An Affair to Remember (1957)
Directed by Leo McCarey

Film Review

Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to any film is for it to be remade.  Leo McCarey's stirring melodrama Love Affair (1939) justified its carbon copy remake An Affair to Remember (1957) but could probably have done without Glenn Gordon Caron's mid-90s rehash starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Love Affair (1994).  The dream pairing of Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer in the 1939 film is matched, if not surpassed, by the union of Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant in its first remake, which McCarey wrote and directed with just as much charm and tenderness.  One of the most enduring romantic film dramas to have been made in Hollywood in the 1950s, An Affair to Remember still has a powerful emotional resonance, despite one or two scurrilous digressions into treacly sentimentality.  The earlier Dunne-Boyer film has the edge in that it is more genuinely heartfelt, but the Kerr-Grant replay is a more polished and visually appealing production.

More than anything, it is the chemistry between Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant that makes An Affair to Remember so memorable and enjoyable.  Chemistry is not something that can be manufactured or bought, it just happens, and right from the very first moment when the two principals appear on screen together we can feel their characters' mutual attraction.  This is what gives the film its heart and makes its somewhat contrived narrative so powerfully moving.  You have to be made of pretty stern stuff to avoid shedding a tear or two during the film's devastating final scene when the last obstacle to a happy ending is suddenly demolished.  It's not all good, though.  The twee kiddie musical numbers that somehow crept into the production are a slightly nauseating indulgence which the film could have done without (McCarey may have been feeling nostalgic about Going My Way), but apart from this minor lapse there isn't much to fault with the film.  An Affair to Remember is, if not the nearest thing to Heaven, as close as Hollywood gets to a film with real human feeling.  How it failed to win a single Oscar (despite being nominated in four categories which included Best Music and Best Cinematography) is a mystery.

Film Synopsis

The world is stunned by the news that celebrity playboy Nickie Ferrante is about to marry  a wealthy American heiress.  Nickie is on his way back to New York by ocean liner when fate intervenes and derails his matrimonial plans, via a chance meeting with nightclub singer Terry McKay.  In spite of the fact that both of them are already in a romantic relationship, Nickie and Terry cannot help falling in love.  Once they reach New York, they agree to meet up in six months' time at the top of the Empire State Building if their love can endure that long.  When the fateful day comes, Terry is prevented from reaching the rendezvous by another quirk of fate...