The Promise (1979 film)

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The Promise is a 1979 film, released by was a Universal Pictures, which starred Kathleen Quinlan, Stephen Collins, and Beatrice Straight. It was directed by Gilbert Cates and produced by Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller. The screenplay was written by Garry Michael White and was novelized later by Danielle Steel.

[edit] Synopsis

The film tells the rich-boy/poor-girl story (along the lines of "Love Story") of Michael Hillyard (Collins) and Nancy McAllister (Quinlan), two college students very much in love with one another, much to the chagrin of Hillyard's disapproving mother, Marion (Straight).

Michael and Nancy, visiting a park overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, hide a costume jewelry necklace under a large rock, and promise that they will love each other as long as it remains undisturbed (which they of course expect to be forever).

Marion -- whose relationship with her son is so tense that Michael calls his mother by her first name -- is convinced that Nancy is below Michael's class, so she tries to intervene. Michael makes it clear that he isn't going to choose her over Nancy, and storms out of the matriarch's home.

Sensing the urgency of the moment and the matter, Michael calls Nancy with plans to elope.

On the way to the ceremony, with Michael's best friend Ben Avery (Michael O'Hare} in attendance, the three are involved in a horrible car crash. Michael survives, but is comatose; Ben Avery survives as well.

Marion makes a deal with Nancy -- she will send her to California and pay for the best plastic surgeon to make her beautiful (she had been of average appearance before), and finish her education (as an artist) there. The catch is that Nancy must not return to Boston or contact Michael again until he contacts her, with the implication being that he will decide if he wants the relationship to continue after the trauma of the accident. Nancy agrees.

Marion then tells Michael that Nancy is dead.

Once healed, Michael becomes a successful architect, designing multimillion-dollar business skyscrapers. His company takes a contract to design a building in San Francisco. Seeing a photograph that he admires, he tracks down the artist to ask her to paint a mural for the building's lobby. He doesn't recognize Nancy (who has a new name), but she knows him on sight. Believing that he had discarded her, she refuses the offer, then when he is persistent, she angrily gives him a phoyo and tells him to do what he likes with it. He then has it put on a billboard and even the side of a large truck, as part of his campaign to break down her resistance.

Eventually, she is unable to contain her feelings of abandonment, and flees to the East Coast. Michael sees an finished painting, which Nancy had been working on during their romance, and realizes her true identity, then is told that she has gone to Boston. He follows Nancy.

In the climactic scene, Nancy reaches the rock, and after a struggle, dislodges it -- to discover that the necklace is not there. As she tries to understand, Michael informs her that she can't have it, because it belonged to a friend of his, who he had been told had died in a car crash two years earlier.

[edit] Musical score

The film features a haunting music score by David Shire, with a theme song written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman entitled "The Promise" and performed by Melissa Manchester. The theme song has also been covered by several other artists, including a duet with Ogie Alcasid and Regine Velasquez.