Thursday, August 08, 2019
An Affair to Remember
- Commentary: Up front, I'm not a fan of this movie, nor of the Annette Bening/Warren Beatty remake, although I love Sleepless in Seattle, which is so full of this movie it practically vomits it. When I first saw and fell in love with Sleepless in Seattle I had never seen this movie, any remakes of it, nor was I familiar with the story. Once I became my mother's companion and we began sharing our love of watching movies, I finally saw this movie on one of the many cable channels to which we subscribed. [I'm telling you, we were really into movies!] Mom did not remember if she'd ever seen it, but she didn't care for it. I clearly remember her saying, when the movie finished "Well, that was silly!" My thoughts, exactly.
So, what am I doing with this movie in my collection? It came in another one of those four-packs. I was looking for one (old) movie, in particular and it was cheaper to buy the four-pack with it than it was to buy the movie as a single.
All I can say about this movie, An Affair to Remember [Wikipedia link to this film], is, at least I have a disc record of a movie to which lots of other movies refer but that I never liked, and, I'm sure, never will, not even in its next remake. I'm sure there will be another remake!
Update 8/14/19: Well, I decided to watch this movie, tonight, as, the more I tried to recall it, the more I realized all I could remember was the Annette Bening/Warren Beatty/Katharine Hepburn remake, for which I didn't much care, and the references to the original in Sleepless in Seattle. Wow! Was I surprised! I'm thinking, now, that maybe I never really saw it, it may have been one of those movies that I'd glance at between chores, checking on Mom watching it, while she and I were companions. I have little knowledge to base this on, but it seems very 50's-ish in it's portrayal of romance (which shouldn't be a surprise, considering that it came to the screen in 1957): witty, intelligent, full of stock secondary characters who are (thankfully) used lightly, lush orchestration almost to a fault, strong female lead, independent male lead, oh, come on, you know the 50's drill. I was born in the 50's and raised primarily outside the U.S. without much television so I was either too young or too far away to see any of these films until decades later when they became available on tapes/dvds, I moved back to the states and finally (after many years) was in the presence of a television. It's an interesting exercise to watch these movies, and this movie, now. I found myself wondering, as I watched (which often happens when I watch one of these 50's movies), if I had been exposed to them when I, as a U.S. kid, was supposed to have been exposed to them, would my perception of what it is to be a woman be any different, now? It's very late, tonight, though, and my mind isn't sharp enough to give much cogent thought to this, but I wanted to make a note of it, perhaps write/think, here, about it, later. Here's the beginning of a list of movies I own that would fall into this category for consideration: The Best of Everything; Funny Face; I don't know, maybe I was too young to have been exposed to these movies at a time when conditions would have been ripe for them to have an effect on me; I mean, in 1957 I was 5 years old for most of the year (I'm an autumn child), thus, I can't imagine that I would have been intrigued by this movie, in particular, and many, of that time, in general, had I seen them during their first runs; ... more later ...
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Cary Grant Nicolò Ferrante Deborah Kerr Terry McKay Richard Denning Kenneth Bradley Neva Patterson Lois Clark Cathleen Nesbitt Grandmother Janou Robert Q. Lewis Self as Announcer Charles Watts Ned Hathaway Fortunio Bonanova Courbet
By the way, the great Marnie Nixon sings for Terry McKay.
Release Date: 1957
Directed by Leo McCarey.
Labels: 20th-century-chick-flicks1, cary-grant, popcorn-and-soda1, romance1
