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Not only did Loren reject Grant's proposal, but the Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish vessel Stockholm, killing over fifty people (some sources claim both events happened on the same day). Having been rejected by Loren, Grant now fretted over the fate of his wife. Thankfully, Drake survived the accident and Grant was ready to reconcile.

In February of 1957, Grant began shooting An Affair to Remember. Betsy was still traumatized by the Andrea Doria incident and the couple even started dabbling in hypnotism to help her come to terms with the tragedy. There are those who say that Grant channeled Loren's rejection and Betsy's trauma during key moments in Affair to Remember. Although Grant's Nicky Ferrante begins the film as a swingin' bachelor, when events turn sour, Grant plumbs emotional depths made more real in light of recent events.
Modern audiences are surely unaware of the odd emotional journey Grant took in making An Affair to Remember. In fact, modern audience are probably unaware the film even exists. Anyone under 40 knows it from the 1993 romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle, especially the scene where Meg Ryan and Rosie O'Donnell sit on the couch and cry over the film's treacly excesses.

And make no mistake: An Affair to Remember is a treacly movie. What saves it are the interesting choices by director Leo McCarey, the performance of Cary Grant and the light, frothy humor. Regarding McCarey: notice the shipboard scene where Nicky, who is engaged to a New York socialite and Terry (Deborah Kerr), who is engaged to a successful businessman, first kiss. They kiss midway up a flight of stairs, so we never see the upper halves of their bodies. We only see them from the waist down, as if McCarey doesn't want to intrude upon the privacy and intimacy of that moment. Choices like that you'll never see in a modern love story.

Ferrante and McKay's shipboard romance comes to an end when they arrive in New York to rejoin their respective fiancés. However, the pair make a deal: they will meet in exactly six months, on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building. If they still feel the same way about each other, they'll get married. What happens on that fateful day will remain unsaid by me, for those who have not seen the movie. But as mentioned earlier, Grant rose to the occasion, taking Ferrante to naked and tragic places. As for Kerr, I was never a big fan of her as an actress. I always found her a little stiff. However, she does just fine here, although I wonder how the film would have been with original choice Ingrid Bergman.

An Affair to Remember is actually a remake. Director Leo McCarey also helmed the original 1939 version with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. Here McCarey does a much better job, even if the film could be trimmed by a good 15 minutes (for instance, the musical numbers with Kerr and the children. What the hell was that about?!). Still, it's a better movie then the original, and a much better movie then the 1994 Warren Beatty/Annette Bening version.

Men are probably not going to sit through the film without squirming. Women will probably sit through the film, cry and then want to make romantic love to you. So guys, if you can make it through one hour and 54 minutes of An Affair to Remember, it's a win-win for everybody.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

This is An Affair to Remember's second go-around on DVD and it's a marked improvement over the first. Its initial release was just a glorified rehash of the Laserdisc. Here, we've got a wonderful 2.35:1 widescreen picture that's anamorphically encoded. Colors are well saturated, although they do sport that slightly faded look of a 50's CinemaScope presentation. At times, the picture was a tad dark, but otherwise it's bright and beautiful (especially the scenes at Ferrante's grandmother's house). Fleshtones are nice and brown, with pink hues on the ladies. The image itself is sharp and fairly crisp. Blacks are surprisingly dark and stable, however shadow detail falls off during certain interior scenes. Grain is occasionally evident, but not nearly as much as other films from that era. Artifacting and pixelization is kept to a very respectable minimum. There is some shimmering, but it's not distracting.

Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

Audio here is an acceptable Dolby Digital 2.0. However it pales in comparison to mixes in DVDs of other 1950s movies. There's not much going on in the way of directional effects. Dialogue rarely uses the lefts and rights, while imaging is nonexistent. On the upside, the dialogue is always sharp and understandable. Fidelity is okay: the highs aren't that high, while the bass is only occasionally a factor. Overall presentation is not that enveloping. An Affair to Remember is a pretty wordy film, but more aggressive sound would have given it a more lush, emotional resonance. For a 45 year-old movie, there is admirably little background hiss.

The DVD also includes mono dubs in French and Spanish, as well as subtitles in English and Spanish and English Closed Captions.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Fox has unearthed a respectable array of extras that fans of the film will enjoy. They also shed some light on the great Cary Grant, who is in danger of being forgotten by contemporary audiences.

The big supplement is the audio commentary by film historian Joseph McBride and Marni Nixon, who provided Deborah Kerr's singing voice in the film. McBride is scholarly, but entertaining. He spends much time dissecting Leo McCarey's directing style and his remarks were generally insightful and right on. He also delves into the personal life of Cary Grant, who was not the suave, ladykiller he portrayed so well on screen. Not only was Grant admittedly insecure at times, but he even took LSD as a way to search for inner peace. As for Marni Nixon, she is a welcome presence on the DVD, even if her overall contribution is less than scintillating. Interestingly, she talks of how the studio threatened to practically blacklist her if she told the public how Deborah Kerr's singing voice was really Nixon's.

Next is the valuable, 24-minute AMC Backstory. It chronicles the making of the movie and includes interviews with director and film buff Peter Bogdanovich and Deborah Kerr's daughter. There are also nice behind-the-scenes photos, vintage posters and 1950s era video. Many DVDs include basic cable TV documentaries as supplements and the video quality is usually pretty bad. Here, however, the 4:3 is clean and colorful. Check out this informative American Movie Classics piece after you watch the film. Next is a vintage, black-and-white Movietone newsreel. Called Shipboard Premiere, it covers An Affair to Remember's 1957 unveiling on an ocean liner. These Movietone newsreels are awesome. If they were an hour, I'd watch every second. Alas, this one is only about a minute. The video is damn clean and the audio is good enough.

There is also a Still Gallery of about two dozen photos. Some of them, including wardrobe test shots, are pretty good. Also check out the 3-minute theatrical trailer. Video is a tad dirty, but it's one of those endearingly cheesy, faux behind- the-scenes coming attractions. Finally there are additional trailers for All About Eve, Gentlemen's Agreement and How Green Was My Valley. Normally, I'd scoff at such blatant DVD self-promotion, but younger viewers adventurous enough to rent An Affair to Remember, may want to check the trailers out for some other classic choices.

DVD- ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

No ROM extras have been included.

Parting Thoughts