An Affair to Remember

Posted by Larita Shotwell on Friday, February 2, 2024

Adding comedy lines, music, color and CinemaScope, Jerry Wald and Leo McCarey turn this remake of the 1939 Love Affair into a winning film that is alternately funny and tenderly sentimental. An Affair to Remember, using plenty of attractive settings (on and off the USS Constitution), is still primarily a film about two people; and since those two happen to be Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr the bitter-sweet romance sparkles and crackles with high spirits.

Adding comedy lines, music, color and CinemaScope, Jerry Wald and Leo McCarey turn this remake of the 1939 Love Affair into a winning film that is alternately funny and tenderly sentimental. An Affair to Remember, using plenty of attractive settings (on and off the USS Constitution), is still primarily a film about two people; and since those two happen to be Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr the bitter-sweet romance sparkles and crackles with high spirits.

Story [by McCarey and Mildred Cram] has Grant and Kerr fall in love aboard ship, though both are engaged to other people. They decide to meet in six months atop the Empire State Building. Meanwhile, Grant, a faintly notorious bachelor, is to change his life in a more useful direction. He shows up for the rendezvous, but she is struck by a car on her way to the meeting and may never walk again.

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McCarey, who with Delmer Daves wrote the screenplay, has done a fine job, and has gotten the most out of his players’ talents. Both are experts in restrained, sophisticated comedy. Both are able to get a laugh by waving a hand or raising an eyebrow. The Grant-Kerr romance is never maudlin, not even at the end.

1957: Nominations: Best Cinematography, Costume Design, Score of a Dramatic Picture, Song (‘An Affair to Remember’),

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An Affair to Remember

  • Production: 20th Century-Fox. Director Leo McCarey; Producer Jerry Wald; Writer Delmer Daves, Leo McCarey; Camera Milton Krasner Editor James B. Clark; Music Hugo Friedhofer Art Lyle R. Wheeler, Jack Martin Smith
  • Crew: (Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1957. Running time: 115 MIN.
  • With: Cary Grant Deborah Kerr Richard Denning Neva Patterson Cathleen Nesbitt Robert Q. Lewis

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