By Lucie M. Winborne, ReMIND Magazine
Whether you’re a romantic or a cynic, in a new relationship or mourning an old, there’s something for everyone in these five cinema hits exploring love in its myriad forms, even as they prove that whether noble or tragic, comical or quirky, its course rarely runs smooth.
World-weary nightclub owner Rick Blaine provides a haven for Europeans looking to escape the Germans by fleeing to America in the early days of World War II in Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. When his former love Ilsa unexpectedly turns up at the club with her Czech nationalist husband, Rick, who holds two letters of transit obtained from a suspicious source, is confronted with an agonizing choice. Masterful performances and a heart-wrenching theme of love versus duty made this an American classic unlikely to ever lose its power.
Then there’s the delicious tension of misunderstood love that so often exists between characters of differing backgrounds, which proved a route to box office success in films like 1952’s The Quiet Man. Boxer Sean Thornton (John Wayne), returning to his native Ireland to forget a tragic event in his past, finds the road to romance rather thorny thanks to fiery Mary Kate Danaher’s (Maureen O’Hara) insistence on a stringently proper courtship and a marital dowry that her older brother Will is reluctant to provide. Several squabbles and one fistfight later, hearts triumph over heads (and money) in the end.
Passion is just as palpable for another set of lovers separated by a cultural divide in 1961’s West Side Story, an exuberant and haunting musical update of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in which feuding families are replaced by rival street gangs. Reflecting the real-life violence of New York turf wars at the time, this ever-timely production still leaves viewers asking, “Why can’t we just let love be?”
Sometimes the road to togetherness is paved with neuroses, as with the on-again/off-again duo of Woody Allen as standup comedian Alvy Singer and Diane Keaton as titular singer/photographer Annie Hall. Analyzing their relationship in between breakups, during which he unsuccessfully dates other women, Singer attempts to understand what went wrong, but is finally reduced to crafting a happy ending to their story in the lines of a play. Beloved for its witty dialogue, portrait of ’70s culture and screen chemistry between Allen and Keaton, the film earned multiple Oscars.
Exotic and international obstacles plague novelist Joan Wilder, who lives vicariously through her heroines until a phone call plunges her into a kidnapping/drug smuggling/fortune hunting escapade in Romancing the Stone. Will soldier of fortune Jack Colton choose pursuit of a mysterious treasure over rescuing Joan and her endangered sister, Elaine? His fate seems certain after following a booty-swallowing crocodile into the water, but when he later reappears in Manhattan with the sailboat he dreamed of buying, our protagonists cruise into the sunset, where it can be presumed that anything but a dull life awaits them.
And isn’t that what we all dream of when it comes to romance?