The great love of my life

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Movie
German title The great love of my life
Original title An affair to remember
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1957
length 115 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Leo McCarey
script Delmer Daves ,
Leo McCarey
production Jerry Wald
for 20th Century Fox
music Hugo Friedhofer ,
Harry Warren
camera Milton R. Krasner
cut James B. Clark
occupation
synchronization

The great love of my life (original title An Affair to Remember ) is an American romance film from 1957 by Leo McCarey . Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant play the leading roles. The script by Delmer Daves and Leo McCarey goes back to a story by Leo McCarey and Mildred Cram .

action

The nightclub singer Terry McKay and the adored playboy Nickie Ferrante meet on board the luxury linerConstitution ” . Ferrante is engaged, McKay is being courted by a friend in America. Ferrante's fiancée Lois Clarke is extremely wealthy and will bring a large fortune into the marriage. But their relationship with their partners is not the way it should be, and Terry and Nickie are more than friendly from the first moment. You spend the days on board harmoniously with each other, although other, curious passengers are watching you.

When they go ashore in Villefranche , they visit Nickie's grandmother Janou, and Terry learns from her that Nickie was actually a gifted painter before he completely devoted himself to his volatile way of life. The two women get along straight away, Janou spontaneously promises Terry that she will inherit her large white mantilla .

Back on board, Nickie Terry proposes marriage and promises her to return to a job. Terry accepts his proposal, but they want to wait six months to sort out their personal affairs and so Nickie can earn a living. When they enter New York Harbor, for example, they arrange a meeting in six months up on the viewing terrace of the Empire State Building .

Back on land, the past overtakes them both. Lois is waiting for Nickie, and Ken for Terry. Lois has arranged a television interview about their wedding, but Nickie mostly gives dismissive answers, but talks about the plans he actually has for Terry: getting married in six months and wanting to work as a painter again. Terry, on the other hand, breaks with Ken and doesn't let him change his mind.

In the meantime Terry appears again as a singer and Nickie can sell the first pictures. They have no contact with each other during this time because they have not exchanged their addresses.

On the agreed date for the rendezvous, Terry is in such a hurry to get to meet Nickie that she is hit by a car in front of the Empire State Building. She is hospitalized and Nickie waits in vain on the observation deck of the high-rise building until late at night.

Due to her injuries, Terry is now temporarily dependent on a wheelchair, from which she works as a music teacher at a Catholic school, as she cannot yet afford the money for an operation from her meager salary. Ken's offers to help her with the financing, she rejects all, because she does not want to slide back into the previous relationship with him. Out of pride, she doesn't try to contact Nickie and tell him why she didn't show up for the meeting. Out of pity, an antique dealer gives her a picture painted by Nickie, which shows her wearing Janou's scarf.

One evening Nickie and his companion run into Terry and Ken while walking out of the theater. Both pretend they hardly know the other. Ken wants to run after him and tell him about Terry, but she stops him. On Christmas Day, Nickie visits Terry at her apartment after finding her new address. He wants to bring her Janous scarf, who died some time ago. Terry receives him, sitting on a couch with a blanket over his legs, and still doesn't want Nickie to find out what actually stopped her from going up to the Empire State Building.

As he leaves, at the door, Nickie mentions the picture he painted of Terry wearing Janou's scarf. He explains that he gave it to a young woman he did not know for free. The gallery owner, Courbet, who was entrusted with the sale of his pictures, told him about the woman who was paralyzed and could not afford the picture. At this point in the conversation, the light suddenly dawns on Nickie. He resolutely opens the bedroom door, where he sees his painting hanging on the wall in the mirror. The film ends with the reconciliation and the prospect that Terry will learn to walk again, just as Nickie has learned to paint again.

production

Production notes

The location of the film, which had the working title Love Affair , was, among other things, the transatlantic liner Constitution ; the film was also shot in Villefranche-sur-Mer , on the French Riviera and in New York. However, most of the film was made in the Hollywood studio. Was filmed from mid-February until 10 April 1957, additional scenes were shot from 8 May 1957. As 20th Century Fox found out that Columbia Pictures the rights to the name Love Affair had, the title was accordingly in An Affair to Remember changed . The writer Donald Ogden Stewart , who was on the so-called blacklist at the time , and who contributed to the script for the 1939 version, was omitted from the credits.

