Most romantic films ever

[DB7]

The 30 most romantic films ever

Love makes the world go round – and box-office tills ring, so here are our top 30 romantic films. Do you agree with the selection? Let us know at romance@telegraph.co.uk. At least it's something to argue about on Valentine's Day…

1 Brief Encounter 1945

Parting has never been such sweet sorrow as in David Lean's adaptation of a Noël Coward play. Celia Johnson is Laura Jesson, the suburban housewife married to a crossword-fixated man; she falls in love with a dashing medic called Alec (Trevor Howard), and the rest is – repression. It's almost unbearable to watch Laura straining against her suburban self, trying to convince herself that she has a right to lunge for happiness. "This can't last. This misery can't last," she cries. Wonderful.

Heartstopping moment: As Alec leaves Laura in the train station, he puts his hand on her shoulder, expressing in that gesture fathomless depths of gratitude, tenderness, longing and regret.


2 The Graduate 1967

"Elaine! Elaine! Elaine!" It's the interrupted wedding scene to end them all. Dustin Hoffman's screams to bride Katharine Ross are racked with a desperation that borders on mania. And it's not just romantic - it's deep. The lost dream of the late 1960s, the battle of cynical middle-age against youthful idealism, the timeless appeal of a bright red Alfa Spider - all are bound up in this peerless finale to a lyrical and life-affirming film. "It's too late," smiles her mother, Mrs Robinson. "Not for me," says Elaine. Exit the lovers on an unforgettable bus-ride to ambiguity.

Simon and Garfunkel singing "Are you going to Scarborough Fair?"

3 Jules et Jim 1962

Three's not a crowd in François Truffaut's wonderful adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roché's novel.

Henri Serre and Oskar Werner are the two friends who are equally smitten by Jeanne Moreau, an exuberant free spirit whose vagrant character they find encapsulated by a phrase in a novel: "On a ship, a woman made love to a stranger in her mind." The camerawork on this New Wave classic is as ecstatic and giddying as falling in love itself. Truffaut moves between comedy and tragedy with awesome ease.

Moreau, baggy-jumpered and sporting a moustache, races across a bridge with Jules and Jim.

4 Casablanca 1942

"You must remember this…" could stand as a motto for this golden-age Hollywood triumph, an endlessly immersive tale of wartime intrigue and thwarted amour. Bogart and Bergman are beyond incomparable, and the happy-accident screenplay collaboration is the stuff of legend.

Simply the most memorable farewell in the history of farewells. "Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor… If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life…"

5 Gregory's Girl 1980

When the voluptuous Dorothy joins the school soccer team, tongues start wagging, hormones surge out of control, and love blossoms in the damp and sweaty changing rooms. But is she really Gregory's girl? Bill Forsyth's delightful comedy, set in an ultra-average new-town comprehensive and starring the gloriously gawky John Gordon Sinclair, captures the exquisite agony of teenage infatuation with unerring affection.

Gregory, bamboozled into a date with the far more suitable Susan (Clare Grogan), "explains" gravity as they dance horizontally in the park at sunset, warning her: "Don't stop, or you'll fall off."

6 It Happened One Night 1934

Famously causing a drop in vest sales when Clark Gable revealed a bare chest, this Frank Capra comedy is one of only three films to take the top four Oscars – for best film, direction and acting. It combines a magical innocence of tone with a risqué plot as married rich girl Ellie (Claudette Colbert), on the run from a disapproving father, hooks up with Gable's resourceful journalist Peter on the night bus to New York. As they cross the country, sleeping in motels and haystacks, contempt becomes love, and the walls of Jericho – the sheet on a rope that has divided their beds – come tumbling down.

When Ellie, tear-stained and wide-eyed, appears from behind the sheet to declare: "Take me with you, Peter. I can't let you go out of my life now. I cannot live without you."

