GLENN GORDON CARON
Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBB.
Warren Beatty co-wrote this remake of Leo McCarey’s ever-popular 1939 film of the same name, which was also filmed by McCarey in 1957 as An Affair To Remember. Beatty plays the wandering playboy and Annette Bening is the “regular gal” with whom he happens to be sharing a plane trip. Their flight gets re-routed because of Tropical storms over the Pacific Ocean, and soon they find themselves on a gorgeous, Felliniesque ocean liner where they fall deeply in love. If you can swallow all your disbelief and accept the fact that Beatty’s age is hidden through the use of ten pounds of Vaseline on the camera lens, you will get no end of pleasure from this richly photographed romance. The highlight here is a sequence on Fiji where Beatty visits his aged aunt (played by a, dare I say it, feisty Katharine Hepburn) and Bening charms her to no end (of course the scarf thing is everyone’s favourite! It makes me cry endlessly in the Deborah Kerr version too).
USA, 1994
Screenplay by Robert Towne, Warren Beatty, based on the screenplay by Delmer Daves, Donald Ogden Stewart, story by Mildred Cram, Leo McCarey
Cinematography by Conrad L. Hall
Produced by Warren Beatty
Music by Ennio Morricone
Production Design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti
Costume Design by Milena Canonero
Film Editing by Robert C. Jones
