The movie “An Affair to Remember” is based on two characters who fall in love with each other while they are both on vacation on a ship, hence the movie is based on romantic relations between two characters, Nickie and Terry. The two meet aboard a ship and vow to marry each other after six months if they will still be in love after not seeing each other for that amount of time. They plan a rendezvous, and when the lady is on her way to meet Nickie, she is involved in an automobile accident and does not make it to their agreed venue. The man feels rejected and betrayed and considers that he has been stood up and this makes it look like their love story is coming to an end until he finally finds her and gets to know of the real reason why she could not make it to their rendezvous. Thereafter, they reclaim their vows of adoration making theirs an affair to remember. Through their relations, and those of other characters, different human behaviors and relations are presented and these can be used to understand relationships of love and hate.
When analyzing the movie from a psychosocial point of view, the focus is mainly put on the love and hate relationship between the two main characters (Woolf, 2015). Looking at the theories of love, the mutual attachment is required for the survival of any relationship. The mutual attachment between two people is the emotional connection between them that provides a safe haven and a secure base upon which a relationship can be fostered. It determines the quality of the relationship between the two people and thus determines the strength of the bond between the two individuals. During their first encounter, Nickie and Terry feel attached to each other and end up declaring their love for each other. The mutual attachment between them is what makes them have the feeling that they will both be able to see each other at the end of six months, despite travelling to different places. They agree to break up with their respective partners in six months’ time. This is mainly influenced by the feeling of attraction that they experience the first time they see each other on the ship and this is what draws them to make vows to marry each other once they see each other again. It is the same mutual attraction that brings them together, despite being involved with different people.
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After her accident, Terry decides not to contact Nickie to inform him of the reason as to why she could not make it to their rendezvous. This causes him to feel rejected when he thinks that Terry stood him up. The act by Terry to hide her physical deformity after the accident can be construed as being an act of social defense against rejection in the event that Nickie rejected her for being physically disabled (Meridian, n.d.). This fear of rejection is what makes her avoid meeting with Nickie later on after she heals rom her accident, and is the same reason why she avoids any contact with him. She also finds ways to avoid telling him about her accident when he comes to visit her at her place. Terry goes as far as hiding her wheelchair when Nickie visits her so that he does not notice her disability. He, however, notices his painting, which acts as a clue as to what could have happened to Terry since he is able to recall that the painting was given to a woman who had no money and was confined to a wheelchair. From a psychosocial perspective, the action by Terry as a way of dealing with her fear of rejection is able to offend the people around her. Through her coping mechanism of staying far away from the love of her life, he offends him as he feels that he has rejected him despite having made future plans with her to get married (McCarey & McCarey). He has hatred toward her for not keeping her promise to meet him as they had planned and this affects how he relates to her after he meets her at the ballet. As she tries to hide her situation from her new-found love, she ends up rekindling love with her old boyfriend and this angers Nickie as he feels that his love was initially not reciprocated and is thus cold towards her at the ballet. Looking at her situation from a wider scope, including her workmates, there is a possibility that she quit her former job to work as a music teacher as a result of her condition.
The two main characters, after choosing to get married after six months, opt to break up with the people they were dating. This way, the love relationships they had with their former partners is terminated so that the two can be together. Terry was initially engaged to a wealthy business man while Nickie is a famous playboy with usual flings but currently, has a fiancée. This decision is one to elicit hatred from their fiancées since they have invested their time in the relationship that is only suddenly terminated as a result of the fake belief of love at first sight. Their decision is haste and one-sided since they do not consult their partners prior to the breakup. Looking at this decision from the point of view of the partners who were left, this action can be termed as being inconsiderate and offensive.
In looking at the psychosocial stages of development by Erik Erikson, at young adulthood, an individual is usually involved in forming intimate relationships with people so as to get intimate with them. According to Erik Erikson, this stage is also coupled with its own share of psychosocial crisis, just like the other stages of development (McLeod, 2017). Erikson also established that with the successful development of the ego, an individual is able to solve crises that are social in nature, thereby being able to develop a sense of identity and a sense of trust in others while preparing other generations or the future. The intimacy versus isolation stage also requires complete success in order to form strong relationships with others, while failure in this stage results in isolation and loneliness. In the film, Nickie and Terry are two different characters who according to their actions, show the success and failure in this stage respectively. Nickie’s character is egotistical and this influences his relationships, given that he is a playboy, and how he is able to avert the crises of such a lifestyle since there lacks a scene that shows any two women fighting over him. He readily trusts that Terry will meet him as planned and when she does not show up, he automatically concludes that she may have rejected him and chooses to move on by continuing his career in painting. When he later sees her at the ballet, he later tries to find her contact address so that he can confront her to find out why she stood him up so as to solve the issue of why she rejected him despite having appeared to be in love with him (McCarey & McCarey). He later finds out the reason why, and this way, the feeling of rejection departs and he reclaims his love for her. This is a show of how his fully-developed ego works in helping him solve the social crisis that had been formed by the lack of knowledge on why she did not make it to their rendezvous. He can be said to have successfully completed the stage of intimacy versus isolation as he finally rekindles their love to show that he is indeed ready to be intimate with Terry despite her physical disability.
Terry, on the other hand, has an ego that is not fully developed as she has a poor way of handling her crises. She fails to inform Nickie of her accident as a way of offering an explanation for not making it to their rendezvous and thus crisis arises since Nickie feels that he has been rejected. This affects their social relationship. Her development in the stage of intimacy versus isolation is unsuccessful since she ends up in isolation (McLeod, 2017). After her accident, she concludes that Nickie will ultimately reject her. This was her own intuition and her inner insecurity is projected since she is unable to trust that Nickie will accept her with her disability. She thus decided to isolate herself from the relationship so as to be alone without having any intimate relationships. Her fear of rejection also leads her back to her ex-boyfriend as she feels that he will accept her back, seeing that she is now disabled. Her inability to trust Nickie is also seen with the way she acts once he visits her at her home on Christmas Eve since she continues to hide the fact that she was paralyzed by the accident. However, it is Nickie’s successful phase development that results in both of them ending up in a strong relationship.
References
McCarey, L. (Producer), & McCarey, L. (Director). (1957). An Affair to Remember. (Motion Picture). United States: Jerry Wald Productions, Inc.
McLeod, S. (2017). Erik Erikson Psychosocial Stages of Development . Retrieved from https://m.simplypsychology,org/Erik-Erikson.html
Meridian. (N.d.). Foundations of Psycho-Social Analysis Part 1: Diagnosis . Retrieved from http://www.meridian.org.uk/_PDFs/Foundationsl.pdf
Woolf, L. M. (2015). Psychology of Love and Hate. Webster. Retrieved from http://faculty.webster.edu/woolflm/LoveHateF15.html
