You have your favorite love stories. These are ours.
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Notorious (1946)
Alfred Hitchcock's tale of a man and woman who look so fantastic together they must fall in love combines gorgeously lit romance with shadowy emotional undercurrents. In the convoluted espionage plot, Ingrid Bergman is a masochistic lush whom misogynistic agent Cary Grant recruits to seduce and marry a mama's-boy Nazi in South America. Alas, when love ignites between Bergman and Grant before the mission can begin, she turns out to be so masochistic she can't beg him to beg her not to go through with it, and he turns out to be so misogynistic he can't beg her to beg him to beg her not to go through with it.
Before Sunrise (1995)
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have charm to spare in Richard Linklater's tale of two stray pups who meet in Vienna and spend one perfect night together talking big issues and small till they fall into each other's arms just before dawn. It's like Brief Encounter meets My Dinner With Andre.
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
The best of Audrey Hepburn's May-December romances (the others being Funny Face, Sabrina and My Fair Lady) succeeds on the deliciously profound wit of cowriter/director Billy Wilder and on the chemistry of Gary Cooper as the womanizing, wealthy older man, and Hepburn as the girl who's too good to resist him.
Chinatown (1974)
The story of Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is a murder mystery and a history lesson laced with social criticism, but ultimately, most importantly, it's a love story between a man who knows better than to trust anyone and a woman who dies because she trusts him.
Afterglow (1997)
A highly dubious theme-- the healing effects of adultery--is put over persuasively thanks to superb turns from Julie Christie and Nick Nolte as marital burnouts whose straying ways lead to a rediscovery of their love for each other.
The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
It only seems unlikely that the beautiful daughter of a British colonel in the American colonies during the French and Indian Wars would fall for the buckskinned, sharp-shooting adopted son of a Mohawk chief she meets in the middle of a massacre. The kind of chemistry Madeleine Stowe and Daniel Day-Lewis have here makes it inevitable. Demonstrating the basic good sense that has typified the American spirit from colonial days, Stowe and Day-Lewis decide that the best thing to do as French cannons inch ever closer to their doomed fort is to find a nice, dark, out-of-the-way spot and make out.
Jerry Maguire (1996)
Emerging straight from the heart of a generation hopelessly polarized between emotional idealism and brutal cynicism, Cameron Crowe's modern romantic comedy tells the story of love between a toughly sweet young accountant (Renee Zellweger) and the ambivalently greedy sports agent (Tom Cruise) in whom she persists in seeing good. The movie has truly touching moments and terrific laughs and, since we'd all kill ourselves if we were forced to come to the opposite conclusion, it reassures us in the end that committed love is still possible.
Carmen Jones (1954)
The movies have served up 20 Carmens so far, yet neither Rita Hayworth's va-voom gypsy goddess in 1948's The Loves of Carmen nor Laura Del Sol's flamenco-mad gypsy goddess in the 1983 Carmen can hold a candle to the electrifying Dorothy Dandridge's torrid, tragic mantrap. As a creature too consumed by passion to commit to any one man, Dandridge is superbly matched by lust-crazed Harry Belafonte in this unusual, moving, Americanized musical overhaul of the Georges Bizet opera.
The English Patient (1996)
Movies about Grand Passions That Cannot Be Denied (Whatever the Cost) are a rare breed in today's era of tinny, teen-style romances, making this World War II adult tear-jerker particularly welcome. If you're not moved when Ralph Fiennes carries Kristin Scott Thomas out of that cave, check your pulse.
Casablanca (1942)
Whereas the World War II-era lovers in The English Patient decide that, compared with their love, the problems of millions of people caught in a fight to the death between good and evil don't amount to a hill of beans, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), the World War II-era lovers in Casablanca, decide the exact opposite.
A Star Is Born (1954)
This version of the much remade story of doomed love between a rising superstar (Judy Garland) and a fading movie hero (James Mason) is the definitive dissection of why Hollywood marriages fail. All the details are mercilessly right--the makeovers, the back-stabbing agents, the grueling hours at the sound-stage. Offscreen, many a Hollywood couple is living out this inevitably sad romance this minute.
It Happened One Night (1934)
Spoiled runaway heiress Claudette Colbert finally figures out that it's wisecracking working-guy reporter Clark Gable she's meant to love, not the spineless playboy she fell for to thwart Daddy. The road trip she unwillingly takes with Gable offers more than one night on which things happen, but the night when the "it" of the title happens is clearly the one in which she gets an eyeful of Gable without his shirt on.