McCarey originally wanted Ingrid Bergman to play the lead female role.

The ballet, which Nickie and Lois as well as Ken and Terry attend on Christmas Eve, was obviously not performed for the film, but comes from a recording that Twentieth Century Fox had used in part in There's no business like show business back in 1954.

Background, music

Leo McCarey undertook with this film a remake of his own film Love Affair (dt. Restless love ) from 1939 with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne in the leading roles. Later in 1994, another film adaptation was made under the title Perfect Love Affair with Warren Beatty , Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn . This third version hardly differs from the second version, so the dialogue at the end of the film is also taken verbatim. Leo McCarey is said to have said that his two film versions differ to the extent that Grant could not hide his extraordinary sense of humor, which is in contrast to the embodiment by Charles Boyer, which is why the second version is much funnier.

Jerry Vermilye stated in his biography of Cary Grant that the earlier popularity of Love Affair led McCarey to remake it in 1957. In his opinion, the new version was far inferior to the original version, but the new film was also very well received by the audience. Symptomatic of the film's problems was the fact that a small black-and-white film that ran 18 years ago with a duration of eighty-seven minutes had now been added to Eastman Color and CinemaScope, so that the film ended up with a length of 115 minutes brought. Deborah Kerr also reported on the "murderous problems" that would have lain in seemingly smooth love scenes and particularly referred to a scene in which both had to dance, sing and alternately turn their faces to the camera and look tenderly in love.

Deborath Kerr hadn't seen Cathleen Nesbitt, who played Grant's grandmother, in 19 years. At the time, she was cast in a small role in the play Much Ado About Nothing , in which Nesbitt appeared in a leading role. This film marks the beginning of a long friendship between the actresses.

In the song passages in which Deborah Kerr performs the theme song An Affair to Remember (Our Love Affair) , Marni Nixon acted as her voice double. The film composer and arranger Alfred Newman was of the opinion that the interplay between singing and facial expressions had not worked out as well with any other as with these two. In the opening credits An Affair to Remember is sung by Vic Damone , for whom the song became a big hit, with which it was placed in the charts for 16 weeks. The song became the standard and was recorded by artists such as Nat King Cole , Dinah Washington , Johnny Mathis, and Frank Sinatra . In his last film Not So Fast My Boy , Cary Grant sings a few lines of the song. Many years after the film ended, Grant admitted that, like many fans, he always had tears in his eyes by the end of the film.

reception

publication

The film premiered in New York on July 11, 1957. On July 19, 1957, it ran generally in the United States. In the same year it was published in the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, the United Kingdom (London), Italy, Sweden, France, Ireland, Portugal, Finland, Japan and Australia. It premiered in the Federal Republic of Germany on September 27, 1957 and in Austria on November 8, 1957.

The melodrama was released in Hong Kong in 1958, in Spain (Madrid) in 1959, and also in Denmark. The film was first shown in Turkey in 1960. It has also been published in Greece, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and the Soviet Union. The full English title is Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember .

The film was released on January 9, 2006 by Twentieth Century Fox as part of the series "Große Film-Klassiker" with a German soundtrack on DVD. The film was re-released on October 24, 2014, this time by Alive, on both DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

criticism

The online portal Filmdienst was of the opinion: "Cultivated directors and high-class actors catch the dream factory-like, sentimental story."

Kino.de said: "Leo McCareys Romance is one of the great classics of Hollywood and arrived as the movie Meg Ryan , Sleepless in Seattle ' look again and again in the' 90s to new glory. McCarey, who had already filmed the material almost 20 years earlier (' Restless Love ') , was able to build on the experience of parade gentleman Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr for the second version, through their nuanced interaction the film 'that certain something 'receives. Handkerchief alert! "

Also Cinema turned on Meg Ryan's tears of emotion in Sleepless in Seattle and wrote: "To the howling beautiful! this truly heartbreaking romance ”. So the conclusion was: “One of the most beautiful romances of all time”.

