Pristine’s Top Ten Romantic Movies (Update: July 5, 2006)
Email This ArticleI’m looking over other people’s Top Ten Most Romantic Movies list and I gotta say it: Who is this Meg Ryan? I’ve never heard nor seen a movie with her in it. Gentle readers of d332.com might think that your humble writer is one of those stodgy bookworms who sit at home and listen to NPR and pledges to PBS. And while it’s true that I go to the cinema once every five years (last two movies I saw were D.E.B.S., and Goya in Bordeaux), I do have my very own ten most romantic movies. I have been writing them down on my collection of top ten list for years. Here they are.
1. Natural Born Killers
Oh what lovely chemistry between Juliet Lewis and Woody Harrelson! From the opening musical collage of Patti Smith’s rock and roll song to The Cowboy Junkies’ rendition of Sweet Jane, this throw-in-the-kitchen-sink attempt by Oliver Stone is a one-of-its-kind romance flick. The inverted footage of a galloping wild horse along the backdrop of a south eastern desert ranks as one of the most sensual movie moments for me. It’s a metaphor of every teenage girl’s dream of freedom. And if that isn’t enough, well then there’s always the romance of running off with the local butcher after he successfully exorcises the Rodney Dangerfield from your all-American dad.
2. Wild At Heart
Nicholas Cage’s Elvis and Laura Dern’s bubble-gum chewing Lula are my favorite onscreen romantic movie couple. I mean, sex, pedicures, and thrash metal moshing is like, total guaranteed formula for romance. The way Lula gazes dreamily at Sailor with her big dark eyebrows is every girl’s first cherished ideal of being in love. And of course, there’s the reappearing motif of escaping the psychotic disapproving forbidding parental unit. This shouldn’t be read in any way as a reflection of the listmaker’s personal life, of course.
3. Immortal Beloved
Next to Kieslowski’s Short Film on Killing and Camera Buff, this was the only movie that big fat tears rolled out of my eyes when I was in the movie theatre. The notion of an angry, annoying, temperamental fella throwing tantrums for the first 99% of the movie, before revealing a pure unending love is for me, a wonderful romance story: It shows how easily we can make mistaken assumptions about a person, and that love is more often than not, a deep, personal, and intensely private affair. The stately scene where Isabella Rosselini gets onstage to accompany the composer out of the hall after failed starts at his Emperor Concerto No.5 is the greatest onscreen moment. For a person to stand by a failed person, in the face of hundreds of disapproving looks, is love and charity personified.
4. A Patch of Blue
Continuing on the theme of seen versus unseen, we come across one of my earliest picks of romantic movies. Throughout this movie, Sidney Poitier is beleaguered by the eventual revelation of his skin color to a blind girl he has befriended. The most lovely moment is at the point when he does, and Elizabeth Hartman shrugs and says, “like ya dude, I knew that all along.” Just the look on Poitier’s face is worth a thousand words. In my opinion, it’s the triumphant moment of celluloid accomplishment in showing just how precious it is for every person to be truly seen as who they are, against society’s instructions on how to look at him or her. The closing scene with Poitier running down the staircase only to miss her departing car by seconds before Jerry Goldsmith’s piano score wafts in between the leaves of the streetside trees is that delicate romantic screen moment that I’ll always cherish.
5. Dead Calm
Surprisingly, when I ran this movie by my friends, they chimed in and said “oh yeah, that made my list too.” The scene where Nicole Kidman is climbing to the upper mast of the sailboat, in the dark stormy seas, with binoculars searching the horizon for Sam Neill, who is underwater, about to drown, breathing his last breath always leaves me speechless. It’s a metaphor of divine destiny where two people who belong together are doing everything they can to find their way back into each other’s arms again. *Sigh* (sees stars)
6. Mulholland Drive
I adored Naomi Watt’s perky, bubbly new-girl-in-town character in Mulholland Drive. She’s so nice, sweet, and innocent that when she professed her love to Laura Harring bedside, I was instantly transported to the very first time I declared my feelings to my first love. So pure and unadorned, it’s tres primitif!
7. Un Homme et Une Femme
When I was a little girl, I use to gaze at a poster of Anouk Aimee in my dad’s darkroom. When I finally saw Claude LeLouch’s A Man and a Woman, it was all I imagined it to be. Just the thought that a boy would drive and complete a 24 hour transcontinental European auto race, and still want to see his girl enough that he’d drive all night to see her makes any expectations I have of boys to drive over to see me all the more reasonable! The sequence with the song Samba Saravah is just an adorable scene of domestic bliss.
8. Witness
It should be apparent at this point that I have a penchant for seeing romance in non-romantic movies. I reiterated my list of romantic movies to several people and got nothing but looks of confusion and wrinkled furrowed brows. Witness is a gorgeously understated love story set on an Andrew Wyeth canvas. Every movement is a minimal stroke that subtly hints at what lies beneath the surface. The look that Kelly McGillis gives to Harrison Ford from behind the screen door during the shower scene is, in itself, a piece of artwork, a classic portrait. Sometimes so much is harvested in one’s imagination when things are not realized. It’s the notion of what could have been against what is, that creates the foundation of romance.
9. Marnie
I was trying to think of a present day actress who could play Marnie in a remake. I’m not sure anyone can ever match Tippi Hedren in her taut mania of Munchian disgust, something that only the alumni of John Waters can only begin to realize. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of Tippi Hedren’s look (I would have preferred Eva Marie Saint). But oh, to be manhandled by tall dark Sean Connery, who says “Now, I’ve caught you, by god I’m going to keep you!.” Doesn’t every girl want to ride horses all day and be saved by a young wealthy industrialist banker? I know I would!
10. The Misfits
I love Clark Gable! Growing up, I was taught to think myself Grace Kelly in a jungle filled with Ava Gardners. Anyway, the story behind the production of the Misfits- Gable believing in the project enough to personally finance it to completion, then passing away two weeks before it opened - made the closing scene where Rosalyn snuggles against our aging protagonist, driving in a beat up pickup truck off into the sunset uber romantic.
July 5th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
nice movie selection do you have any other movies you like that are romantic
July 7th, 2006 at 6:42 am
I guess I must be from Mars. I always categorized Wild at Heart as a comedy, at least when Willem Dafoe entered the movie. What was I smoking?? I had to stuff a sock in my muth when he explained his time in Nam. Then the hold-up scenes!!! Drop their guns or don’t move …bwhahahaha…. the dog with the hand in his mouth. God I was in tears.
Now I have to re-view it as a love story, a love triangle if you add in Bobby Peru? I am up for it, but it may lead to questioning all sorts of basic assumptions. Geez, where will that lead……
July 7th, 2006 at 6:52 am
Reckless (with Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah) is an addendum Dave.
July 7th, 2006 at 7:07 am
Wild at Heart is a comedy, but also a love story. Willem DaFoe was funny. I remembered my dad laughing out loud during the “not now, maybe later” scene with Laura Dern. Dafoe is one of my fav onscreen actors. I know: he plays weird guys…but check out “Off Limits” with Amanda Pays. He actually came off handsome. Of course, there’s always Kathryn Bigelow’s debut “The Loveless” which paved the way for DaFoe’s character is “Streets of Fire.”
The romance of Wild at Heart is mostly due to Lula and Sailor.