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Starring:
Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable,  Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel & Butterfly McQueen
Directors:
George Cukor & Sam Wood

233 minutes

Winner of 10 Academy Awards®, including Best Picture

What woman hasn't wanted to be Scarlet O'Hara just once in her life? And what man wouldn't love to be Rhett Butler? Gone with the Wind continues to charm audiences  even 62 years later with its sweeping love story spanning the years of the civil war and the decade following. It is the movie all others are measured by and produced the first Academy Award® for an African American Actress (Hattie McDaniel as Mame) in history. Considering this was 1940's USA where we still lived in a segregated society, this is a well deserved but remarkable achievement.

In terms of tickets sold, Gone with the Wind is still the champ.  In terms of romance, chasing the one that will never be yours and not appreciating what you have until too late, this film is a great reminder of the precious gift love can be if only you open your eyes to see it.

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Director:
Blake Edwards

114 minutes

Oscar® for Best Original Song

Truman Capote's wonderful tale of singles life in New York casts Holly Go Lightly played by Audrey Hepburn as the ultimate scatter-brained party-girl who makes her living by earning $50 every time she goes to the restroom on a date and by carrying coded messages to a mobster in prison.  She is set on marrying wealthy but ends up falling for kept man and starving author whom she calls Fred, but is actually Paul.

Confused, frightened and terrified to commit, Holly won't even name her cat because this would mean they were responsible for each other.  The last scene is one you'll remember and cry over as in the pouring rain she searches for Cat after abandoning him and opens her eyes to true love in a rain drenched kiss.

This film touches a nerve with anyone whom has ever been afraid to love yet desperately longs for it.  Audrey Hepburn is at her absolute best and turns a somewhat narcissistic character into a woman most men would long to love.

Doctor Zhivago

My mother was 3-months pregnant with me when this film came out and I was named after the lead character Lara, though spelled differently. Needless to say, I have music boxes with the Oscar® winning Lara's Theme and several collectables from the movie even though I didn't first see it until 1987. At the time I thought it was funny how much I looked like Julie Christie and being a hopeful romantic, like many before me I too fell in love with the movie.

Set aside the personal notes and you have a film that countless young Baby Boomers fell in love with and to. It came out during the beginning of turbulent times in the United States on the heels of Beattle Mania, Viet Nam deployment and two years prior to the Summer of Love.  It speaks of an earlier time of social turbulence during the Russian Revolution, the choices to be made between love, morals  and duty and the longing one feels when he/ or she fails to follow the heart.  The film brings a human side to the revolutionary saga and ends with a hopeful yet dismal look at the results of communism and a love both found and forever lost. 

What makes this movie a phenomenal love story is its  realism and its exploration of the less romantic sides of life like deception, dissolution, inner strength, grief and determination. 

An Officer and a Gentleman is really a coming of age story about a man in his late twenties determined to change his life.  He enters the Officer Candidate training and discovers an inner courage and strength he never knew existed.  During this time he falls in love with a young factory worker, discovers the harsher truths of human nature and becomes disillusioned by life. Like many men he tries to deny his love for her and escape.  Also like many men he ultimately discovers his life is empty without her and in the end he comes back, sweeps her off her feet and carries her into forever. 

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This award winning interpretation of Shakespeare’s most beloved tale of star-crossed lovers is as epic in its visual elements and costumes as it is in the quality of the acting.

Even if you think you won't like Shakespeare, this film will change your mind.  The script is his, no alterations. 

Romeo & Juliet proves that this Renaissance man is truly the age’s master storyteller and still holds the key to enduring and unequivocal sensuality. Viva la romance!
 

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Casablanca

Humphrey Bogart plays a saloon keeper heavily distraught over the future and the one time lover of Ingrid Bergman.  When she wanders into his Gin Joint of all those in the world, the sparks begin to fly and the old romantic feelings are once again rekindled.  In the end Bogart does the hardest thing for any man in love.  He lets her go in one of the most famous good-bye scenes ever recorded on film. 
 

