This marvelous romance transports us back to a different time, when passions were just as they are now, but repressed, if with difficulty.
Deborah Kerr is magnificent, keeping her control, yet radiating her inner feelings in unmistakable glances, pauses and such. Cary Grant, yes, who could possibly imagine themselves as Cary Grant, not even himself.
It is a proper romantic comedy, but it is set in the time of Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Bill Haley. "An Affair to Remember" teeters precariously on the brink of sentiment and soapsuds, yet pulls back from those traps every time.
We will never know why a ship sailing from England to New York City stops at the French Riviera. Perhaps to view the films for that year at Cannes. "Friendly Persuasion" takes the Palme d'or, but the jury prizes are shared by Andrzej Wajda's gritty "Kanal" and Ingmar Bergman's classic, "The Seventh Seal." It is as if we are crossing from a time of then to a time of now.
"An Affair" was one of the last of its mannered kind, a film that could both hold belief and hold off the coarser, more open world that had already claimed its foothold.
Deborah Kerr is magnificent, keeping her control, yet radiating her inner feelings in unmistakable glances, pauses and such. Cary Grant, yes, who could possibly imagine themselves as Cary Grant, not even himself.
It is a proper romantic comedy, but it is set in the time of Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Bill Haley. "An Affair to Remember" teeters precariously on the brink of sentiment and soapsuds, yet pulls back from those traps every time.
We will never know why a ship sailing from England to New York City stops at the French Riviera. Perhaps to view the films for that year at Cannes. "Friendly Persuasion" takes the Palme d'or, but the jury prizes are shared by Andrzej Wajda's gritty "Kanal" and Ingmar Bergman's classic, "The Seventh Seal." It is as if we are crossing from a time of then to a time of now.
"An Affair" was one of the last of its mannered kind, a film that could both hold belief and hold off the coarser, more open world that had already claimed its foothold.