An Affair to Remember

Even the greats have off days. Michael Jordan looked disturbingly mortal when he played for the Charlotte Hornets. The Beatles followed up Sgt. Pepper's, one of the most iconic and landmark albums in history, with Magical Mystery Tour. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr have An Affair To Remember. And it's not even their own fault, because in almost every other aspect, Affair is a lush and lovely romantic movie. The color is splendid, the dialogue is snappy, the score is beautiful, and Grant and Kerr are actors who don't need a sell-job from anybody, let alone me. The ingredients should come together here to make a classic, old Hollywood romantic picture. But it didn't, and it all boils down to one thing: Grant and Kerr in these specific roles. Even setting aside the issue that this whole movie is predicated on two people cheating on their partners and we're supposed to be swept up in their whirlwind, Grant and Kerr do not have romantic chemistry. Ever. Not even by accident. Their verbal sparring sounds more like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby than star-crossed lovers. Grant's character, Nickie Ferrante, is supposed to be this swinging, international playboy that has finally settled down with someone, but that requires a bit of vulnerability and tenderness to portray, and Grant is too cool by half here. While Kerr's Terry McKay is not burdened with such a reputation, she nevertheless plays it like she does, with a too-cool-for-school detachment. Neither are great communicators, so they're constantly butting heads, and not in a rom-com, opposities-attract kind of way; more of a worrisome way. There are warning signs aplenty that these two do not have the foundation of a long-lasting relationship. I'm not saying recasting these roles would've solved all the problems, because the characters are still fundamentally flawed and wrong for each other, but I could at least enjoy watching the flirtation between them if they weren't so damned cool about everything. Say, Jimmy Stewart and Vera Miles. Now the characters would be more relatable. There's also some structural issues with the script itself, like how the movie stops dead in its tracks on four separate occasions for Kerr to do a musical number. Not like a musical itself, with a big dance number and all; no, her character is a nightclub singer, so we see two performances, plus two when she pivots to being a music teacher. All it does for this movie is slam on the brakes of the narrative. Equally problematic is the contrived second half, when the cruise finally ends and they're back home in New York, and the scripts contorts and twists itself like a pretzel to find ways to keep them apart. Again, these two faults would still be there if the casting was better, but, as it is said in sports, winning covers a lot of sins, and losing exposes them. Affair falls squarely into the latter camp. I'm sure some will watch it and get swept away precisely because of the leads. Hell, the AFI ranked this the fifth most romantic movie of all time in 2002 ... but they also ranked Gone With The Wind number two, and that movie is about the two most toxic people you'll ever see ruining each others' lives, so, I don't know if the AFI understands what romance is. All I know is I want to like this movie more than I do, and I like a lot of the components of it, but when combined, those parts detract from one another.