News headlines pronounce that rich "Casanova" Nickie Ferrante is finally engaged, to rich Lois Clark, and is ready to settle down. However, on a ship route from Europe to New York, Nickie meets Terry—a woman who is engaged to someone else. Nickie and Terry fall in love, despite commitments to other people. As the ship docks at New York, Nickie and Terry make a deal: if they end their respectful engagements, they will meet in six months on the top of the Empire State Building. As the day arrives, Terry rushes, but is hit by a car on the street. Nickie waits for her at the top of the building, but gives up when she doesn't show up. Later, Nickie arrives at Terry's home, and finds out she now cannot walk anymore and needs a wheelchair. They embrace each other.
The director Leo McCarey's last significant movie, "An Affair to Remember" is a tepid soap opera-romance that, unfortunately, did not age that well. While the concept of a couple who falls in love despite being already engaged to other people is interesting, the execution is strangely uneventful, boring and unexciting, leaving a standard movie without highlights. Cary Gramt still has some charm here and there, yet his role as Nickie is routine, whereas his interaction with Terry has no chemistry. It is kind of naive and illogical that Nickie and Terry promise to meet each other in six months at the Empire State Building, without ever exchanging phone numbers or leaving room for alternative contacts in case that something happens to one of them (which, of course, it does) which could easily ruin their plan. In the entire film, there is only one inspired moment: the one where Terry stands on the balcony, while the door swings open, until it stops, revealing the reflection of the Empire State Building in the mirror next to her. Sadly, the rest of the movie is without such imagination or creativity. Even more surprisingly, it never shows Terry using a crutch or the wheelchair, and treats it as some sort of an unspeakable taboo, as if the viewers are unprepared for such dark thought. After the accident, Nickie is just shown sitting. This is the most obvious in the bizarre sequence where Nickie enters her room, but the wheelchair is off screen, and his shock is left without a context, as if paraplegics have to be censored from the mind.
Grade:+
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