Genre Guesstimation – The Promise (1979)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s genre has been chosen by me and we will be reviewing our favorite Oscar Nominated or Winning Movies.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Mar by sending them to andtheOscargoesto…@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Oscar Nominated or Winning Movies……….

“I promise. I promise never to say goodbye to you.” – Michael

Number of Times Seen – 1 (14 Mar 2022)

Brief Synopsis – After a tragic accident that disfigures her, a young woman is guaranteed that her fiancee’s mother will pay for it all as long as she never sees him again.

My Take on it – This is another movie that I had never heard of before coming across it while trying to find Oscar nominated films that I’ve never seen.

The premise is quite intriguing, but the way that things play out is done in a far too simplistic way which takes away from the potential that they truly had here.

Kathleen Quinlan does a wonderful job in the lead role and it’s easy to feel for her plight even if the rest of the characters aren’t very sympathetic in the way it all plays out.

Beatrice Straight is also great as the menacing mother of her fiancee and gets that character just right.

The film was nominated for an Oscar for the song I’ll Never Say Goodbye which is actually quite good.

The fact that the same artist sang two nominated songs that year was groundbreaking (see trivia below).

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The title song “I’ll Never Say Goodbye” was performed by Melissa Manchester. She also sang the theme song to Ice Castles (1978) entitled “Through the Eyes of Love”. Both songs were nominated for the Best Song Academy Award, marking for the first time that one artist performed two of the nominated songs of that year. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Nope. Nice idea, but doesn’t work the way that it could have due to the way it is presented.

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)