An Affair to Remember (1957)
June 19th, 2007
Classic romance, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr as two people who fall in love on a ship. Both are single, but both have long-term relationships with others. Grant’s character, a notorious playboy called Nickie Ferrante, is engaged to be married.
The lovers agree to take six months to think things over and wrap up their other relationships, and then meet at the top of the Empire State Building and start their new life together. Only one of them makes the rendezvous, but there is a complicated and unlikely reason, and they find each other in the end.
I liked watching this, partly because I have hardly ever watched a classic Cary Grant movie from start to finish. I’m a little young for movies made in 1957, believe it or not. (Oh all right, I was 8.) Part of the pleasure of it is just to look at 1957, if only through a director’s eyes and mostly on a sound stage made up as a cruise liner. And Grant is wonderful, although at 53 he seems a little too old for Kerr, 36 at the time.
But really, the main reason to watch this now is because of the other movies it has influenced, especially the Richard Linklater double feature ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Before Sunset’ and Nora Ephron’s ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’ Both offer a modern take on the notion of star-crossed lovers, and both are informed by this movie. Every female character in ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ bursts into tears at the very thought of this movie, and scenes from it appear on TV sets; its characters (played by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan) even replay the meeting at the Empire State Building. (Only they both show up.)