Moonstruck (1987)
In the movie for which she will be most deservedly remembered, Cher joins with Nicolas Cage to play a pair of fiery, blue-collar eccentrics in Brooklyn. They are mismatched in every which way, but destined for each other in the only way that counts--they throw off genuine sparks. It's a fairy tale--complete with a magical moon, a man-beast boyfriend and wishes fulfilled--but an edgy, smart one.
Parting Glances (1986)
Have Kleenex on hand for this independent movie mostly featuring actors you've never heard of. It's a bittersweet tale of a gay man (Richard Ganoung) struggling to learn what love really is when he must choose between his untrustworthy, good-looking boyfriend (John Bolger) and his dying-of-AIDS ex (Steve Buscemi).
Two for the Road (1967)
Beautiful couple Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney swap witticisms and wounding blows while literally driving in circles in France over the decades of their marriage. It's a view of conjugal togetherness as the plight of people too addicted to punishing each other to part.
Rebecca (1940)
This Alfred Hitchcock mystery tells an unsettling tale about the kind of love that must blossom inside a marriage to make it a real union. So here is a love story about insecurities, secrets, inequalities and crises. The unspectacular young woman (Joan Fontaine) who is swiftly courted by the aristocratic widower (Laurence Olivier) of a legendary society goddess struggles to figure out who she has really married and why she's worthy of his love--and doesn't get righteously kissed until she does.
Mamie (1964)
This Alfred Hitchcock mystery tells an unsettling tale about the kind of love that has to blossom inside a marriage to make it a real union. So here is a love story about phobias, lies, sexual terror and crises. The overconfident, aristocratic man (Sean Connery) who swiftly marries a spectacular-looking thief (Tippi Hedren) struggles to figure out who he has really married and why she's frigid-- and he doesn't get righteously loved until he does.
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
In Woody Allen's best film, unhappily married housewife Mia Farrow wins the man of her dreams, a film character (Jeff Daniels) who, because she has fantasized it so intensely, steps right off the screen to woo her. A powerful argument for the movies' ability to transform lives, and one of the greatest final scenes in film history.
Mrs. Soffel (1984)
This overlooked gem tells the true story of a turn-of-the-last-century scandal in which the fragile, pious wife of a Pittsburgh prison warden fell so in love with the charismatic convicted mutderer to whom she was trying to bring spiritual comfort that she ended up helping him escape and running away with him. The improbable seems perfectly plausible when the murderer is played by Mel Gibson, who gives a performance that shows us all the subtle changes by which the murderer blooms with true love, allowing Mrs. Soffel (Diane Keaton) to accomplish her original purpose.
II Postino (1994)
The improbable, life-changing relationship between a shy, simple villager (Massimo Troisi) and a worldly libertine poet (Philippe Noiret) sets the stage for the hero to set his sights on winning the woman (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) he loves from afar. Of course, he gets what he wants, but not for long. Poetic in virtually every sense of the word.
Out of Africa (1985)
OK, we've got Africa as a backdrop for the love affair of two white people. We've got Ralph Lauren tableaux with designer animals to match designer clothes. We've got Robert Redford as an Englishman with an American accent. So what? The movie works because it enacts a fundamental drama: an extreme masculine ideal and an extreme feminine spirit meet and duke it out. Redford and Meryl Streep give us fleshed-out characters with interesting minds to mask the basic conflict of the wandering, abstract male and the home-bound, materialistic female. The hopeless intensity of the attraction/repulsion between them proves even more fascinating than Africa.
The King and I (1956)
As platonic lovers in this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr embody a powerful, forbidden attraction that dares not cross the lines of class (barbarian/lady), culture (East/West) or costumes (silk pajamas/hoop skirts). Steer your kids away from the recent animated remake and straight toward this glittering gem.
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Director Ernst Lubitsch's silken, subtle charmer about two coworkers who despise each other yet are (unbeknownst to both) passionate, lonely hearts pen pals. As the two people who at first think they're too good for each other then realize they're too good to pass up, James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan can't be beat--even by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the recent rehash You've Got Mail.
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Since most movie love stories are thinly disguised "fairy tales," we prefer this actual fairy tale, which, like all great fairy tales, deals in dark psychology, rococo eroticism and poetic sexual metaphor. Jean Cocteau's simple, magical retelling of this old chestnut shines in its exploration of what transpires when a virginal beauty cannot resist the sexual pull of a creature with the exterior of a monster and the soul of an angel.
The Year of Living Dangerously (1983)
A journalist (Mel Gibson) on assignment in the political tinderbox of Indonesia in 1965 puts the story he's after before the girl he's after (Sigourney Weaver), and, like many a guy, doesn't straighten out his priorities any too soon. Even with a mystic benefactor masterminding his awakening to the preeminence of love, he must go nearly blind before seeing that the woman he's fallen for matters more than the byline on a front-page story.
