Leo McCarey
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Connections, in both directions
The dialogue is witty and there are a few truly hilarious scenes such as Rita Wilson (Hanks' real-life wife) trying in vein to explain why women love "An Affair to Remember" to two men.
A leitmotif is the old Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr weepie "An Affair to Remember", and its key scene on the Empire State Building is echoed with a nice twist in"Sleepless in Seattle".
Evoked by "Sleepless in Seattle," through clips and numerous references in dialogue and soundtrack music, is Leo McCarey's sentimental 1957 classic "An Affair to Remember," a movie that instantly reduces every woman in the new film to tears.
Ephron is smart enough to kid the whole genre by including several clips from the Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr tear-jerker An Affair to Remember and teasing the women who melt at that movie's notion of romantic destiny.
The movie's oh so romantic theory is that two people can be meant to be together, and that something like a radio show can put them on a crash course towards each other, as Annie writes to Sam and gives him rendezvous on top of Empire State Building on Valentine's Day, just like in her favorite movie "An Affair to Remember".
By its own admission, this film is intended as a throwback to the screen romances of the past (An Affair to Remember in particular, which is cited numerous times, and borrowed from explicitly and implicitly).
Oblivion (2013)
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
influenced by An Affair to Remember (1957), Love Affair (1939)
Plot
But by the very nature of Harper's mandated 'mind wipe,' Cruise comes off as a bit robotic and Kosinksi's story is such a mishmash of those that have come before, everything from "WALL*E" to "Star Wars" to "Total Recall" to "An Affair to Remember," that instead of becoming immersed in it, it becomes a game of spot the reference.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Kosinski's film seems haunted by vestigial memories of its own, containing as it does repeated echoes of films as diverse as "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Planet of the Apes," "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones," the animated "Wall*E" and even the classic romance "An Affair to Remember."
Oblivion is so much like and influenced by so many other movies that it doesn’t top or transcend — The Matrix, I Am Legend, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Aliens, Vertigo, Cloud Atlas, Inception, An Affair to Remember.
Along the way, my mind turned to "Wall-E," "Moon," "Independence Day," and even "An Affair to Remember," to name only a few of the many other works Kosinski borrows from.
Oblivion must be the only science-fiction film that borrows substantially from I Am Legend, WALL-E and Sleepless in Seattle — itself a remake of 1957’s An Affair to Remember, which was a remake of 1939’s Love Affair.
Oblivion must be the only science-fiction film that borrows substantially from I Am Legend, WALL-E and Sleepless in Seattle — itself a remake of 1957’s An Affair to Remember, which was a remake of 1939’s Love Affair.
The film’s title may be a nod to Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, and while Robert Luketic’s synthetic rom-com is, of course, worlds away from McCarey’s comedy-of-remarriage masterpiece, the charmingly brittle chemistry between leads Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler keeps things moving pleasurably enough along.
The title of The Ugly Truth echoes that of The Awful Truth, the 1937 Cary Grant-Irene Dunne battle-of-the-sexes film that essentially invented the comic-romantic persona that Grant would wear with such panache for the duration of his career.
The film is not fueled by incident or melodrama - the clearest break it makes from its avowed inspiration, Leo McCarey's heart-rending Make Way for Tomorrow of 1937 - but by character interactions: the film simply places us in the middle of a family situation and allows us to be thrilled and enthralled by the greatest cinematic spectacle of them all, the feelings of human beings.
With its debt to Leo McCareys trenchantly titled Make Way for Tomorrow sixteen years earlier, Yasujiro Ozus Tokyo Story/Tokyo monogatari is no less true, shattering, and not for viewers fretting about unsympathetic grown-up children.
Before they depart, the couple treat themselves to a bittersweet night on the town, and it is here that McCarey’s masterful mise en scène recalls the spare profundity of a Japanese landscape print—no surprise that the film is the ostensible inspiration for Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story.
Of these, the filmmaker's personal favorite and arguably his film with the highest overall reputation among those who've seen it is Make Way for Tomorrow , our current subject; I am not myself quite inclined to call it better than Duck Soup or fellow 1937 release The Awful Truth (with which it shares screenwriter Viña Delmar), but that's pretty damn good company to be in regardless; and serving as the inspiration for Tokyo Story isn't too shabby either.
Tokyo Story was co-written by a longtime associate of Ozu's, Kogo Noda, who felt inspired by his memories of having watched Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow, a tremendously heartfelt 1937 Hollywood drama which recounts a similar story.
The plucky nature of Baron Cohen’s protagonists harken back to Chaplin — and the easiest point of comparison is “The Great Dictator,” right down to the crude Western imitation of foreign language that forms Wadiya’s native tongue — but the creators of Wadiya owe a tremendous debt to “Duck Soup” and its own fictionalized dictatorship, Freedonia.
Although the movie very casually follows the progress of the romance and the assassination scheme, Cohen and the director, Larry Charles , are about as dedicated to plot as the Marx Brothers; the movie's spiritual ancestor is " Duck Soup " and Groucho's Freedonian dictator Rufus T. Firefly.