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands

Director:
Nick Cassavetes

124 minutes

It's a film that truly reinvigorates ones belief that love is worth living and dying for.  Without giving away the plot, James Garner is a saint in this film, exactly the type of man every woman wants to spend the rest of her life with.  You will be caught up in this story from the first moments and guys may kick a bit and call this a Chick Flick, but it really is about what vows and love were meant to be...and the guy is the real good guy.

What makes this film a great love story is it shows the sacrifices people who love each other make in order to love each other despite the odds and the disapproval of others.  This is a tear jerker as in the end one of the two does die, leaving the other to face the world alone. If you're looking for uplifting, Love Story is not your movie.  If you're looking for an emotional tear-jerker, pop the popcorn and draw up a chair. 

This film was marketed to a generation of Baby Boomers proclaiming "Love means never having to say you are sorry," which is probably the worst advice any person has ever received.  It may also be why Boomers have the highest divorce rate in history!
 

Each engaged to others, Grant and Kerr meet on a cruise ship and turn society upside down as they fall in love with each other.  Agreeing to meet New Years Eve a top the Empire State Building, tragedy intercedes and the union is postponed.   In true romantic fashion, neither can forget the other but both believe the other does not want them. 

In the end the truth comes out and a lesson in love is revealed showing that true love overcomes all obstacles and accepts each unconditionally.

1962: G
Starring:
Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway
Wilfrid Hyde-White
Director:
George Cukor
170 Minutes

Winner of the Oscar for 'Best Picture' 1962

One of the ultimate Cinderella stories set to the music of Rogers and Hammerstein, My Fair Lady follows the transformation of "Gutter Snipe" Eliza Doolittle into a lady who can fool royalty with her elegance and grace.

The whole story begins as a bet when Professor Higgins states he can make any woman a lady simply by refining her speech and manners.  He succeeds yet unbeknownst to him, he has also fallen in love with her. Like most men though, It takes losing her for him to finally figure this out.

You may recognize this theme in later movies like Trading Places.  It's a popular theme and one that plays upon the hidden desires each of us has.

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Marty is a burly but gentle man, easing into middle age without much hope for romance or a career. He lives at home with his mother (Esther Minciotti), a kind but life-smothering woman, and a small circle of dead-end friends. Marty has no self-confidence and feels he's dumpy and unattractive. While it takes some doing, Marty's mother finally convinces him to go to the Stardust Ballroom in Manhattan, where he meets a plain-looking schoolteacher named Clara (Betsy Blair), whose life appears to mirror his own. He asks Clara to dance...for the rest, watch Marty. You'll love it!
 

"You complete me."

It's not often that a romantic film strikes a cord with men.  Jerry MaGuire does.  Perhaps it is because this film captures a man's life and idea of romance as it inserts itself into his work.  Women see hearts and flowers and emotions as they define romance.  Men, action oriented see the completion of a quest and objective.  When she adds to his life and provides that stability in spite of his flaws.  When she sees him as a hero no matter what.  When she completes the picture of his life and suddenly a life without her is unbearable, this defines romance to a man. Jerry MaGuire is a romantic movie for men which illustrates the strength of love even when he is at his worst and how the right woman can still bring out his best.
 

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In 1982, the world first encountered Mel Gibson as Mad Max but it wasn't until 1983's The Year of Living Dangerously did the world completely embrace this superstar.

Set in Indonesia in 1965, the film follows the work of a troupe of International correspondents in Jakarta through the overthrowing of President Sukarno. Gibson plays Australian journalist Guy Hamilton aided by Billy (Linda Hunt playing a man) bent on delivering the story, whatever the cost. Through his quest he comes to respect the Indonesian people and falls in love with a British embassy liaison played by Sigourney Weaver.  The story, like An Officer and a Gentleman is a coming of age and coming to truth story where a man confronts his own immorality and ultimately decides that love is the one thing worth risking even his sight for.

This is an action packed adventure set to an alluring yet hauntingly sensual soundtrack that will give you a new appreciation for life and the gifts you have.    NEXT PAGE

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