Josef Schnelle was convinced that “the dialogues - sometimes comedic, then again as if set in stone, make this film an irresistible experience”. “Only in the 1950s is such a sophisticated couple conceivable in such décor as Glenn Gordon Caron's second remake with Warren Beatty and Annette Benning [has]”. Love Affair failed miserably. There were the "constant twists the story, the elegance of the speeches and and the small comic scenes of stuffy marginal figures, which are always the great lovers only in the way it formerly know as the two main characters, what about those going to the make the great love of my life a little essay about the confusion of love and life ”.

Geoffrey Wansell wrote Cary Grant in his biography . The career of a perfect gentleman : “When The Great Love of my Life came into the cinemas in July 1957, the critics complained about his 'old-fashioned demeanor'. The 'New Yorker Zeitung' wrote that the film was 'terribly sentimental', and ' Time ' emphasized that only Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant with their acting performance had saved this sugar-sweet farce from suffocating in its maudlin packaging. The Los Angeles Times had nothing but praise for the film and its director. "

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said the appeal of this story lies in the velvety manner in which two seemingly smug people find each other in love. The script offers a lot of humorous conversation, but something goes wrong after the couple left the ship. The marriage pact seems rather ridiculous and a little childish for adults. The fact that she is keeping her accident a secret is also rather absurd, as is the slowness with which the man grasps the obvious. That was applied a little too thick.

Variety believed that the addition of comedy lines, music, and color in Cinemascope made this remake of the 1939 film a hit film that was alternately witty and tenderly sentimental.

Nick Zegarac said for MediaScreen that Leo McCarey's remake of his own Love Affair production was a masterful update of his pre-war classic for the post-war generation. But regardless of whether you see the original or its remake, the end result is ultimately planned to be the same - have Kleenex ready! In addition, the plot of this stirring piece is now very out of date, although there are some inspiring romantic and touching moments, and at least in the middle section it tends to provoke yawns.

Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' Welt Filmkritiken couldn't get anything out of the film and said that the bubbly comedy on board the ship was easy to handle. The subsequent melodrama in New York was not only a mood but also a film killer. The story is a prime example of the shameless manipulation of emotions that Hollywood uses to sell its soapy water.

success

The film is quoted in the comedy Sleepless in Seattle . The great love of my life also benefited from the success of this comedy , as a new generation of fans sold the film millions on VHS and later on DVD. At the time, the film was one of the top-grossing 1957 films, with $ 3.85 million in box office revenues.

Awards (selection)

The film was nominated for four Oscars in 1958 , but came away empty-handed.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for The great love of my life . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2005 (PDF; test number: 15 291 V / DVD).
  2. a b An Affair to Remember Notes at TCM (English).
  3. a b c d e f g h An Affair to Remember Articles at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (English).
  4. Jerry Vermilye: Cary Grant. His films - his life. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1979, 1984, 4th edition, ISBN 3-453-86005-5 , pp. 153-155.
  5. The great love of my life Fig. DVD case (in the picture Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr)
  6. The great love of my life Fig. Blu-ray Disc.
  7. The great love of my life see filmdienst.de. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
  8. The Great Love of My Life: Leo McCarey's great Hollywood romance with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.
    sS kino.de. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
  9. The great love of my life sS cinema.de (with 7 film images). Retrieved May 23, 2018.
  10. Thomas Koebner , Jürgen Felix: Melodrama and love comedy, Reclam film genres. Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co., Stuttgart, 2007, 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-018409-7 , comments by Josef Schnelle on the film "The great love of my life".
  11. Geoffrey Wansell: Cary Grant. The career of a perfect gentleman - to the film The great love of my life. Publisher Gremese.
  12. Bosley Crowther : An Affair to Remember In: The New York Times . July 20, 1957. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
  13. An Affair to Remember. s. Newspaper article (English).
  14. Dennis Schwartz: An Affair to Remember - Not much to remember sS homepages.sover.net.