7 The Philadelphia Story 1940

Never has class war seemed more elegant and, well, classy, than in George Cukor's version of Philip Barry's comedy. Everything about it is so darned stylish that it could end up as brittle as its heiress heroine (Katharine Hepburn at her most luminous). Its great heart springs from that fact she learns to love the right man (ex-husband Cary Grant) by kissing the wrong one, James Stewart's love-struck journalist.

"Put me in your pocket, Mike," Hepburn's husky just-kissed request to Stewart as he sweeps her into the darkness.

8 Solaris 2002

Steven Soderbergh's sombre meditation on love and loss has an almost unbearable intensity: although set largely in the vastness of space, it is one of the most emotionally claustrophobic films ever. George Clooney plays Kelvin, a shrink sent to a distant space station after the planet it orbits starts to play terrifying games with the minds of the crew. Kelvin discovers he is not immune when his dead wife materialises beside him in bed.

At the deeply ambiguous conclusion, Kelvin asks bewilderedly, "Am I alive or dead?", to which his wife replies: "We don't have to think like that any more."

9 Roman Holiday 1953

From the moment we see Audrey Hepburn toying with her shoes under her voluminous dress, we know she's bored with the regal lifestyle. Naturally, only one profession could provide someone dashing enough for her: journalism. And so it's into the arms of US hack abroad Gregory Peck that she falls, while William Wyler directs this sublime couple with infinite charm.

Peck pretends that his hand has been bitten off by the ancient stone face, without having warned Hepburn that he was going to do this. Her initial panic, and the way they hold and gaze at each other afterwards, radiate pure, unscripted affection.

10 Love Story 1970

Cancer and ice-hockey: not, on paper, a recipe for romance. But throw in Ali McGraw, a lush Oscar-winning score and some chunky early-1970s woollens and – hey, presto – it's the highest-grossing film of the year. "What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?" asks sportif rich boy Ryan O'Neil in the opening line. Plenty, of course, most of it schmaltzy, but irresistible. Meanwhile, poor-girl McGraw succumbs to terminal illness while remaining delicious and coining the phrase "Love means never having to say you're sorry." But it's the music that nails you.

The carefree snowball fight of the doomed lovers.

11 An Officer and a Gentleman 1982

He's an officer. He's a gentleman. And, let's not forget, he's a lovva. John Travolta turned down the role of the ne'er-do-well trainee fighter pilot redeemed by Debra Winger, and good thing too. He lacks the hardness that we have to see the character shedding, wouldn't have cut such a dash as Richard Gere in his white outfit, and would have been effortlessly outshone in the looks department by his smouldering belle.

Winger is in her dismal factory; Gere, in full dress uniform, strides in and sweeps her off her feet. The definitive romantic image.

12 Gone with the Wind 1939

With the American Civil War as an expansive backdrop, and enough famous set-pieces to win eight Oscars, this epic is still a simple love story at heart, though arguably it is more about the power of sex than the mysteries of love. Vivien Leigh's petulant Scarlett O'Hara is a terrible pain, but Clark Gable's Rhett Butler is besotted, witty and wise enough to make his kicking down of the bedroom door an act of passion rather than brutality.

Rhett to Scarlett as they kiss and she says she will faint: "I want you to faint. This is what you were meant for."

13 In the Mood for Love 2000

Like so many great romances, Wong Kar-Wai's modern Hong Kong masterpiece is about the impossibility of a romance. It overflows with sensuality and passion, but the man and woman at its heart (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) never consummate their love. They're both married, and are drawn together only when they discover that their partners are having an affair with each other. Soundtracked by the aching cries of cellos in the night, drenched in super-saturated tones, this is the ultimate in desire and frustration.

Tony Leung whispers his most secret thoughts into a hole in the ruined temple of Angkor Wat.

