An Affair to Remember (1957)

"We changed our course today."

Leo McCarey made two genres of films, and make them very, very well. The first, and the one that he is most know for today, is comedy films. This is due to his most famous film, the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933) being one of the best comedy films of the 1930s. Other comedies, such as Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) also stand up well today, as do the timeless Laurel & Hardy films he directed. But McCarey is also known for his strong moralistic views, reinforced by his Catholicism. In 1937 he made the heartbreaking (and criminally under-rated) Make Way for Tomorrow, and in the 40s he had some of his greatest commercial successes with the dramatic films Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). After his 1952 anti-Communist film My Son John was a failure at the box-office, McCarey retired from filmmaking for 5 years. He returned in 1957 with An Affair to Remember, at a time when it had been over a decade since his last commercial success, and the world had changed rapidly and dramatically in that time. So for McCarey there was a lot riding on this.
The first half of the film is spent on the transatlantic liner SS Constitution as she travels from Europe to New York City. Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) is a well-known playboy who meets Terry McKay, another passenger on the ship. Both are crossing the Atlantic to meet their respective partners in New York. Through a number of chance meetings they become good friends and spend a lot of time onboard together, despite the gossiping of the other passengers. Apart from one course-changing event (which I'll come to shortly), this is all that happens for the first hour of the film. All credit to McCarey, it doesn't drag at all, and it's surprising to see how much time has elapsed to this point.

At this time it was something of a coup for any studio to get Cary Grant to star in their film - if his name was on the movie posters you were guaranteed a hit, and as I mentioned earlier, McCarey needed a hit. Grant had worked with McCarey in 1937, in his first Oscar-winning film, The Awful Truth. Maybe it doesn't help that I watched To Catch a Thief the day before I watched this, but even more so than on that film Cary Grant is playing Cary Grant. That said, even if he does seem to be going through the motions in many scenes, he is still an excellent leading man. I'm not going to go on about the poor guy's age again, but when the actress playing his grandmother is only 16 years older than he is, surely that's pushing it a bit? They could easily have called her his mother and no one would have cared.
Terry McKay is played by experienced Scottish actress Deborah Kerr ("Kerr as in Star!") who had starred in the Powell-Pressburger classics Black Narcissus and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but was also familiar to audiences for her recent leading role in The King and I. So you'd got two of the biggest stars in contemporary cinema here, and they're both good enough actors to make the relationship seem believable, without which the film would have none of its impact.
So the first part of the film, all set on the SS Constitution, sees the two become closer and closer. It's made clear that they are both meeting their partners in New York, but of the two Terry is more resistant to Nickie's advances - especially with the playboy reputation that he's earned. But Nickie persists, and the two start dining together, though when rumours from other passengers become too much for Terry she announces to Nickie that they must spend less time together. A port visit along the Mediterranean coast allows Nickie the opportunity to catch up with his grandmother, and Terry agrees to accompany him. The whole plot hinges on the time they spend here - Terry goes to pray in front of a statue in the chapel, with a slightly embarrassed Nickie in tow. Like much of the film, nothing is made explicit. Is she praying for forgiveness for what she's done? For what she's about to do? Or is she just seeking vindication? We can only speculate. What is apparent is that there is far more conflict going on inside Terry than Nickie.

Terry, Nickie, and his grandmother Janou

Nickie's grandmother Janou, played by the brilliant Cathleen Nesbitt, soon warms to Terry, and though again nothing is made clear, the body language and eye contact she makes with her grandson as she plays the piano while Terry sings along almost seems to be telling him he's doing the right thing, but again this is left up to the audience to decide. It is also revealed to Terry that Nickie has a talent for painting, but is very critical of his own work, though is encouraged by praise from Janou and Terry. As Terry later drapes a shawl over the frail woman, it's easy to see the parallels between the old grandmother and the Virgin Mary herself, before whose statue Terry was earlier praying. The boat blows its horn and the couple return to their ship, bidding a fond farewell to the tearful Janou. Once back on board the ship as they walk down to the lower deck, Terry is embraced and kissed by Nickie for the first time. Interestingly, McCarey chooses to  have the upper parts of their bodies at this moment hidden from camera by the upper deck of the ship, as if the moment is to personal and private for the camera to intrude upon. As they then walk down the steps, Terry admits, "we changed our course today," and for the remainder of their voyage  they plan their future together. They decide that they will arrive in New York and go off with their respective partners, but arrange in six months' time to meet at the top of the Empire State Building, free to make a life together. I'm not going to go anymore detail on what happens, as there's a big twist in the plot, and this is definitely better seen without spoilers.

This is one of those films that certainly merits a rewatch. Though looking back as the end credits roll, it seems like very little has happened, it's only thinking back and watching again that a lot of small details actually turn out to have a large impact on the lives of Nickie and Terry. For my money, Make Way for Tomorrow is a better film, and I think this is a very love-it-or-hate-it film. The scene with the grandmother is by far the standout scene in the film, and the dialogue is very strong and believable but there's just too much stuff that's too easily missed on a first watch, such as the discrete body language that turns out to be pivotal in the grandmother scene. Despite this, it's one of McCarey's better films and I can see why people loved it at the time. It turned out to be one of the biggest hits of 1957, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it as a tender, human film - even if some of the characters choices are frustrating and difficult to understand.  This is actually a script remake of the 1939 Leo McCarey film, Love Affair, which was remade itself in 1994. Confusingly, An Affair to Remember was also loosely remade as the 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Watching this film, I couldn't help but see similarities with the latter part of Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited - with two people betrothed to others getting together and falling in love on an Atlantic voyage (the male is a painter also), and over the course of the trip arranging to split up with their respective partners and set up home together. Though Catholicism and religion in general is more explicitly referenced in Brideshead, it's certainly a major theme here as well, but it's easy to forget in this immoral, streetwise world we live in that it wasn't so many years ago that religion was one of the cornerstones of virtually everyone's life, so these similarities may well be mere coincidence.
So McCarey got his hit after all - and made the similarly successful Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! the following year before slipping into well-earned retirement. Carey Grant continued his resurgence in playing himself, and Deborah Kerr continued as one of Britain's most successful actresses. Happy endings all round except for... well, you can watch the film and find that out for yourself.