Nickie Ferrante, aptly described in a Variety review of the film as a "fairly notorious playboy", has just become engaged to a wealthy oil and gravel heiress named Lois Clark, who will soon inherit the staggering fortune of $600 million. (That's roughly over $500 billion in 2014 dollars when you factor in inflation.) He is returning to the U.S. from a trip to Europe on an ocean liner, where he is hounded by curious ordinary people. He meets a lady named Terry McKay, who is engaged to a high-level New York oil businessman named Kenneth Bradley. They talk often, and most of their fellow passengers and the crew think that they're a couple. (This leads to many awkward situations.)
Terry was trying to become a singer in Boston before she met Kenneth and moved to New York to practice becoming a perfect housewife. And as for Nickie....well, as a little boy says, "Everybody on the ship's talkin' about ya!" When he asks what they're saying, the little boy answers, "I don't know. Every time they start talkin' about ya, they make me leave the room." He's irritatingly good at everything he tries, makes it really difficult to care about the character.
During a stop on the Italian coast, Nickie visits his grandmother and Terry tags along. This is by far the best sequence(though lengthy - it takes 21 of the 114 minutes) in the film, there's a garden and a collie named Fidel('faithful"). "It's so peaceful here...it's like another world." "Well, it is another world. It's my grandmother's world." "I think I could stay here forever." "Oh, no, no, no!" Grandma admonishes. "It's a good place to sit and remember, but...you have still to create your memories." His grandma mentions that he used to be a painter before quitting due to being scared of failure. Grandma - Janou - is quite meddlesome and overall a nice old lady. As proof of her meddlesomeness, Janou hints often that Nickie and Terry ought to get married. As they leave to go back to the boat, Terry admires Janou's shawl and, being the nice old lady she is, Janou says she'll send it to her.
After this visit, Nickie and Terry sort of realize that they might love each other, and even more awkwardly avoid each other over the next few days. The last night of the cruise they agree to return to their respective fiance(e)s in New York, and make plans to meet at 5 p.m. on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building on July 1, six months away. At this point, the movie is only half over? Even considering that films moved a lot slower then, this is a dreadfully plodding movie. "What makes life so difficult?" "People."
Nickie breaks up his engagement on live TV during an interview, and soon after watching the painfully uncomfortable scene on her television Terry breaks up with Kenneth, who takes it ridiculously well. Interviewer: "I'm sure you had some wonderful experiences in Europe." "Yes." "...Would you care to elaborate on that statement?" "No." It goes downhill from there. I'm pretty sure Terry's maid is played by the woman who was Mrs. Ziffel in Green Acres.
Terry goes back to Boston and begins a semi-successful singing career again in nightclubs, and Nickie starts painting in earnest, not doing too well. This takes too long to be slammed down our throats.
On July 1, Terry gets hit by a taxi and is paralyzed from the waist down. Kenneth is disgustingly amicable about paying for Terry's hospital bills and taking care of her, and Nickie thinks she stood him up, waiting until midnight and she never shows.
A distraught Nickie mopes around for the next six months, Janou has died by this time. A Catholic priest has in pity found Terry a job as a elementary-school music teacher, and we have a jarringly cheerful (and entirely unnecessary) concert about obeying your conscience by her students. She's too prideful to let him know about her accident, and they awkwardly and unhappily run into each other one night in public. Then there's another performance by Terry's students, and by now it's Christmas.
The neighbor lady is just leaving Terry's apartment when Nickie walks in. He found an address in the phone book that might have been hers, so he followed in just to see, and, well, there he is. He lies about keeping their appointment, saying he missed it, and so he presumably came to apologize. (Cary Grant also opens this scene by saying, "Hi Debbie," HOW did that not get fixed?!) He tricks her into admitting that she never was there, they verbally dance around the subject, he walking through the living room, she staying put on the couch. (But of course, she's paralyzed; but he doesn't know that.) They get madder and madder at each other; he remembers that Janou had left a package for Terry before she died. A very perturbed Nickie suddenly remembers that some poor crippled woman had liked seeing one of his paintings in the studio, and as it was too sentimental to sell, he told his friend the manager of the studio to give it to the lady. He opens the bedroom door, and in a brilliant bit of photography, we see his face on the left of the screen and the painting's reflection in a mirror on the right. He knows, now. She starts sobbing, "If you can paint, I can walk!" He nods, wiping the tears away with his handkerchief. The End. NO, YOU CAN'T. YOU'RE PARALYZED. And he's leaving New York that night, and why should he stick with her, anyway? It's not like he has the greatest track record with that in the first place...it's a horrible ending to a film that was a complete waste of two hours. Why should the situation change? And if it did, there sure wouldn't be any happy endings. And yet this is supposed to be some kind of joyful reunion where everything ends happily ever after. IT ISN'T. It isn't even an ending, really - if they would have cut it off just after they ran into each other, that would have been an ending.
Not sure how I stayed awake through watching it once; but then I started writing this review, and left it barely-started for two months and needed to finish it. Really not very impressed and completely mystified why people love it so much.
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