Deborah Kerr

An Affair To Remember (50th Anniversary Edition)
$19.98
Finally watched this movie, after years of hearing raves.

Full disclosure: I'm a sucker for a good, sentimental romance. Love Cary Grant. Love Deborah Kerr.

But this movie is overwhelmingly cheesy -- when it's not overpoweringly saccharine, that is. The script is hackneyed, and the major plot twist is preposterous. Without adding a spoiler here, does the very perceptive and intelligent Terry McKay not know how to use a telephone? or write a letter? If they love one another as profoundly as they both know, then certainly Nickie would not have rejected her, but embraced her unconditionally. The shark jumps even higher when the Treacle Children's Choir shows up. TWICE, just in case their 'cuteness' wasn't hammered home the first time. Awful. Rated IN-13; insulin recommended for viewers over 13.

Really, don't bother. If you've not seen it yet, you're not missing anything. If you want to watch a really *superb* sentimental love story, run-don't-walk to "I Know Where I'm Going": I Know Where I'm Going! - Criterion Collection

The Sundowners
$19.98
The movie takes place in the outback of Australia. It is about an itinerant family of sheep tenders: Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchem, and friend Peter Ustinov. The scenery and the acting is far better than the movie plot itself. With lessor actors, this would have a totally boring movie, but with these fine actors, it is pretty good. I give it 4 stars for acting and 2 for everything else. A movie that should be reserved for TV.

King Solomon's Mines
$19.98
This classic movie appeared when I was about ten, and I can remember laughing at some of the more unlikely moments in the film. Now that I'm a geezerly age I feel rather nostalgic about it. I have a friend who told me he gets together annually with a buddy to view King Solomon's Mines yet again. There is much stock studio footage of central Africa used here, and it shows peoples and traditional dancing that I suspect is no longer present on today's African continent. The storyline is just barely plausible, but compelling enough to have been filmed at least three times: first in the '30s, then this version circa 1950, and most recently in the '70s. Maybe it's not the acting or the story, but all that wonderful African scenery that captivates me. One disadvantage for me now is that all the actors are dead...Deborah Kerr just recently...and I wonder what the hell has happened and where did my life go.

The End of the Affair
$14.94
Given the puritan production codes of the era, this is a surprisingly adult film for its time. The ending is not the usual retribution for sin, but fits in with the plot development and Graham Greene's religious bent.
While not graphic of course, it is clear these two are having a sexual love affair--there is a shot of a rumpled bed, a line about taking a taxi to a hotel, a scene of a passionate kiss followed by a fade to black, and then Deborah adjusting her earrings and clothes. Given the prudery of most 'adult' dramas of the time, I'm amazed at what they got away with. Deborah was excellent, not a goody-two-shoes, but a complicated conflicted woman, who is an adult,and an adulteress,though a sympathetic one. Van Johnson, though to me he had no physical charisma, played his role with layers and complexity. This makes a great companion piece to the 1999 film with Fiennes and Moore. A few lines are exactly the same, though the latter film has more heat and frankness, of course.
There is one trailer from the original, and some extra material related to the 1999 remake, just for filler and promotion I guess.