Sleepless In Seattle is an ode to cinematic romance – the kind of silver screen love that is built on yearning glances, captured in dreamy, soft backlighting, and set to a score of swelling violins.

A homage to the 1957 Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr romance An Affair To Remember, which was, in turn, a remake of the 1939 film Love Affair, Sleepless In Seattle was already an echo of a distant cinematic past upon its release 30 years ago.

At its helm was director Nora Ephron, who was, at the time, already garnering a reputation for shaking up the formula of the ‘romantic’ film having penned the groundbreaking When Harry Met Sally four years earlier.

Meg Ryan stars as Annie, a go-get-em reporter from Baltimore, while Tom Hanks plays Sam, a recently widowed architect living with his son in Seattle. When Annie hears Sam discussing his grief on the radio, she becomes fixated with him. Eventually, she writes him a letter, asking him to meet her on top of the Empire State Building, a move borrowed from An Affair To Remember, her favourite film.

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