An
Affair to Remember
1957
Director: Leo McCarey
Starring: Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr
I
have to say this from the outset: I enjoy this film ironically. Overall, I find An Affair to Remember to
be far too melodramatic and, frankly, too silly for its own good. But if I’m in the right sort of mood, I take
a massive cue from Sleepless in Seattle and rather enjoy this particular film in
spite of itself.
Nickie
Ferrante (Grant) is an internationally known playboy sailing across the ocean
to meet up with his wealthy fiancée.
Terry McKay (Kerr) is a former nightclub singer sailing across the ocean
to meet up with her loyal and wealthy boyfriend. She is the only person on board not falling
over herself to ingratiate herself with him, so naturally, he is intrigued and
pursues her. Naturally, love blossoms
despite their respective significant others.
When the liner drops them off in New York, they agree to part ways
temporarily to deal with said other romantic interests but also to meet up
again in six months at the Empire State Building. What on earth could possibly happen in six
months?!?
The
silliness to which I alluded in the opening paragraph doesn’t really set in for
the first half hour, and as such, I enjoy the first half hour completely
un-ironically. The first half hour is
full of snappy, sexy dialogue between Grant and Kerr, and their chemistry is
spicy. She has the ability to skewer him
with the precisely right turn of phrase, he comes back with some sort of
self-deprecating witticism, and it’s just plain fun. In order to divert paparazzi attention, the
two sit back to back at adjoining dinner tables and speak to one another behind
the huge menu, fooling no one. The whole
set up of the meet-cute between these two characters is very engaging.
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| This bit's fun. |
But
that’s only the first half hour, because as soon as we get to Nickie and Terry
visiting his grandmother, the whole movie gets remarkably somber and serious
and melodramatic and wholly silly. There
is such a charming lightness that gets completely deflated once our couple
starts seriously falling in love. The
movie loses its pace and nearly all its energy, a fact which is not at all
helped by some incredibly schmaltzy songs.
Let’s watch Nickie’s grandma play some bland piece at the piano for five
minutes. Seriously, five minutes of the
film is just watching her play the piano.
Yes, I get that this is when the two of them are supposed to be falling
in love, but holy crap this is stupidly serious. Every now and then, some of that original
snappy repartee comes back, but we don’t get nearly enough of it. It’s far more spread out, and there’s so much
water-logged dialogue in between.
Ugh. (I will give the film credit
for clever and fun scenes that involve a TV reporter interviewing Ferrante.)
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| This bit's not as fun. |
So
from this point on, I have to change my outlook in order to have the patience
to get through the film. So I think of Sleepless
in Seattle. I saw Sleepless
in Seattle in the theaters with my dad when I was but a wee Siobhan,
and I’ve always highly enjoyed the bits in it where the women get all
ridiculously weepy over An Affair to Remember (followed by
the fabulous scene at the end where Tom Hanks and Victor Garber get all weepy
over The
Dirty Dozen). When things get
ridiculously melodramatic, I picture Rosie O’Donnell and Meg Ryan weeping their
eyes out and I smile.
Seriously. The dialogue moves from snappy and fun to
dirge-like in its seriousness, and it becomes so eye-roll inducing that I have
to picture Crow and Tom Servo sitting in front of the screen throwing things at
Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.
I
know that this film is a retelling of Love Affair from 1939, but I kept on
thinking of Brief Encounter instead.
Both films deal with people who are in otherwise loving and committed
relationships, yet they find themselves falling in love with other people, and
this causes them emotional anguish. The
thing is, I find myself getting completely swept up in the angst in Brief
Encounter, and ridiculing the angst in An Affair to Remember. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure why that
is. I’d like to think that Brief
Encounter isn’t nearly as schmaltzy, but I don’t know if that’s
true. Maybe it has to do with the
situation; although similar, Brief Encounter is a bit more
realistic and less fantasy. A bit. Maybe it’s Laura’s voice over narrative that
helps me into her soul; I have no similar window into Terry’s soul. Maybe it’s the soundtrack. Brief Encounter uses Rachmaninov; An
Affair to Remember uses an original soundtrack that I consider a step
down from lounge music. I honestly don’t
know why I’m so turned on by one film, and find a similar film so much
lesser. Maybe it’s just me. Ah well.
I
do like that the significant others that get pushed aside in An
Affair to Remember are presented as very nice, kind, civil people. We like them.
We should. If they were horrible
people, then why would our hero and heroine suffer emotional anguish at the
thought of breaking up with them? I like
that about the film; I like that the hurdles standing in the way of our main
couple are not monsters.
Again,
at some point, I just say “to hell with it,” pour myself a huge glass of wine,
and laugh at the ridiculous schmaltz that is most of An Affair to Remember. Cary Grant is always fun and pleasant, and
Deborah Kerr can match him well in the witty banter department. The two have very good chemistry, and the
first half hour of the film is highly enjoyable. But really, wine and a sense of humor is all
that’s going to get me through the remaining hour and a half. I have to stop taking the movie seriously
because it’s just too damn silly.
It
also has what is possibly the most ridiculous school music concert I’ve ever
seen in a film.
Arbitrary
Rating: 6/10, enjoyed mostly from an ironic point of view. Get me a drink and I’ll just laugh over and
over at the silliness that is the unending sea of schmaltz called An
Affair to Remember.
