An Affair to Remember

Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant), a well-known playboy, meets Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) aboard the transatlantic ocean liner SS Constitution en route from Europe to New York. Each is involved with someone else. After a series of meetings aboard the ship, they establish a friendship. When Terry joins Nickie on a brief visit to his grandmother, Janou, while the ship is anchored near her home at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast, she sees Nickie with new eyes and their feelings become deeper. During their visit, Janou tells Terry that Nickie is a talented painter but destroys most of his paintings because they don't meet his standards. As the ship returns to New York City, they agree to reunite at the top of the Empire State Building in six months' time if they have succeeded in ending their relationships and starting new careers.

On the day of their rendezvous, Terry, hurrying to reach the Empire State Building, is struck down by a car while crossing a street. Gravely injured, she is rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile, Nickie, waiting for her at the observation deck at the top of the building, is unaware of the accident and, after many hours, leaves at midnight, believing she has rejected him.

After the accident, Terry, now unable to walk, refuses to contact Nickie because of her disability. Instead, she finds work as a music teacher. Nickie has pursued his painting and has his work displayed by Courbet, an art gallery owner. Six months after the accident, Terry sees Nickie with his former fiancée at the ballet, which she herself is attending with her former boyfriend. Nickie does not notice her condition because she is seated, and she says hello as he passes her.

Nickie learns Terry's address and on Christmas Eve pays her a surprise visit. Although he tries to get her to explain her actions, Terry dodges the subject, never leaving the couch on which she sits. He gives her a shawl that Janou left for her after she died. As he is leaving, Nickie mentions a painting that he had been working on when they originally met, and that it was just given away to a woman who liked it but had no money. He is about to say that the woman was in a wheelchair when he pauses, suddenly suspecting why Terry has been sitting unmoving on the couch. He walks into her bedroom and sees the painting hanging on the wall. The film ends with the two in a tight embrace and Terry saying, "If you can paint, I can walk. Anything can happen, don't you think?"

• Cary Grant as Nicolò (Nickie) Ferrante
• Deborah Kerr as Terry McKay
• Richard Denning as Kenneth Bradley
• Neva Patterson as Lois Clark
• Cathleen Nesbitt as Grandmother Janou
• Robert Q. Lewis as Himself (announcer)
• Charles Watts as Ned Hathaway
• Fortunio Bonanova as Courbet
• Marni Nixon as Terry McKay (singing voice)

The film was a remake of McCarey's 1939 film Love Affair, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. An Affair to Remember was almost identical to Love Affair on a scene-to-scene basis.[5] McCarey used the same screenplay as the original film, which was penned by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart. Also, the character name "Terry McKay" appears in both films.

The theme song, "An Affair to Remember (Our Love Affair)", composed by Harry Warren and with lyrics by Leo McCarey and Harold Adamson, was sung by Vic Damone over opening credits and by Deborah Kerr during the film.

• Continué
  • Sung by Marni Nixon (dubbing for Deborah Kerr)
• The Tiny Scout (He Knows You Inside Out)
• Tomorrow Land
• You Make It Easy To Be True

Contemporary reviews were mixed. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times found the early part of the film fairly enjoyable, with "plenty of humorous conversation that is handled crisply" by the leads, but found that the picture went wrong after the couple got off the ship, writing: "The marriage pact seems ridiculously childish for a couple of adult people to make. The lady's failure to notify her fiancé of her accident seems absurd. The fact that the man does not hear of it in some way is beyond belief. And the slowness with which he grasps the obvious when he calls upon the lady is just too thick."[6] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post agreed, writing that the film "boasts early amusing reels that ultimately become unbelievably foolish in the quest for audience tears."[7] Variety disagreed, calling the romance "never maudlin" and "wholly believable" in a positive review of what it called "a winning film" with "all the ingredients that should make it an ideal women's picture."[8] Harrison's Reports was also positive, calling it "more enchanting and delightful than the original," and "so powerful in the closing scenes that one is unable to fight back the tears."[9] John McCarten of The New Yorker was dismissive, writing that the actors were "tolerable, but the movie is really awfully maudlin."[10] A generally positive review in The Monthly Film Bulletin called the film "a lush slice of Hollywood romanticism, unashamedly following most of the familiar conventions of glossy magazine fiction. To judge it on a higher level would normally seem unfair if it were not that here the script does succeed in cutting rather deeper. The relationship between Ferrante and Terry McKay is briskly developed, with an attractive, often touching humor."[11]

The film holds a 63% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 30 reviews.[12] In 1998, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader included the film in his unranked list of the best American films not included on the AFI Top 100.[13]

The film was nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Original Song and Best Original Score at the 30th Academy Awards.

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #5
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • "Oh, it was nobody's fault but my own. I was looking up. It was the nearest thing to heaven. You were there."—Nominated

• Nora Ephron's 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, was partly inspired by An Affair to Remember, particularly the ending. References, clips and the theme song from the earlier film are used throughout.
• A 1994 remake, reverting to the original title of Love Affair, starred Warren Beatty (who also wrote and produced) and his wife Annette Bening. The film also featured Katharine Hepburn in her last screen appearance, portraying the male protagonist's aunt; this character replaces the grandmother from the original film.
• Bheegi Raat, a 1965 Bollywood film starring Ashok Kumar and Meena Kumari, was an adaptation of this movie.
• Mann, a 1999 Bollywood film starring Aamir Khan and Manisha Koirala was almost a scene-by-scene copy of this film. It was remade in Telugu in 1999 as Ravoyi Chandamama.
• In 2009, the HBO film Grey Gardens licensed an aerial shot of The Pierre Hotel from this film.[14]
• The climax of 1980 Bollywood movie Ek Baar Kaho is inspired by this movie's climax.
• A sound clip from this film, was used on Basement's 2011 album I Wish I Could Stay Here in the Song "Fading".
• The teen drama TV series Gossip Girl features an episode in season three titled, "Last Tango, Then Paris" where the characters Chuck and Blair decide to rekindle their love and agree to meet on top of the Empire State Building at 7:01pm, just like the movie. However, Blair is unable to meet Chuck because her maid goes into labor on their way there. This results in their "final break-up".
• In the TV series 30 Rock, the character Tracy Jordan claims to have starred in a remake of An Affair to Remember called "A Blaffair to Rememblack".
• In the TV series Family Guy, there is a cutaway gag of what the movie would be like with cell phones. After being struck, Terry tells Nickie she's paralyzed. He abruptly ends the call and tosses the phone off the observation deck.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to An Affair to Remember (film).

• An Affair to Remember at the American Film Institute Catalog
• An Affair to Remember on IMDb
• An Affair to Remember at the TCM Movie Database
• An Affair to Remember at AllMovie
• An Affair to Remember at Rotten Tomatoes