An Affair to Remember

An Affair to Remember (1957) is Leo McCarey's romance, ready to watch online on iFILM. On a transatlantic ocean liner, smooth playboy Nickie Ferrante meets nightclub singer Terry McKay. Both are engaged to other people. Both know it. They fall for each other anyway.

Aware that a shipboard fling rarely survives dry land, Nickie (Cary Grant) and Terry (Deborah Kerr) strike a deal: if the feeling holds after six months, they'll meet at the top of the Empire State Building. The appointed day arrives. One of them climbs to the observation deck and waits. Then fate steps in, the plan collapses, and the two are left with silence and everything unsaid.

McCarey filmed this story twice — once in 1939, and again here in glossy color and CinemaScope. It's the rooftop ending that Sleepless in Seattle keeps weeping over, the reason the skyscraper rendezvous became cinema shorthand for love. A polished slice of old Hollywood romance you're allowed to cry at. Stream An Affair to Remember (1957) online on iFILM.