: 4 stars

I've had this DVD in my collection for several years now, having picked it up cheap at a Black Friday sale. Deborah Kerr's unfortunate passing finally got me to pull it out. Should have went with my first choice, Black Narcissus, instead. An Affair to Remember starts off fine, with Cary Grant and Kerr, both engaged to be married, meeting on a voyage across the Atlantic. The first half of the film follows them as they try to avoid each other, but end up falling in love anyway. As they are about to part ways, they agree to meet each other in six months at the top of the Empire State building. So far, it's lovely. Unfortunately, there's an hour left, and, where the first half was a lovely romantic comedy, the second half is all dull melodrama. When Cary and Kerr are apart, the sizzle between them burns out pretty much instantly. And then the film inserts a bunch of precocious children, whom Kerr teaches to sing. There were a couple of fine child actors in classic Hollywood, but the vast majority of them seem like they are being fed lines two seconds before the camera comes on, and then they just repeat it out of rote. If there's a Hell, I'll be surrounded by kids who appeared in classic movies.

...especially if that man is being played by Cary Grant! I'm not going to spoil it for you by repeating WHAT Grant's character says that sounds ridiculous, I'll let you watch and find out. I'd just like to know what kind of bucks the studio held out to Grant to get him to speak some of these lines, which are mainly the lines every woman wants to hear from a man who looks and moves like Cary Grant.

The idea behind this film is that two people on the threshold of middle age - at least in the 1950's - meet on a long cruise and fall in love. So far, so good. But there are complications, or else there would be no movie. Both are involved with wealthy members of the opposite sex and have no money or real skills of their own. They agree to try to make a go of it independently, having no contact with the other, and to meet at the top of the Empire State Building six months from the day of landing in New York if all works out. Complications ensue.

You are obviously setting yourself up for disaster or at least miscommunication and bitterness if you say things like "if one of us doesn't show up, no questions". No grudge maybe, but no questions, no bothering to find out what went wrong? Wouldn't it just eat at you not knowing during the six months if the other person just forgot all about this plan in the first place and you are eking out a living for nothing? I shall now prepare to be pelted by eggs, tomatoes, and tear stained handkerchiefs.

What one has to consider about the Deborah Kerr/Cary Grant characters is that they are both "kept" individuals: Kerr by a wealthy Texan named Ken (-doll, played by Richard Denning), Grant a gigolo engaged to an heiress (Neva Patterson). They meet on an ocean cruise, with this some cute and also silly comedy thrown in. Kerr & Grant are British and speak the accents yet their characters are from the U.S.; a not too distracting error, however. An unusually touching scene is when they de-bark in Italy and visit Grant's 82-year-old grandmother (Cathleen Nesbitt). It's a beautiful setting with wonderful music and pathos. Back in the states the couple agree to meet atop the Empire State Building in 6 months. One wonders why Kerr won't marry the handsome Denning, athletic, wealthy and kind (in real-life the actor was married to the British-raised actress Evelyn Ankers, a beauty in the Kerr-mold). Much of the second half is infused with un-necessary scenes of singing children but this all leads up the the final, long scene, beautifully acted and directed (by Leo McCarey). A mystery is very slowly unraveled in layers until the peak of the scene, scored by the emotional title theme song. This scene "gets" one every time, that's how effective it is. Beautiful costumes, scenery, clever photography (note the scene where the open patio door reveals the Empire State Building in its reflection), great cast make this an enduring, never-forgotten golden classic.