In 1950s Connecticut, a flustered housewife faces a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in the outside world.In 1950s Connecticut, a flustered housewife faces a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in the outside world.In 1950s Connecticut, a flustered housewife faces a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in the outside world.
- Nominated for 4 Oscars
- 102 wins & 96 nominations total
- Sarah Deagan
- (as Jordan Puryear)
- Billy Hutchinson
- (as Kyle Smyth)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaCinematographer Edward Lachman created the 1950s "look" by using the same type of lighting equipment (incandescent), the same lighting techniques, and the same type of lens filters when shooting this film, as would have been used on a 1950s era melodrama.
- GoofsThe typewriter around the corner from Frank Whitaker's office is a late-model Selectric (circa 1971 at the earliest).
- Quotes
Cathy Whitaker: That was the day I stopped believing in the wild ardor of things. Perhaps in love, as well. That kind of love. The love in books and films. The love that tells us to abandon our lives and plans, all for one brief touch of Venus. So often we fail at that kind of love. The world just seems too fragile a place for it. And of every other kind, life remains full. Perhaps it's just we who are too fragile.
- Crazy creditsThe first end credit reads "for Bompi"
- ConnectionsFeatured in Anatomy of a Scene: Far from Heaven (2002)
Cathy can't catch the clue when she bails Frank out of the police station and he mutters angrily about the arresting officers mistaking him for a "loiterer." A loiterer in a neat business suit with a topcoat in Hartford? Only one kind of well-dressed character like that attracted police attention in those days.
Dispensing good cheer everywhere, Cathy decides to bring dinner to her hardworking-at-night husband (no spoiler here, every media review has this part). And what should she find? Frank is in the arms of a man, kissing him actually, clothing in disarray.
Today, a presumably straight spouse or lover being gay, secretly, isn't a taboo subject. It was in Cathy and Frank's time and, in fact, no movie from that period would have touched this subject with a ten-foot boom mike. "An Affair to Remember" was risque enough.
Cathy insists Frank get help and James Rebhorn in a brief role as psychiatrist Dr. Bowman explains the most modern therapeutic approaches to "converting" Frank to exclusive heterosexuality. This was in the days when homosexuality was an official diagnosed mental illness.
In what could have been a familiar variation of the white/black awkward beginnings of friendship seen in Sidney Poitier movies but which in this instance has a refreshing originality, Cathy befriends gardener Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert). An attractive and prominent white woman being seen in public with a black man in the South at this time would have led to probably horrific repercussions. Here we get to see 1950s racist northern suburbia, people who decry Arkansas obduracy (there's a brief shot of President Eisenhower on TV announcing the despatch of the 101st Airborne Division to confront the state's mad governor at Little Rock High School) while dispensing their own venom. No guns, no lynchings, no white sheets - just an insidious degradation of blacks, reducing them to actual invisibility when convenient.
The friendship between Cathy and Raymond is at first tentative and it grows with affecting tenderness. So does the shocked anger of the wealthy gaggle in Frank and Cathy's social circle.
Is Frank cured of his "illness?" Does racial tolerance and respect for diversity seep into Hartford's tony neighborhood? Does everyone live happily ever after? Go see the film. The mid-afternoon packed audience in Manhattan's Lincoln Plaza Cinema broke into applause at the end.
Viola Davies turns in a small but critically important role as the Whitaker's maid, Sybil. Fine acting.
Director Todd Haynes allowed Moore and Quaid to make their roles real, involving, and anguished and funny in turn. Both stars deserve Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
Rooted in the 50s in many ways, composer Elmer Bernstein turned out a good score, original rather than depending on recognizable tunes from the time. But as is so often the case, at points the score is unduly intrusive where the actors' words and expressions convey all that is necessary, music being an annoyance.
8/10.
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Lejos del cielo
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $13,500,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $15,901,849
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $211,279
- Nov 10, 2002
- Gross worldwide
- $29,027,914
- Runtime1 hour 47 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1