An Affair to Remember

Leo McCarey remaking his own 1939 film Love Affair. Nickie and Terry meet on an ocean liner. Both are engaged to other people. When the voyage ends they make an agreement: they will sort out their lives within six months and meet at the top of the Empire State Building. On the day, something happens and one of them cannot come; the other does not know why. The first half is light and quick, the second is pure melodrama. The break is deliberate: the same couple, the same rhythm of dialogue, an entirely different key. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr star. Its second life began in 1993. Sleepless in Seattle refers to it constantly and its characters watch it in tears, and as a result the original was rediscovered and has been treated for years as one of the measures of screen romance. A genre classic for anyone who loves classical Hollywood melodrama. For a modern viewer the emotional escalation in the second half is very plain and the final scene takes a long time to arrive.