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
This story of the bird with Givenchy plumage who will perish if caged is a parable about how even the most chic, self-created urban beings have to face the truth occasionally. Impeccable Audrey Hepburn plays a kept party girl who deludes herself that she's free; impossibly good-looking George Peppard plays a kept man who tells himself he's going to become a serious writer. When both characters get honest--in a finale involving an abandoned cat in a rain-soaked alley--be sure to have tissues on hand.
Love Affair (1939)
Despite many remakes and imitations, no one has ever improved on the original version of this heartbreaker about two sophisticates--both engaged to other, less scintillating people--who fall in love aboard a ship and then part reluctantly for six months to see if their passion is true. The results are, of course, disastrous. Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer give funny, sad, poignant performances as the sort of people we only dream of meeting on a Princess cruise.
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Is there really only one ideal mate for each of us? Ernst Lubitsch's splendid, rueful and sophisticated romantic comedy pairs up two light-fingered con artists--Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall--who endanger their union when they set up a sting on attractive heiress Kay Francis, who's at least as right for Marshall as Hopkins is.
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
It's a great story, sure. But if you're telling the perfect love story--i.e., one that kills the young lovers before they can start squabbling--what counts is who plays Romeo and Juliet. Director Franco Zeffirelli deserves eternal kudos for casting unknowns Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, two heartbreakingly gorgeous teenagers caught at what turned out to be an exact moment of peak beauty. And they could act. Trust no one who doesn't cry at the end.
West Side Story (1961)
A gloriously moving musical Romeo and Juliet on the mean streets of New York during the golden age of the juvenile delinquent, a time when Maria, the Puerto Rican Juliet, could be played by porcelain-white Natalie Wood and the tragic killing of Tony (Richard Beymer), the updated Romeo, could be brought about by what seems to have been the only gun in the whole slum (that's '61-speak for 'hood).
Titanic (1997)
James Cameron pitched it to the studio as "Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic," but that doesn't quite nail it. Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack is not the scion of a rival aristocratic family, but a penniless artist, and it is not a war between clans that brings death to young love, but an iceberg. In fact, it's interesting to note that such a miraculously popular love story has at its core, in our post-women's-lib times, the presence of a passionate and good-hearted young man who becomes, as his lover later describes it, "the person who saved me in every way it's possible for someone to be saved." The pitch could more correctly have been, "Someday my prince will come ... and die for me."
One Way Passage (1932)
Here's a quintessential shipboard fantasy about love that defies all odds. The two strangers who meet and fall for each other both harbor their own Terrible Secret. Glamorous socialite Kay Francis bravely hides her fatal disease, while suave William Powell hides the fact that he's a criminal en route to prison for life. Sure it's romance-novel nonsense, but it's done with such panache you might be sorry they don't make 'em like this anymore.
Witness (1985)
Tough city cop Harrison Ford and luminously sensible Amish widow Kelly McGillis--soulmates from opposite worlds--encounter each other when her son witnesses a murder. They end up doing what few lovers from opposite worlds ever do: making their ultimate act of love the decision to part before any of the transformative power of their experience gets destroyed.
Roman Holiday (1953)
Tough foreign correspondent Gregory Peck and luminously curious European princess Audrey Hepburn-soulmates from opposite worlds--encounter each other when she runs away from her royal keepers. They end up doing what few lovers from opposite worlds ever do: making their ultimate act of love the decision to leave each other before any of the transformative power of their experience gets destroyed.
Vertigo (1958)
Hitchcock's most twisted romance, which stars James Stewart and Kim Novak, is many things to many people-- a metaphysical love story, a ghost tale, the final cinematic word on male obsessive behavior--but it has essential words of wisdom for all: never try to do a makeover on your lover.
Gone With the Wind (1939)
An epic love story most commendable for its bottom line: nobody gets what they want.
Cousins (1989)
In Joel Schumacher's vastly underrated remake of the French hit Cousin, Cousine, the immensely likable Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini play distant relatives who spark and spark and spark after being thrown together when their respective spouses start an adulterous affair. Trust us about Ted Danson--here, anyway.
A Room with a View (1986)
You're a beautiful, well-bred girl with an appetite for life and a desire to become a woman with a secure place in the world. So, do you let a rash young man who sweeps you up in his arms and kisses you in a Tuscan field distract you from your intention to marry the staid, loyal fiancé who awaits your return in England? Helena Bonham Carter's Miss Honeychurch thinks decidedly not, which allows her to make a great fool out of herself for our amusement until she finally opts for passion.
