If it makes you tear up, it's a minimum of ⭐⭐⭐⭐.
Where the fleet-footed Love Affair [is] a romance with the verve of screwball comedy, blooms with lively and sweet innocence, the later An Affair to Remember aches and shudders with an awareness of mortality that seems absolutely foreign to the earlier film’s reverie-like atmosphere. Of course, McCarey had aged in between making the two films: he was 41 when he made Love Affair, about the same age as its two stars, but he made An Affair to Remember at the age of 59. Something else also happened in the intervening years: after directing Love Affair, McCarey was involved in a near-fatal car accident that left him temporarily confined to a wheelchair.
— Trevor Link (Spectrum Culture)
By simultaneously reminiscing and meditating on her own imminent death, [Marnet's aunt] establishes the stakes for this potentially one-off affair. It’s her resignation and ambivalence that lead both central characters to contemplate the potential damage of ignoring their feelings for one another. In both films, “love” is neither an at-first-sight phenomenon nor a static condition for people to aspire to; instead, it’s an edifying stage of life, a midpoint between childhood’s bouncy excitement and the wizened irresolution of old age.
— John Lingan (Slant Magazine)
Synopsis: A French playboy and an American former nightclub singer fall in love aboard a ship. They arrange to reunite six months later, if neither has changed their mind.