In much the same way that the allegedly original schtick that Cohen employed in both "Borat" and "Bruno" was little more than a more vulgar variation of the comedic sensibility that the infinitely funnier and more incisive Andy Kaufman found himself publicly crucified for two decades earlier, "The Dictator" is a film that, despite the claims to its uniqueness, owes much of its existence to two of the most famous comedy films ever made--the Marx Brothers classic "Duck Soup" (1933) and Charlie Chaplin's landmark "The Great Dictator."
Despite being a box office hit, it’s not as warmly remembered today as Sleepless in Seattle, which always surprised me – probably because I never cared for Sleepless (or its inspiration, the sappy, unbearable An Affair to Remember), while Mail still charms effortlessly.
In Sleepless, the movie that embodied a woman's fantasies was An Affair to Remember; for men, it was The Dirty Dozen.
That earlier film was partly inspired by "An Affair to Remember," and this one is inspired by "The Shop Around the Corner," but both are really inspired by the appeal of Ryan and Hanks, who have more winning smiles than most people have expressions.
Clooney and the absolutely first-class Farmiga project the kind of understated sexual chemistry and easy intellectual rapport reminiscent of Nick and Nora in " The Thin Man ," Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in " The Awful Truth ."
The film, a surprisingly violent and kinetic slapstick comedy reminiscent of Clive Barker's "Midnight Meat Train," begins with one character aping Harpo Marx's blowtorch lighter bit from Duck Soup and ends with scenes that recall Vincent Ward's visionary The Navigator.
Indeed in the rustic fictional nation of Zubrowka one can almost hear echoes of Freedonia, the nation of the Marx Brothers’ 1933 comedy “Duck Soup,” although this film has none of the brothers’ anarchic energy, of course.
That said, all this film’s multilevel daring comes to a head when the two Joes face off over a diner table; it’s the mirror scene from “Duck Soup” for an age of personality crisis.
But the "once upon a time" exists exclusively in one particular movie junkie's head, where the combat exploits of the Dirty Dozen combine with the madcap slapstick of Duck Soup, where the hardboiled swagger of Sam Fuller meets the grisly gore of Eli Roth (the Hostel director stars as one of the Basterds), where comic shtick and over-writ jive reach a tsunami of camp excess.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Directed by Michel Gondry
influenced by The Awful Truth (1937)
Themes
The philosopher Stanley Cavell has called the classic screwball movies like The Awful Truth (1937) and The Lady Eve (1941) "comedies of remarriage," in which couples are rudely bounced from their Edenic connubial gardens and reunited (after a series of farcical/magical contrivances) in a spirit of wry realism: This time they know they'll live bumpily ever after.
Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr’s An Affair to Remember, one of the grand dames of the genre, was part of a running bit in Sleepless in Seattle — no female character could describe the plot without sobbing, but for the men, it was talking about war epic The Dirty Dozen that got the tears flowing.
Me Before You (2016)
Directed by Thea Sharrock
influenced by An Affair to Remember (1957)
Plot Themes
To be fair, there of echoes of many other more edifying sources—“An Affair to Remember,” “ Pretty Woman ,” the French import “ The Intouchables ”—that reverberate through this “ Beauty and the Beast ” fantasy as it unfolds in a quaint English village.
Watching An Affair to Remember or Brian’s Song?
As Good as It Gets (1997)
Directed by James L. Brooks
influenced by An Affair to Remember (1957)
Themes
Intimately concerned with the embarrassment and difficulty of constant repositioning and mutual readjustments and with all the ethical issues that arise from this activity--the same sort of issues that abound in the films of Leo McCarey (such as My Son John and An Affair to Remember) and Vincente Minnelli (such as The Cobweb and The Band Wagon)--these interactions are the mother lode that all of Brooks's features have been searching for.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Directed by Woody Allen
influenced by An Affair to Remember (1957)
Plot
The side trip and its emotional aftermath are not unlike Deborah Kerr's change of heart toward Cary Grant's playboy in "An Affair to Remember" after a visit to his grandmother.
But it's in this segment that Giant's objective--to redefine masculinity for Bick as something not founded on chauvinistic principles--surfaces, leading to a thoughtful denouement that, like the epilogue of Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth , shows "'til death do us part" from a comforting angle.
Instead, there's a kinship with Hollywood's screwball comedies of the 1930s, where an unlikely romance blossoms in the flurries of a rough and tumble escapade, like the beautiful zaniness of Bringing Up Baby (1938) or classic divorce scenario in The Awful Truth (1937), except equipped with the foul-mouthed glory and sexual fervor inherent to reality.
Which is fine: Cary Grant and Irene Dunne didn't deny their movie-star qualities in " The Awful Truth ," either.
…that dates back to a 1920s Arthur Richman play, The Awful Truth, which was filmed twice before finding its classic incarnation as a star vehicle for Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in 1937.