14 Sunrise 1927

Many silent classics tend to be admired from a reverential distance, but not FW Murnau's Sunrise: it's impossible not to respond to it like something that only came out yesterday. Led astray by a lascivious "woman from the city", George O'Brien plots to kill his unsuspecting wife (the luminous Janet Gaynor), only to see the light in a series of reconciliation scenes as tender as they are uplifting. Better still, it's on current release nationwide in a lovingly restored print.

O'Brien and Gaynor go to a photographer's studio and act like giggling newlyweds all over again.

15 Dirty Dancing 1987

A generation of teenage girls were obsessed with this Emile Ardolino film. It's the ultimate female adolescent romance: smart-but-plain daddy's girl (Jennifer Grey's "Baby") has sexual – and rhythmic – awakening with chiselled holiday resort dance teacher (Patrick Swayze's Johnny). It's 1963 and, away from the family activities, Baby is mesmerised by a below stairs world where the staff bump, grind and lose themselves in sensuous R&B rhythms. Baby saves Johnny from a lack of self-worth. He saves her from the foxtrot.

"Nobody puts Baby in the corner," says Johnny, and leads her on stage for the dance of her life.

16 An Affair to Remember 1957

This is the film that Meg Ryan keeps talking about in Sleepless in Seattle. Cary Grant is a carefree playboy who falls in love with Deborah Kerr, a nightclub singer engaged to a wealthy businessman, and vows to meet her six months later at the top of the Empire State Building. Shot in lush Cinemascope, it looks great and features some of the most romantic lines ever written. Sighs Kerr: "Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories." Grant was rarely this sad or soulful again.

Kerr tells Grant, "I was looking up. It was the nearest thing to heaven. You were there."

17 The Way We Were 1973

It's a case of opposites attract when impoverished communist student Katie (Barbra Streisand) falls for rich jock Hubbell (Robert Redford at his most gorgeous). He, however, hardly knows she exists until a chance meeting years later. They fall in love and for a brief, honeymoon period life is filled with long walks on the beach, before their different views drive them apart. All they're left with are "misty water-coloured memories of the way we were".

Hubbell turns up drunk to Katie's romantic meal and falls asleep. But he does so beautifully.

18 La Belle et la Bete 1946

The film may be based on the classic fairytale, but Cocteau transforms it into a heartstopping examination of what is meant by sexual and romantic love. Jean Marais as the Beast is a real animal – clawing at Belle's door at night and drinking the blood of his prey. Josette Day's delicate heroine is terrified and disgusted by this high-testosterone monster, but comes to love the Beast's gentle, self-sacrificing soul. Deeply Freudian, but oh so moving.

Belle offers the Beast some water in her hands and he laps it like a cat.

19 Laura 1944

Unusually for a romance, the heroine is dead when the hero falls in love with her. Laura (Gene Tierney) has been murdered and tough cop Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is interviewing two of the men who loved her. He becomes smitten by the sweetness they describe and also by the portrait above her fireplace. Then she comes back from the dead. Part-thriller, part-romance, with plenty of sharp humour thrown in, Otto Preminger's film is near-perfect.

It's late at night and McPherson has fallen asleep drunk in front of Laura's portrait. A key turns in the lock and in walks a woman. It is Laura. "You're alive!"

20 Punch-Drunk Love 2002

Teetering on the brink of terminal depression, Paul Thomas Anderson's beautiful pipe dream of a modern romantic comedy turns the genre on its head with a mixture of skewed invention and giddy sincerity. Trust the smartest talent in contemporary American cinema to find gainful employment for its most gormless clown - Adam Sandler - whose small-time entrepreneur Barry Egan is a vulnerable and touching creation; Emily Watson glows from within as his expectant sweetheart.

Sandler races through the corridors of Watson's apartment block, rings her doorbell, and they kiss as the music soars.

21 True Romance 1993

It took Quentin Tarantino five years to find backing and a director (Tony Scott) for his first, most personal, script. An update of Badlands, Tarantino admits it is also the romantic fantasy of a single 25-year-old "movie geek". Thus, Patricia Arquette's endearingly ditzy trailer-trash blonde (Alabama) shares a love of kung-fu movies and Elvis with Clarence (Christian Slater). As their cocaine deal-of-a-lifetime goes wrong, the film bursts into a symphony of violence, and we root for this "real cute couple" to make it out alive.

