An Affair to Remember

An Affair to Remember (1957)

Ending / spoiler

(3 votes)

By a fluke, Nickie discovers where Terry is staying, although not that she is paralyzed. He barges in to see her and yells at her for breaking his heart. He is just about to storm out when he realises that a woman in a wheelchair came to the studio that sells his paintings and was interested in the one that looked like Terry. He had his agent give the painting to the paralyzed woman. He enters another room of her apartment and discovers the painting. Suddenly he knows why she didn't meet him at the appointed time. She cries and they hug. She states "if you can be a painter I can walk" and the movie ends with a shot of the Empire State Building. In this ending it is left unknown if Terry ever walks again, but none of it seems to matter because they have each other.

fenwestwick

Revealing mistake: An open water shot of the Constitution shows the wake from the camera boat.

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Question: In the last scene a neighbor gets Terri settled on the couch and goes to leave. Why was there not a wheelchair or crutches available for Teri's use once the woman left?

Answer: As Terry is paralyzed, crutches would be useless. She would also be unable to get into a wheelchair by herself. The real reason is that this is a rather flimsy plot device. When Cary Grant arrives and sees Terrie on the couch, he is unaware of her condition. The whole point of the scene is that he is resentful and hurt because he mistakenly believed she rejected him six months earlier by not showing up at the Empire State Building. She hid her condition, not wanting his pity or for him to feel obligated to be with her. If a wheelchair was visible, he would have immediately known the truth, and that would have spoiled the way he finds out, his reaction to it, and the overly-sentimental ending.

raywest

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