A Film Canon

This melodramatic masterpiece renders sentimentality as poignant, bittersweet and melancholy as possible, without robbing it of its manipulative intensity, largely as a result of McCarey's curious presentation of melodrama as the reconfiguration of screwball comedy around television, rather than the newspaper industry. As a result, the first act, in which engaged playboy Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) and engaged singer Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) fall in love aboard a transatlantic cruise, continues the subdued screwball overtones of McCarey's 1939 original, fusing conversation with consummation, delighting in the charismatic idiosyncrasy of its female lead, strenuously advocating marriage for love over profit, and indulging in the semi-obligatory pastoral aside, in the form of a hushed, idyllic French garden. However, the characteristic backdrop of the newspaper world is deflected into a more omniscient media presence, from the series of international radio broadcasts that open the film, to the increasingly inescapable spectacle that Nickie and Terry provide to the cruise ship (culminating in a sequence in which their comic, symmetric awkwardness effectively 'frames' them to the voyeuristic passengers and crew, justifying the notable absence of secondary characters, at least in this act), and, finally, the television segment that sets the tragic second act, and melancholy third act, in play. From this perspective, it feels as if Nickie and Terry's autumnal distance from each other - reiterated by the burnt umber of her hair, costumes and decor, fusing Technicolour with the glossiness of a magazine spread - is ultimately a symptom of their increasing inability to connect with, or control the dissemination of, images of themselves, explaining the critical role Nickie's portrait plays in the conclusion, and clarifying its idealistic, fantastic overtones.