>> Speaker 1: We hope you all had a great Valentine's Day because we're talking
about love.
So whether you get wooed, laid, stood up or dumped, we've got a movie for you.
These are the top ten movie romances of all time.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Kicking us off at number 10,
let's get it out of the way right off the bat, the rom-com.
Whether it be from the gold standard When Harry Met Sally,
the magical Sleepless in Seattle, the ingenious Groundhog Day, or
the raucous Some Like it Hot, Hollywood loves its comedic couplings.
But if there's one we like a little more than all the rest, it's gotta be Barry and
Lena from Punch Drunk Love.
>> Speaker 2: I'm looking at your face and I just wanna smash it.
I just wanna fucking smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it.
You're so pretty.
>> Speaker 1: Combine masterful performances in the supporting roles with
magical chemistry and
probably the best role of Adam Sandler's wildly varied career.
This is the same man that brought you this.
Throw them into a strange world of PT Anderson's making and
you've got a phenomenal twist on the romantic comedy.
Punch Drunk Love has all the trappings of a traditional rom-com
wrapped in the strange eclectic tone of, PTAs creation.
It also has it's fair share of phone sex, violence and
pudding, whole lot of pudding.
All in all it's a bizarrely funny trip into romance, that met cute and
succeeded against all odds.
So we're happy to have it start off our list.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Next up at number 9, we're looking at Young Love.
There's something innocent, and awkward, and complex, and
completely relatable about the hand-fumbling, head-spinning,
hormone-raging world of falling in love for the first time.
And we've got the movies to show for it.
We love the budding romances of Moonrise Kingdom, and Say Anything, and
Show Me Love, of Badlands, and My Girl, and the Umbrellas of Sherboard.
But for our number 9 we've got to give it to Romeo and Juliet.
>> Speaker 3: Romeo, Romeo.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 3: Wherefore art thou, Romeo?
>> Speaker 1: You might be a little confused as to that clip,
because it's not an avalanche of LSD and visuals.
That version is good too, but it's not the one on our list.
This spot is reserved for the 1968 adaptation by Franco Zeffirelli
that contains even more chemistry than the 96 modernization.
If that even possible.
There's a giant chasm of difference between good Shakespeare and bad.
Good Shakespeare imbues it's words with meaning, with passion, with subtext and
desire behind the flowery prose in such a way that someone who knew precisely
zero English could easily grasp the drama that takes place behind those words.
While bad Shakespeare is a mockery.
A recitation of incomprehensible baroque poetry with little resemblance to plot.
But these are teenagers saying these words.
Teenagers who are horny, and impulsive, and naive, and stupid, not scholarly, and
verbose.
And Zeffirelli was one of the first in cinema to treat them as such, and
it pays off.
This Shakespeare is not only watchable but irresistibly so.
At number 8 we wanna dedicate a spot to happy endings.
Because a little forehadowing here,
this will be the last you see of it on our list.
>From number 7 onwards the best you're gonna get is ambiguous and
the worst is dead.
But we're not complete pessimists.
We love Wally and Eva as much as anybody, and the titular Beauty and
Beast from La belle et la bête.
Westley and Buttercup from The Princess Bride, and David and
Kim from A Matter of Life and Death.
But if there's an ending that makes our hearts the meltiest, it's the gorgeous
look of recognition between the flower girl and the tramp from City Lights.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Years after talkies had become the predominant mode of
film-making, Chaplin still chose to make one last silent film.
So he made a romance of few words.
Instead, gestures, looks, touches of knee-slapping, slapstick comedy and
eye-watering emotion.
But at it's core, City Lights is film about a man who goes unseen and unnoticed.
A social outcast finding someone he hopes to be seen by, and
doing the right thing even when he isn't.
If you've ever seen City Lights you'll truly know why it's on this list,
but if you haven't.
Even if you're skeptical of black-and-white and
dialogue cards, give it a watch.
We promise it'll be worth it.
Next up, we wanna look at some odd couples, those like Bonnie and Clyde and
True Romance's Clarence and Alabama for their violent bent.
Vampire and human from Let The Right One In, Man and
computer from the wonderful Her, and Benjamin Braddock and Mrs.
Robinson for their age gap from the Graduate.
However, for our number 7, we're going even bigger with the age gap with the 19
year old hero Harold and 79 year old Maude.
>> Speaker 4: I like you, Maude.
>> Speaker 5: Yes, I like you Harold.
>> Speaker 1: This movie practically created quirky in the modern indie sense,
spawning all sorts of twe love stories that celebrate the delightfully different.
Garden State, 500 Days of Summer, and Juno.
However, the original manic pixy dream girl just might be Maude.
79 years young, and obsessed with living her life to the absolute fullest,
as if every day were her last.
She lives in a rail car, commits casual everyday felonies, and
attends daily funerals, where she meets Harold.
A death obsessed young man, who's primary character trait is a predilection for
staging his own Suicide.
Despite their almost unbelievable diametric opposition,
their relationship is tender, heartfelt, and believable.
It has real chemistry and vulnerability involved beneath the stylization.
And in the end, it has more than enough humor and heart to land it on this list.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Next up at number 6 we're all about second chances.
And that might be the twisted romance between Scotty and Judy from Vertigo,
of Zoe and Darryl in Breaking Upwards, or
the wonderful re-seduction of Walter's ex-wife from His Girl Friday.
And we recommend them all.
However, for second tries there's no romance like the one between Joel and
Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
>> Speaker 6: I can't see anything that I don't like about you.
>> Speaker 7: But you will.
>> Speaker 6: Right now I can't. >> Speaker 7: But you will.
