An Affair to Remember

Saw An Affair to Remember, a romance about a man and woman, both engaged to other people, who suddenly fall in love on a cruise ship. The woman is a sort of shut-in, once a cocktail lounge singer, now the kept woman of an industrialist. The man is a playboy who is marrying a rich lady. It's the sort of film that starts off cute and just gets progressively sweeter and sweeter and sweeter, smothering your cynicism and overwhelming you with its adorable sweetness until at last you rebel and start shouting "oh for God's sake!" at the screen, making eye contact with your cat and asking her "Are you seeing this?"

For me, the first ominous rumblings of the treacly sweetness to come was during the visit to the man's grandmother. She's so fucking adorable she brings the woman to tears. She can see that the man and woman have something special together, although she's only met this woman for five minutes. Okay, I can deal with this. But I can't deal with the following tearful piano playing, the tearful farewells, and the tearful run back for just one last hug. Oh! How sweet it all is!

The film comes out of the depths of the Hayes Code era. Every kiss happens off-screen or becomes a hilariously unlikely hug at the last moment. The actors do their best to show physical affection, but of course they can't really do much beyond grip each other's elbows because for heaven's sake this isn't a porno! The film gets yet more mawkish after the granny visit, but I'd have to give some serious spoilers to talk about it. Suffice to say there's a chorus of adorable little white kids (plus exactly one black boy and exactly one black girl) singing a song about following "the little scout" (i.e. your conscience.) Ugh.

I'm being very mean here and I should admit that this is a very well-respected film. It clearly wasn't made for me though but I admit I did enjoy the falling-in-love shenanigans, and some of the twists and turns in the film. The writing and acting are top-notch but it's really way too precious and cute for me in a slightly ugly, repressive 1950s sort of way. This is escapism but I feel it has escaped entirely into some weird and lurid fantasy.