Popular when it was released in 1957, An Affair to Remember has found an unexpected afterlife in recent decades. Snippets of it have shown up in other films as a signifier of bygone romance—a kind of love no longer in fashion. Nowadays it would be hard to tell the story’s shipboard romance on screen. Who meets on shipboard anymore except tacky people on cruise ships lining up at the all-you-can eat seafood buffet?
Then too, there is no Cary Grant working in Hollywood today. In An Affair to Remember he plays, well, a Cary Grant character—charming but a touch roguish, sophisticated without a hint of pretense, impeccably dressed and trim as a 20-year old. Co-star Deborah Kerr, a big star at the time, hasn’t left as strong an impression on popular culture as Grant. In An Affair to Remember she was forever poised and well mannered, even when surrendering to the fever of passion and embarking on her slightly illicit relationship with Grant. Both characters were already engaged to wealthy people who were waiting at the New York pier. For Grant and Kerr, the luxury liner couldn’t return slowly enough to its homeport.
The 50th Anniversary DVD contains a number of interesting special features, including commentary by Peter Bogdanovich and other movie historians that sheds some light on the Technicolor production. Director Leo McCarey shot An Affair to Remember in deliberately artificial settings to heighten the hyper-reality of romance. And who could have guessed that Grant was experimenting with LSD while making the movie? He was composed as ever.
Although witty with lightly brushed innuendo, An Affair could be called sentimental. Perhaps our society has gone too far in rejecting sentiment and ruling entire zones of the human heart as out of bounds? An Affair toRemember is also good for showing that mature couples can fall in love, and for proposing that romance can lead to a love more profound.