You know?
You will think of things.
And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped,
because that's what happens with me.
>> Speaker 6: Okay.
>> Speaker 1: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind seems to be almost
impossible to dislike.
It is the romance movie for those who hate romance.
It is beautifully written, gently directed, honestly acted, and perfectly
turns Charlie Kaufman's surreal nonlinear script into a visual and auditory feast.
Exploring why relationships turn from success to failure.
And how our past can write our future.
There's a lot to love in this modern romantic masterpiece.
In a world where the movie asks, if you could erase an ex lover, would you?
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: At number 5,
we wanna spend a slot of honor the unparalleled takes on honesty.
Brutal or otherwise, about the entire experience of what it means to love.
Weekend is a phenonimal look at the first few exciting and
awkward days of a budding relationship.
While Amour is a heartbreaking and
unflinching look at a relationship at life's end.
We're conflicted about only giving an honorable mention to
Woody Allen's Annie Hall.
Surely it's one of the greatest relationship stories of all time.
But we think that it is just narrowly edged out by Jesse and
Celine from the Before trilogy.
>> Speaker 8: I'm giving you life, okay?
I got nothing larger to give.
I'm not giving it to anybody else.
If you're looking for permission to disqualify me.
I'm not gonna give it to you, okay?
I love you.
>> Speaker 1: From the passionate sparks of their first meeting to the well
aged familiarity of their nine year anniversary and their reunion in between.
The Before trilogy builds up as beautiful a portrait of a living,
breathing relationship as Boyhood does a youth.
Each shot nine years apart,
written in a collaboration between director Richard Linkletter and
actors Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy, this relationship is pure cinema magic.
Real happiness, and love, and passion, and doubt, and
pain not in the tragic comic exaggeration of the romantic comedy or melodrama.
But hesitantly, inconsistently,
and humanly in all of the ways that real relationships move over time.
Because that is what this movie is built out of, real relationships and time.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Counting down to number 4, it's time to talk about failure.
Romance isn't all about falling in love.
It's about falling out of it, too.
And this is done wonderfully in Revolutionary Road, Like Crazy, and
Blue Valentine.
As well as between Martha and George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
But if there's a picture of a relationship failure more devastatingly beautiful than
Ingmar Bergman's Scene From a Marriage, we don't know it.
>> [FOREIGN] >> Speaker 1: The film
is exactly as its name suggests.
Six episodes over the course of ten years.
Beginning with a self described perfect couple and
ending with their eventual divorce and then, well, you'll see.
The film is just about as simple it sounds,except not in the pejorative sense.
Simple in the sense that all the extraneous bullshit is stripped away and
all that is left are a man and
a woman struggling to communicate as genuinely as they can.
And if any further testament is needed for the power of this movie, consider that in
the year of its release, the Scandinavian divorce rate practically doubled.
Closing in at number 3 and number 2, we have two picks for
the category we like to call the near miss.
Is anything as bittersweet and
beautifully melancholy as the relationship that almost was?
And the films that do this wonderfully but don't quite make the cut are films like
Once, Roman Holiday, and the endlessly stylish Lost in Translation.
But the once that do, well, the first one is between Laura and Alec.
Two married strangers at a railway station from David Lean's Brief Encounter.
>> Speaker 9: You know it's happened, don't you?
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 10: Yes.
Yes I do. >> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 9: I've fallen in love with you.
>> Speaker 1: It's a quiet mannered, contemplative approach to an affair.
All stiff upper lip and
proper composure that conceals an iceberg of emotions beneath the surface.
This isn't bombastic, shout-it-from-rooftops love.
It's two people who have just previously told you that they were happy in their
relationship really grappling with the feelings that emerge when they meet.
We'd like to say we can't think of a love story more beautifully subtle,
but we can't, and it's our number 2.
One car wise Chow and Su from In The Mood For Love.
>> [FOREIGN]
>> Speaker 1: This film paints with the
finest of brushes, detailing the longing and romance capable with simply a glance.
It's also a heart wrenching poem to a love that almost was.
When two neighbors piece together why their spouses are always out at the same
time, they decide that they cannot do the same.
The painful result is a love that is simultaneously mutual and unrequited.
Separated by a pair of violated marriage contracts that they stubbornly uphold.
The tension and
subtext drips off every glance, and the film is absolutely beautiful for it.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: Of course there is no love quite so
capable of simultaneous beauty and pain as love lost.
In films the world over tell stories of this sort of love from Jack and
Rose to Carl and Ellie, from Uri and Laura to Rhett and Scarlet, Robbie and Sicilia,
Jack and Ennis.
But for our favorite silver screen couple of all time,
it's pretty damn hard to top Humphry Bogart and
Ingrid Bergman as Rick Blane and Ilsa Lund in the inimitable Casablanca.
>> Speaker 11: When 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.
>> Speaker 12: But what about us?
>> Speaker 11: We'll always have Paris.
>> Speaker 1: Could there be two leads easier to fall in love with and
harder to let go of?
Desperately we ache as they do for
them to make the happy choice, the easy choice, the choice to stay together.
But of course, Rick would not be Rick, and we surely couldn't love him if he didn't
make the noble choice instead, despite all his intentions to avoid it.
The chemistry, the characters, the dialogue, and
the heartbreak are all permanently etched into our memory and our hearts.
Which is exactly why it's our number 1 pick for
the best movie romance of all time.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: So what did you think?
Did we leave out one of your favorite romances?
Do you disagree with some of our picks?
Let us know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe for
more Cinefix move picks.
>> [MUSIC]