Elle et lui

This is an absolutely beautiful flim, with two beautiful, shining stars. Deborah Kerr, always the epitome of British lady-like reserve... that dainty face and that curled red hair... always bringing a grace to the roles she plays (except for Karen Holmes in "From Here To Eternity"... but that's another story). She's breathtakingly grand as Terry McKay, the class-act who falls in love with a playboy (Grant), though she is engaged to another. And Cary ... the most gorgeous person to EVER grace this earth! He's absolutely marvelous as playboy Nickie Ferrante, who finds himself falling quickly in love with someone other than his fiancee. I have never seen chemistry on screen like this! Although the movie may be classified as "sap" or "a love story"... it's got it's funny moments ("Do you think it will ever take the place of night baseball?", "Top of the mornin' to ya!"--"And the rest of the day to you!"). But there are some scenes that just absolutely take your breath away... like when they are visiting Nickie's grandmother (in my opinion, the point that they realize their deep love for each other). Also, when they meet their fiancees in New York and while Terry's hugging Ken, Nickie gently kisses his fingertips and places them on her glove, and then she holds her glove to her cheek. Truly divine. However, the defining moment of this film (believe me, you better have some hankies handy!) is at the end... the look on Grant's face whenever he sees the portrait is PRICELESS. And of course, Kerr's voice trembling at the words "Darling, don't look at me like that." I give this movie a definite 10.

Grant's charming philanderer Nicky Ferrante, a renowned bachelor, and Kerr's American nightclub singer Terry McKay meet aboard a transatlantic luxury liner steaming back to New York via Naples and surrender—in the midst of good humor—to their undeniable chemistry…

Unfortunately, both are hampered with others lovers… At the end of the voyage, they make a promise… In six months, if both are free they will reunite at the top of the Empire State Building, "the nearest thing they have to heaven in New York."

In the day of the meeting, the reformed Grant put his paintbrushes away and luckily paces the skyscraper's roof, but Kerr, looking up to heaven to see him, is involved in a serious accident…

What fallows is almost unbelievable as Grant yields to pompous cynicism, unaware Kerr is too proud to let him know the truth…

With four Oscar nominations, and with attractive settings as the French Riviera, and two appealing beautiful people sharing pink champagne, Leo McCarey's pretty good romantic film gives off flashes of gaiety and sways with longing hearts to be filled with love and life

...especially if that man is being played by Cary Grant! I'm not going to spoil it for you by repeating WHAT Grant's character says that sounds ridiculous, I'll let you watch and find out. I'd just like to know what kind of bucks the studio held out to Grant to get him to speak some of these lines, which are mainly the lines every woman wants to hear from a man who looks and moves like Cary Grant.

The idea behind this film is that two people on the threshold of middle age - at least in the 1950's - meet on a long cruise and fall in love. So far, so good. But there are complications, or else there would be no movie. Both are involved with wealthy members of the opposite sex and have no money or real skills of their own. They agree to try to make a go of it independently, having no contact with the other, and to meet at the top of the Empire State Building six months from the day of landing in New York if all works out. Complications ensue.

You are obviously setting yourself up for disaster or at least miscommunication and bitterness if you say things like "if one of us doesn't show up, no questions". No grudge maybe, but no questions, no bothering to find out what went wrong? Wouldn't it just eat at you not knowing during the six months if the other person just forgot all about this plan in the first place and you are eking out a living for nothing? I shall now prepare to be pelted by eggs, tomatoes, and tear stained handkerchiefs.

I do love this film so and one thing it has that the original Love Affair did not have was that great title song, sung over the credits by Vic Damone. It was composed by Harry Warren and Harold Adamson and it's one of the great movie themes of all time. Guaranteed to put you in the mood for romance and tears.

This version with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr sticks pretty close to the original with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. Two people, each engaged to others, meet on shipboard and fall in love. It's one of those chemical things that no one can help.

Grant's a playboy who candidly admits he's never worked a day in his life and Kerr wants a bit more security than that. They agree to meet at the top of the Empire State Building in exactly six months to see if the sparks are still there. But something is always interrupting the course of history and romance.

Can't say much more than that, but as Kerr reminds Grant if they don't meet it will be for a darn good reason and if you see the film you'll agree she had one.

This was the second of three films that Grant and Kerr made together and this is easily the best of them. I don't think Cary Grant was ever more romantic on the screen and that is saying something.

Cathleen Nesbitt though old enough to be his mother, plays Cary's grandmother in grand old world style. Her part had previously been played by Maria Ouspenskaya and later on in the Warren Beatty-Annette Bening remake was done by Katharine Hepburn.

If your taste run to screen romances, this is THE film you do not dare miss.

This film has to be the best romantic film that I've ever seen, even above Gone With the Wind, and Casablanca, but on the same level as The English Patient (my favorite film of all time). After I saw Sleepless in Seattle when I was in high school and caught the many references to this film, I decided to check it out for myself. Needless to say, with the whole "shipboard romance" aspect of it, and the promise to meet again in six months atop the Empire State Building of all places, I quickly became hooked. The scene that takes place on the French Riviera with Nickie's grandmother playing the piano, oh God is it beautiful! Cary Grant is so debonair and suave and Deborah Kerr is so ravishing and stunningly beautiful, that it always demands repeated viewings from me (at least twice a year).

Seeing this film always makes me wonder if something like the kind of relationship describes within this film would actually BE possible in real life. Would and could someone actually leave the person they were engaged to in order to marry a complete and total stranger they just met days ago? I'd like to think that it could, but then again I am nothing but a hopeless romantic. The final scene always tears my heart out no matter how many times I've seen it. I'm always sobbing. Watching this film around the fourteenth day of February (even if you are single) is always a treat. It allows our fantasies to take wing so that we may think we are actually the one meeting our beloved atop the Empire State Building in a thunderstorm.

Watch this film with a box of industrial-strength kleenex nearby.

My rating: 4 stars