“Didn’t you just watch this movie?” my beautiful wife asked as she passed through the den the evening which I watched this film. No, gentle reader; we know I watched Indiscreet a couple weeks ago. I am internally aghast that my wife might think that all Technicolor Cary Grant movies from the late 1950s look the same.
C’mon, man, you know the plot, ainna? Grant plays a suave playboy engaged to an New York heiress meets a woman engaged to a wealthy man on a ship crossing the Atlantic. They strike up a friendship, which everyone else on board thinks is an affair. They visit his grandmother in her home in a beautiful Mediterranean setting, and the engaged woman (played by Deborah Kerr) starts to fall for him–and he for her. As they reach New York, they make a pact to meet at the top of the Empire State Building in six months if they’ve broken away. On the day of their reunion, she is struck by a car and cannot make it, and he feels jilted. But he eventually meets her again and discovers her secret. Sorry if I spoiled it for you, but the film has been a part of our culture from its debut up until the end of the time when we had a culture. Sleepless in Seattle relies on it heavily, for crying out loud.
I have seen this film before some time ago, and although I enjoy it, I did not get into it so much as apparently, at least fictional, Baby Boomer women might have. I still want to be Cary Grant when I grow up (and, as he said, “So do I.”).
I don’t think I have many other Cary Grant films hidden amongst the stacks, so I will have to hunt for them in the wild. But Cary Grant movies for the home video market seem to be more videocassette than DVD, and the VHS tapes are getting thin out there all ready.
