A Big Chuck Movie Review: “An Affair To Remember [1957]” (VIDEO)

Here is an old movie always worth a second look, "An Affair To Remember."  This stunningly filmed hit starred Cary Grant at his most suave and the always classy Deborah Kerr as doomed lovers destined to never make the ultimate hook-up.

Scottish actress Kerr was perhaps the Meryl Streep of her day with one exception...she never won an Oscar!  Kerr was nominated six different times for the Academy Award for Best Actress but always came up short.  She had to settle for an Honorary Oscar awarded to her for her incredible lifetime achievement in films in 1994

The film pits the silky smooth Grant sparring with the coolly sophisticated Kerr on an ocean liner where both are romantically involved with others.  The couple falls in love and even makes a sentimental visit to Grant's grandmother in the Mediterranean.  Grandma is played to perfection by the aging and always wonderful Cathleen Nesbitt (who actually had an 80-year acting career).  The scenery on this visit is sumptuous.

The two are instantly drawn to each other and make plans to consummate their love affair by meeting blindly at the top of the Empire State Building in the future.  As with any love story/melodrama, the plans go awry when Kerr is involved in an automobile accident while Grant waits impatiently for her at the top of the Empire State.  Of course she never comes. He is crushed and at this point the handkerchiefs come out by the hundreds in the mostly female audiences.

When the two lovers finally meet, she is paralyzed and cannot walk and he realizes the reason she could not make their lover's rendezvous.  It is a scene that packs a powerful emotional wallop.

This is a great movie, and the American Film Institute named it the 5th greatest love story of all time.

I give it three out of four meatballs.

Fellas, find it, rent it and watch it.  It is a GREAT date flick!