Love is in the air and Cinema Paradiso has pieced together a special Valentine path from variations on a classic romance that continue to delight audiences of all ages. One good film leads to another, so why not discover some tips on what to watch next if you liked Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993) ?
The road to true love has never run smoothly and no one knows this better than the star-crossed couples in films linked by a rendezvous at the Empire State Building. Leo McCarey visited the story in An Affair to Remember (1957), with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr being buffeted by fate and it's this film that helps Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks forge a long-distance connection in Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle. These films remain irresistible in their own distinctive ways and lead on to some other tempting titles for Cinema Paradiso users to enjoy.
Sleepless in Seattle
Directed by Nora Ephron, Sleepless in Seattle isn't a remake of An Affair to Remember. But it would be lost without its most iconic scene and its innate sense of romance. One conversation proves the point. As Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) and best friend Becky (Rosie O'Donnell) are watching the 1957 weepie, Annie declares that this was a time when people really knew how to be in love. 'That's your problem,' Becky replies, 'You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.'
The project had been in the works for some time before Ephron became involved. Virginia schoolteacher Jeff Arch had written the original draft after the birth of his son. Producer Gary Foster had been suitably touched by the story about a Baltimore woman being charmed by a Seattle widower's appearance on a late-night radio phone-in and he had given it to David S. Ward (who had won an Oscar for George Roy Hill's con classic, The Sting, 1973) to rework, while he set about finding co-stars who would melt hearts.
Initially, Meg Ryan and then-husband Dennis Quaid were linked with the roles. But Julia Roberts, Kim Basinger, Demi Moore and Madonna all expressed an interest after Foster passed the screenplay to Ephron for a little polishing in conjunction with her writer sister, Delia. The pair were no strangers to writing for the screen, as parents Henry and Phoebe Ephron had worked on such classics as Jean Negulesco's Daddy Long Legs (1955) and Walter Lang's Carousel (1956) and Desk Set (1957). Indeed, Phoebe was so well known around the film colony that when she had taken the teenage Nora to watch An Affair to Remember and she had sobbed all the way through it, her mother had introduced her to Cary Grant to help her feel better.
Ephron had already secured a couple of Oscar nominations of her own for Mike Nichols's Silkwood (1985) and Carl Reiner's When Harry Met Sally... (1989). But her directorial career had gotten off to a disappointing start after the critics had turned on her Julie Kavner comedy, This Is My Life (1992). Undaunted, Ephron was convinced she could do something special with Sleepless in Seattle and her confidence was further boosted when she convinced Tom Hanks to take the role of Sam Baldwin after he had complained that his son, Jonah, got more laughs than he did.
Among the conditions that Hanks stipulated in agreeing to reunite with Ryan after John Patrick Shanley's Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) was a chance to rewrite some of his dialogue and the opportunity to improvise on the set. One of the scenes that emerged from this off-the-cuff byplay saw Sam and brother-in-law Greg (Victor Gerber) joke about getting emotional while watching Robert Aldrich's macho war adventure, The Dirty Dozen (1967). But shooting didn't always go so smoothly, as Nathan Watt (who had beaten Jason Schwartzman to the role of Jonah) was so starstruck by Hanks that he kept winding him up and had to be replaced. Hanks has since admitted to having been cranky during the first phase of production and was mightily relieved when Ross Malinger was cast as his replacement eight year-old son.
More problems arose when Foster was denied permission to shoot at the Empire State Building. As owner Leona Helmsley - the flamboyant businesswoman who was nicknamed 'the Queen of Mean' - was behind bars at the time for tax evasion, Ephron asked the publicist friend who represented Helmsley to pay her a visit in prison and she agreed to let them use the lobby and the observation deck for six hours. This didn't leave them long enough to shoot Valentine's Day meeting and the scene had to be filmed in Seattle, where Ephron called in a favour from another old friend to shoot in a hangar at a naval base that was about to be decommissioned. When the USN declined her request, Ephron asked Elizabeth Taylor's ex-husband, Senator John Warner, to use his influence as a former Secretary of the Navy and, as was often the case, she ended up getting her way.
She also struck lucky in securing the services of Swedish cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, who had won Academy Awards for his work on Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers (1973) and Fanny and Alexander (1982) and who had shown a keen eye for urban America in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Of the many striking images that Nykvist created, the most memorable is the first, as the camera rises above the Chicago cemetery in homage to Saul Steinberg's famous illustration, 'View of the World From 9th Avenue', which had adorned the cover of The New Yorker in March 1976.
The soundtrack was also a triumph, although Ephron's insistence on finding room for 20 songs caused composer John Barry to quit. He was replaced by Marc Shaiman, who shared an Oscar nomination with Ramsey McLean for the Harry Connick, Jr. number, 'A Wink and a Smile'. But the standouts for many will be Nat King Cole's rendition of 'Stardust', Louis Armstrong's 'A Kiss to Build a Dream On' and a pair of Jimmy Durante gems, 'Make Someone Happy' and 'As Time Goes By', which had been performed so memorably by Dooley Wilson in Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942).
Earning $126 million at the US box office alone on a budget of $22 million, the picture was the runaway romantic hit of 1993. On the back of its success, Ephron (who had also taken a vocal cameo as 'Disappointed in Denver') coaxed Hanks and Ryan into teaming for a third and last time on You've Got Mail (1998), a digital media reworking of another venerated classic, Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940). She also made amends to Parker Posey for cutting her part in Sleepless in Seattle by casting her as Hanks's publishing executive girlfriend. These collaborations would be the highlights of a career that also included scripting credits on Mike Nichols's Heartburn (1986) and Herbert Ross's My Blue Heaven (1990) and writer-directing gigs on Mixed Nuts (1994), Michael (1996), Bewitched (2005) and Julie and Julia (2009).
