From the Theme of Love Affair to Love Affair, the Theme

(Note: This blogpost  is a belated Valentine post as it has been languishing in my drafts for months now. Thanks to interest in Love Affair by Facebook friends, I decided to polish it and publish it a month after Valentines Day.)

Love Affair (1994) is the remake of  Love Affair (1939) with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne and  An Affair to Remember (1957) with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. This version starred Annette Bening and Warren Beatty.

This film joins my very limited list of favorite romantic movies: Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Romeo and Juliet, Ghost, Sleepless in Seattle and Somewhere in Time.

Love Affair's plot was greatly enhanced by the musical score of Ennio Morricone, one of my  favorite contemporary composers. Throughout the film, a musical motif would softly play in the background during the scenes of the leading stars like in the final one shown above. I was so entranced by the music that after watching it in the cinema, I bought a copy of the original soundtrack where I was gratified to hear the entire score by Morricone. The musical motif was plainly titled Piano Solo in the CD.

Fast forward two years later, while watching Twister, a disaster/thriller film starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton based on a screenplay by novelist Michael Crichton, I heard a familiar melody. It turned out to be Love Affair sang by KD Lang. It was the same theme of Love Affair with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.


The words so complimented the melody that I felt it belonged to Love Affair, the movie, instead of being inserted in a soundtrack for Twister that was filled with rock music by Van Halen.

Skies without stars, all the nights without you
I watch the world from a room without a view
For you left me with so few memories
I could close my eyes and cling to
Just a fading photograph I'd sometimes sing to

All those smiles unexplored, all the words left unsaid
We strung our dreams on and all to slender thread
For you left me with so few memories
I could close my eyes and cling to
Just a half-remembered tune I'd sometimes sing to

Now I found what we lost
Time was all, all it cost
Love's always there
Knowing someday I would share in a life-long love affair with you

Love was always there
Knowing someday I would share
In a life-long love affair with you, in a life-long love affair with you

This version of KD Lang became known as the theme song of Twister. 

In a twisted sense that could happen only in Hollywood, Love Affair bombed at the box-office while Twister became a $55-M blockbuster. Love Affair, because it was compared to its earlier two versions and Twister, because of the popularity of Helen Hunt's TV series, Mad About You.

However, Love Affair later went on to become a cult classic movie enjoying high DVD sales and a favorite Valentine and wedding anniversary date movie. It also was the last movie starred in by the great Katharine Hepburn.

And that's how a simple, memorable melody known as the Theme of Love Affair morphed into Love Affair, known as the love theme of Twister.