Alabama purrs: "I feel real goofy saying this, me being a call girl and all, but I think I love you."

22 Now, Voyager 1942

This film directed by the British-born Irving Rapper gets stranger and more compelling as the years go by. Bette Davis plays a dowdy spinstress who is transformed from ugly duckling into a swan after a nervous breakdown. On an ocean cruise she falls for unhappily married Paul Henreid and ends up looking after his troubled daughter. As for marriage, she tells him: "Don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." Romance doesn't always have fairytale endings, then, but Davis's transformation is gripping to behold.

When Henreid lights up two cigarettes, then hands one to Davis.

23 When Harry Met Sally 1989

"We could never be friends," announces Harry smugly. "Men and women can never be friends because the sex part always gets in the way." Sally – a fresh, fluffy, all-American ditz – disagrees; 11 years and several regrettable hair-dos later, they're still arguing the point. Nora Ephron's script, zinging with one-liners and verbal sparring, crystallises an imperishable core issue in the war between the sexes; Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal update Hepburn and Tracy in style.

The climactic new year's eve party where Sally wails: "Harry, you say things that make it impossible for me to hate you, and I hate you, Harry, I really hate you."

24 Titanic 1997

James Cameron's $200 million account of the world's worst shipping disaster is also a classic tale of doomed love across the social divide. On an ocean liner bound for the States, a bored young English aristocrat (Rose, played by a ravishing Kate Winslet) discovers her soulmate in Jack, a penniless Irish charmer (Leonardo DiCaprio). But it's not just the class system that's against them – a 500,000-ton iceberg strikes a hole in the ship, and their passionate affair is sunk.

"Promise me you'll survive," stammers the near-dead Jack as they float in the freezing North Atlantic. Rose clutches his hand: "I'll never let go, Jack, I'll never let go."

25 Lost in Translation 2003

Sofia Coppola's postmodern Brief Encounter is full of unspoken, low-key longing and tentative open spaces, proving that in romance, less is often more. It brings Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson together by chance as guests in a Tokyo hotel. Cut adrift from their normal lives and partners, they shyly, slowly come to recognise each other as kindred spirits. Darting through neon streets, holding hands, singing karaoke – nothing happens, but everything happens. It's wonderful. If you haven't seen it yet, go tonight.

They're falling asleep after talking all night. He holds her foot.

26 Une Partie de Campagne 1936

In Renoir's miniature masterpiece (it's only 39 minutes long), Henriette, a fresh and lovely Parisienne, takes a day trip to the country one sunny summer's day with Mum, Dad, Gran and idiot husband-to-be Anatole. She is utterly intoxicated by the gorgeousness of nature and, separated from her family, falls into the arms of young Henri, a handsome, poetic-looking sort. After a brief moment of passion in the long grass, the clouds burst; she heads back to humdrum domesticity with Anatole.

Henriette's resistance to Henri's advances crumbles and her eyes fill with tears when she hears a nightingale warbling in the tree above them.

27 I Know where I'm Going 1945

This black-and-white gem from Powell and Pressburger is almost as much an ode to the Western Isles as it is a tale of romance. Joan Webster (Wendy Hillier) is all set to marry a wealthy man, but bad weather prevents her from getting to the wedding. While she's stranded, she meets Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), a naval officer and the laird of Kiloran. She is sucked into the otherworldliness of the Scottish islands, complete with superstitions, curses, ceilidhs and whirlpools.

She's leaving to marry her rich man. "Will you do something for me before I go away?" she asks. "I want you to kiss me."

