Movie Review: An Affair to Remember

What is it about old movies that speaks to us so much more eloquently than new ones?

I've just finished watching, for the first time ever, An Affair to Remember, from start to finish. I'd seen bits and pieces of it through the years, but never sat and watched the whole thing. Now I understand what the fuss was about.

If someone decided to make that movie today, it would never go over as well as the original. It just wouldn't be the same. And this is in spite of the melodramatic acting of the 1950s. Seriously...if people acted now like they did then, everyone would think they were watching a comedy. Somehow, in those old films, that kind of acting just works. It's like the difference between a poem and a verse about the same thing. The poem uses language and imagery no one speaks with in day-to-day life. The verse uses language that's more casual and familiar. But the poem gets the point across better. Perhaps the way people moved and spoke and looked in those old films was like a symbology...like a language a different part of us understands.

Or maybe it's just that all the best ideas were used up in those great old flicks. The movies of today are just homages to films like An Affair to Remember. The twist of fate that keeps the two lovers apart. Had it ever been done before? Oh probably. But never by Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and never with characters/actors who have such electrifying chemistry. The entire voyage from Europe was just a way to get you to fall in love with the characters, so that when fate intervened so cruelly, your heart would break for them. The scene where they visit his grandmother was touching and had me in tears. I just kept thinking "how can you leave her? You know you'll never see her again! She KNOWS. She knows you love Terry and Terry loves you back. And she knows she'll die before she sees you again." I admit I was in tears during this scene.

And rarely has a film had me in such a twist of anxiety, right up to the very end, hoping and hoping things would work out, but not knowing if they would. Could they really disappoint us? Could they really fail to give us a happy ending? It was delicious agony. And the final scene was so masterfully played, and so well acted -- not the least bit melodramatic by today's standards -- that I was again in tears at the end. Just like, I'm sure, every other woman (and not a few men) who've seen the movie probably were.

It's recognized as one of the most romantic movies of all time. And while I'm not usually a romantic movie buff, the good ones appeal to me. I'll add this film to my growing list of favourites and recommend it to anyone for its humour, its wonderful script and its incredibly appealing characters.