Summertime (1955)
Katharine Hepburn is the aging, lonely spinster who, on vacation in Venice, finally finds love--with a married man (Rossano Brazzi). Filmmaker David Lean's intense infatuation with Italy puts a golden burnish on one of life's immutable lessons: nothing, especially not a gorgeous Italian lover, comes without a price.
Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Irresistible tosh about a vibrant ballerina (Vivien Leigh) who, devastated when her lover (Robert Taylor) is killed in battle, gets spurned by his family and winds up a tawdry hooker. When Leigh unexpectedly learns that Taylor's actually alive, she--sorry, we're not giving that away. Unquestionably Leigh's finest hour, and no, we haven't forgotten Gone With the Wind.
Holiday (1938)
When the elegant older daughter in a rich Manhattan bankers family brings home the unconventional, fun-loving self-made millionaire she intends to marry (Cary Grant), we all know it's her younger sister (a not-yet-quite-so-mannered Katharine Hepburn) who's the one he's meant to love. Fortunately it takes a while for everyone in the movie to sort things out, giving us time to learn just how miserable the lives of rich people really are and to savor the comedy of chemistry between two lovers-to-be who think they just like each other.
Pride and Prejudice (1940)
The overstuffed, luxe treatment MGM gave Jane Austen's comedy of manners made the important differences in class between her characters all but invisible, but as the lovers who share an equal intensity in their respective flaws (her pride, his prejudice), Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier are so deliciously reluctant to come to inevitable terms with each other that Austen's basic notion about love comes right through.
Cesar and Rosalie (1972)
Many exalt Jules and Jim as the last word on movie ménages à trois, but we prefer this somewhat happier variation on the timeworn theme of two men (Yves Montand, Sami Frey) in love with the same ravishing woman (Romy Schneider)-- if only because Schneiders Rosalie, unlike Jeanne Moreau's Catherine, is a warm, sexy life force, not a capricious, incomprehensible man-wrecker.
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)
If the precision and poetry of filmmaker Max Ophuls didn't take your eyes prisoner, it would probably be intolerable not to look away from this story of the ruinous, lifelong love a young girl (Joan Fontaine) develops for a handsome pianist (Louis Jourdan). Any woman who does not identify at least a little with the main character is perhaps not being entirely honest with herself.
sex, lies, & videotape (1989)
Though "love" is missing from the titles list of nouns, it's at the heart of this story of a prissy Southern belle (Andie MacDowell) whose husband is having an affair with her sister, and a strange guy (James Spader) who can only get himself off while watching tapes of women talking about sex. These are two unlikely prospects for the job of reaffirming modern romance, but they do it.
Withering Heights (1939)
Two enduring girl fantasy-beliefs found perfect expression in Emily Bronte's novel of obsessive love on the moors of England. One: the most exciting lover you can ever have is the ravishing bad boy who will ruin your life. Two: the most satisfying lover you can ever have is the guy who will never get over you and will spend the rest of his days making every other girl miserable because she can't compare with you. Young Laurence Olivier brought exquisite bitterness and desperation to his portrayal of Heathcliff, the double-fantasy fulfilled for beautiful Merle Oberon's wild and heartless Cathy.
Senso (1954)
In Luchino Visconti's swoony, melancholy riff on Anna Karenina, a married Venetian aristocrat (Alida Valli) risks all for the love of a callow officer in the invading Austrian army (Farley Granger). When the soldier betrays her, she, unlike Anna Karenina, learns that revenge is a dish best served cold.
Sounder (1972)
Sure, on the surface this is just another saga of a boy and his dog, but what sets this movie apart is its unusual subplot: how two married, dirt-poor, Depression-era sharecroppers (Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield) manage, through good times and bad, to keep alive passion for each other and love for their children.
My Man Godfrey (1936)
Most stories about rich people falling for their servants turn out badly. But screwball comedy was invented to beat the romantic odds. Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard), the good-hearted, wacky daughter of a rich, dysfunctional family, collects a hobo one night on a charity scavenger hunt, hires him to be the latest in a long line of short-lived family butlers, then falls for him. Godfrey (William Powell), a diamond-in-the-rough who's really a diamond-in-disguise, proves so droll and noble in handling his spoiled, alcoholic employers he manages to save them from themselves. In the end, of course, he fails to save himself from returning the adoration of space-case Irene.
Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)
Nobody wants to be believe their own parents could be passionate, let alone their grandparents, so it's little wonder this gem failed to find a big audience. Two senior citizens (Beulah Bondi, Victor Moore), happily married for 50 years, wish only to live out the remainder of their lives together. Money problems force them to be separated in different homes of their selfish, grown children. Sentimental, old-fashioned in the best sense of the word--and emotionally shattering.
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By Virginia Campbell & Edward Marguiles