28 Breakfast at Tiffany's 1961

Purists maintain that the cinematic version of Truman Capote's novel is a bowdlerised travesty. Few, these days, read Breakfast at Tiffany's, but we keep watching the film. It transformed a slight, amoral tale into a poignant love story where two lost souls, Audrey Hepburn's high-class call girl Holly Golightly, and George Peppard's failed writer, find each other in high-chic bohemian New York. Forty years later, every girl still wants to be an Audrey-style Cinderella walking down Fifth Avenue in a Givenchy dress.

The kiss at the end in the rain with the cat.

29 Bonnie and Clyde 1967


The prototypical warped love story, and, for many, the first modern American movie, this constantly and effortlessly juggles tragedy and comedy, while a cloud of dread at the inevitable outcome hangs over the proceedings. For us not to dismiss them as repugnant killers, the central duo needed to be very beautiful and genuinely touching - and we could have asked for no more than Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

Having just killed his first man, Clyde selflessly suggests to Bonnie that she leave him, adding: "You ain't gonna have a minute's peace!" Her trembling reply is: "You promise?"

30 Annie Hall 1977

Woody Allen's funniest, saddest, finest film, about the life and one true love of Manhattan stand-up Alvy Singer, is almost unbearably heartbroken, a lament for chances missed as well as a fond flashback to better times. Out of the great relationship of his life, Woody fashioned the great relationship of Alvy's and the most personal, mature, reflective film of his career. He couldn't have done it without Diane Keaton, whose Annie is simply unforgettable.

The final montage of Alvy and Annie's life together, set to Keaton's achingly lovely rendition of "Seems Like Old Times".

[Brian Brandt]

THE LADY EVE
BY ROGER EBERT

If I were asked to name the single scene in all of romantic comedy that was sexiest and funniest at the same time, I would advise beginning at six seconds past the 20-minute mark in Preston Sturges' ``The Lady Eve,'' and watching as Barbara Stanwyck toys with Henry Fonda's hair in an unbroken shot that lasts three minutes and 51 seconds.

Stanwyck plays an adventuress who has lured a rich but unworldly young bachelor to her cabin on an ocean liner, and is skillfully tantalizing him. She reclines on a chaise. He has landed on the floor next to her. ``Hold me tight!'' she says, holding him tight--allegedly because she has been frightened by a snake. Now begins the unbroken shot. Her right arm cradles his head, and as she talks she toys with his earlobe and runs her fingers through his hair. She teases, kids and flirts with him, and he remains almost paralyzed with shyness and self-consciousness. And at some point during this process, she falls for him.

That isn't part of her plan. Stanwyck plays Jean Harrington, a con woman who travels first class with her father and their valet, fleecing rich travelers in card games and whatever else comes along. She sets her sights on Charles Pike (Fonda), heir to a brewery fortune, as he comes aboard after a snake-hunting expedition in South America. She drops an apple on his pith helmet as he climbs the rope ladder to the ship, and is reprimanded by her father: ``Don't be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked, but never common.''

What is delightful about Stanwyck's performance is how she has it both ways. She is a crook, and yet can be trusted. A seductress, and yet a pushover for romance. A gold digger, and yet she wants nothing from him. And he is a naive innocent who knows only that her perfume smells mighty good to someone who has been ``up the Amazon'' for a year. She falls for him so quickly and so thoroughly that she's even frank about her methods; just before he kisses her in the moonlight in the ship's bow, she tells him, ``They say a moonlit deck's a woman's business office.''

Howard Hawks once said that the flaw in his ``Bringing Up Baby,'' one of the great screwball comedies, is that everyone in it is a screwball; there's no baseline of sanity to measure the characters against. ``The Lady Eve'' (1941), which in its way is just as preposterous as the Hawks picture, doesn't make that mistake. Fonda is the rock. He remains vulnerable and sincere throughout the picture because, like all young men who are truly and badly in love, his consciousness is focused on one thing: the void in his heart that only she can fill.

That frees Stanwyck for one of her greatest performances, a flight of romance and comedy so graceful and effortless that she is somehow able to play different notes at the same time. The movie establishes Jean Harrington in an inspired early scene, as she joins her father, a phony colonel, in the ship's lounge. Using the mirror in her compact, she spies on Charlie Pike as he sits alone and reads a book (its title, ``Are Snakes Necessary?,'' is a sly addition to the movie's phallic imagery). Sturges cuts to the view reflected in the mirror, and Jean provides a tart voice-over narration for her father, describing the attempts of every woman in the room to catch the handsome bachelor's eye. Then, as Charlie leaves the room, she simply sticks out a foot and trips him; as he picks himself up she blames him for breaking off the heel of her shoe.

He escorts her to her stateroom and she tells him to pick out a new pair of shoes and put them on her feet. ``You'll have to kneel down,'' she says, and swings her nyloned leg almost in his face. His vision blurs with passion, and Sturges comes within an inch of violating the production code, the way her toe swings dangerously close. Poor Charlie falls for her, soon finds himself playing poker with Jean and her father, wins $600 as part of their setup, and then undergoes the exquisite torment of her ear-and-hair caress.

The plot unfolds as screwball invention, except that after boy meets girl and boy loses girl, boy wins what he only thinks is another girl. Jean, hurt by the way he has not trusted her, gets herself invited to a dinner at his father's palatial mansion by posing as ``Lady Eve Sidwich.'' Charlie is struck by how much Eve resembles Jean. ``It's the same dame!'' says his faithful valet Muggsy (William Demarest). But Charlie can't believe it, and follows her moon-eyed through a series of pratfalls.

Sturges says in his memoirs that the studios were always trying to get him to limit his pratfalls, and at the sneak previews he crossed his fingers as Demarest fell into the bushes and Fonda tripped over a couch and a curtain before getting a roast beef in his lap. But they all worked. ``That couch has been there 15 years and nobody ever fell over it before!'' exclaims Charlie's father. Lady Eve: ``Oh, well--now the ice is broken!''

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-90) was known primarily as a gifted dramatic actress (``Golden Boy,'' ``Stella Dallas,'' ``Double Indemnity''). Preston Sturges (1898-1959), who in the early 1940s made one inspired comedy after another (``Sullivan's Travels,'' ``Palm Beach Story'') and scarcely seemed able to step wrong, had promised her a comic role, and gave her one for the ages.

Although the movie would be inconceivable without Fonda, ``The Lady Eve'' is all Stanwyck's; the love, the hurt and the anger of her character provide the motivation for nearly every scene, and what is surprising is how much genuine feeling she finds in the comedy. Watch her eyes as she regards Fonda, in all of their quiet scenes together, and you will see a woman who is amused by a man's boyish shyness and yet aroused by his physical presence. At first she loves the game of seduction, and you can sense her enjoyment of her own powers. Then she is somehow caught up in her own seduction. There has rarely been a woman in a movie who more convincingly desired a man.

Her father is played by Charles Coburn (1877-1961), a valuable character actor from the 1930s through the 1950s, who in appearance was sort of a toned-down Charles Laughton. Here Coburn and Sturges make a crucial right decision: ``Colonel'' Harrington is not blustering and broad, but a smart and perceptive man, not loud, who loves his daughter.

Their relationship is established in a quiet scene the morning after Jean first meets Charlie. She is in her stateroom, still in bed. Her father enters in dressing gown, sits on her bed, and plays with a deck of cards while questioning her. At this point we have a good notion, but no hard evidence, that he is a fraud. ``What are you doing?'' she asks. ``Dealing fives,'' he says. She wants to see. He shows her four aces, puts them on top of the deck, and then deals four hands without dealing a single ace--dealing the fifth card every time. (It's hard to be sure, but here and elsewhere it looks as if Coburn himself is handling the cards.)

The scene establishes him as a shark, makes it clear they're confederates, and underlines, by the way she calls him ``Harry,'' that they're two adults and not locked into a narrow daddy-daughter relationship. The scene also sets up the hilarious scene that night, where the Colonel tries to cheat Charlie at cards, and Jean outcheats him to rescue the man she loves.

A movie like ``The Lady Eve'' is so hard to make that you can't make it at all unless you find a way to make it seem effortless. Preston Sturges does a kind of breathless balancing act here, involving romance, deception and physical comedy. Consider the scenes where Jean masquerades as the Lady Eve. She throws Charlie off the scent by her very lack of a disguise: Brazenly entering his house looking exactly like herself, she adds a British accent and dares him to call her bluff. She knows he cannot, and the masquerade sets up the two final lines of the film, which I will not mention here--except to say that for my money, either one is equal to the classic line ``nobody's perfect!'' at the end of ``Some Like It Hot.''

[Brian Brandt]

The Awful Truth - Irene Dunne and Cary Grant (1937)

One of the top five screwball comedies of the '30s, this helped to cement a genre that waxed golden until the end of WWII. Director Leo McCarey won an Oscar for Best Director for this 1937 romantic comedy--one of the most successful films of his career. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are a squabbling couple who separate because of supposed infidelities on both sides. They part but cannot really keep away from each other. Grant finds himself hooked up with a socialite, Dunne becomes engaged to a millionaire hick played by the hapless Ralph Bellamy (as if he ever stood a chance as the "other" man!). When not dating others or baiting one another in a verbal war, Grant and Dunne wage a custody battle over their pathetic pooch. Gags, double entendre, witty remarks, snide comments, and fast-paced dialogue helped this to garner six Academy Award nominations. The Awful Truth was awfully good to Dunne and Grant, as both were breaking out of much more serious molds and this secured their positions. --Rochelle O'Gorman (amazon.com review)

[Villan]

Can't argue with Brief Encounter

[mike]

Ghost?

[Yvonne]

Brief Encounter 1945

"Parting has never been such sweet sorrow".

My DVDs came yesterday. How did Trevor Howard go from the ineffectual Alec to the masterful and convincing Major Calloway in so short a space of time? If he'd brought a bit of the Major's savoir faire into the situation he'd have hung on to Laura and introduced her, (since she was not yet in deshabille) to his friend, instead of letting her scuttle off in shame. Wet film all round!

[boilerboy]

Originally Posted by mike Ghost?

Yes! and "as good as it gets"

[Carmel]

Im probebly going to get shot here but what is the attraction of Breif Encounter im sorry but its one film i never liked or Casablanca, i really could never see the fuss about these films at all i'v seen a lot more films that were far better.
I think Whithering Heights was a great love story.

[stevie boy]

where is Random Harvest??

[batman]

Originally Posted by stevie boy where is Random Harvest??

I can't remember .

Great film!

Bats.

[HIPPIEDAVE]

Random Harvest starring Ronald Coleman should be on the list, and Portrait of Jenny starring Joseph Cotton.D

[Vicboyd001]

Only a top ten but what movies!

Random Harvest,

Portrait of Jenny,

Brief Encounter,

Now Voyager,

Laura,

Casablanca,

Its A Wonderful Life,

The Lost Horizon,

Brigadoon,

Truly Madly Deeply,

[Nita St. James]

Two of my favorite romantic movies are Wings of Desire and Cocteaus's La Belle et Le Bete.

And I'd add Portrait of Jenny and Lost Horizon too.

[Harleybloke]

'Top Gun' Ooooo Kelly McGillis!

'Sleepless in Seattle' Ooooo, Meg Ryan!

'Shrek' anyone?

[suzepulcheria]

I've always thought that the 1940s movie "The More the Merrier"- Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea- has the most erotic scene ever- and nothing happens! It is just the two of them sitting on a step but the tension positively crackles. That's romance for you.British movies? Anything with Ronald Colman, although it is hard to find many before he went to Hollywood.