Meme: AFI's 100 most romantic movies

[tiggymalvern]

From lady_ganesh

Another "Top 100" list, this time AFI's list of the 100 most romantic movies of the last 100 years (very heavily skewed to the 30s-60s era of Hollywood.)

Bold the ones you've seen, italicize the ones you mean to see, strike the ones you don't intend to see/couldn't make it through.



1. Casablanca
2 Gone with the Wind It bored me to tears, but I stuck it through, hoping it would get better, since it's a 'classic'. It didn't.
3 West Side Story
4 Roman Holiday
5 An Affair to Remember
6 The Way We Were
7 Doctor Zhivago
8 It's a Wonderful Life I really wish I'd never seen this film, I loathe it so much. The entire moral message of this film is the exact opposite of anything I could wish upon anybody.
9 Love Story
10 City Lights
11 Annie Hall
12 My Fair Lady
13 Out of Africa
14 The African Queen
15 Wuthering Heights I hate the book, I hate the film version I saw too.
16 Singin' in the Rain
17 Moonstruck
18 Vertigo
19 Ghost
20 From Here to Eternity
21 Pretty Woman
22 On Golden Pond
23 Now, Voyager
24 King Kong I think the definition of romance is being stretched here!
25 When Harry Met Sally
26 The Lady Eve
27 The Sound of Music
28 The Shop Around the Corner
29 An Officer and a Gentleman
30 Swing Time
31 The King and I
32 Dark Victory
33 Camille
34 Beauty and the Beast
35 Gigi Made me cringe
36 Random Harvest
37 Titanic
38 It Happened One Night
39 An American in Paris
40 Ninotchka
41 Funny Girl I saw part of it once. Nothing I saw inspired me to look up the rest.
42 Anna Karenina
43 A Star Is Born
44 The Philadelphia Story This film made me absolutely adore Katherine Hepburn.
45 Sleepless in Seattle
46 To Catch a Thief
47 Splendor in the Grass
48 Last Tango in Paris Got bored, gave up.
49 The Postman Always Rings Twice
50 Shakespeare in Love
51 Bringing Up Baby
52 The Graduate
53 A Place in the Sun
54 Sabrina (We assume the Audrey Hepburn version)
55 Reds
56 The English Patient
57 Two for the Road
58 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
59 Picnic
60 To Have and Have Not
61 Breakfast at Tiffany's
62 The Apartment
63 Sunrise
64 Marty
65 Bonnie and Clyde
66 Manhattan
67 A Streetcar Named Desire
68 What's Up, Doc?
69 Harold and Maude
70 Sense and Sensibility
71 Way Down East
72 Roxanne
73 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
74 Woman of the Year
75 The American President
76 The Quiet Man Saw this because mum was watching it at home once. I hated it.
77 The Awful Truth
78 Coming Home
79 Jezebel
80 The Sheik
81 The Goodbye Girl
82 Witness Just plain hot. This is UST perfected.
83 Morocco
84 Double Indemnity
85 Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
86 Notorious
87 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
88 The Princess Bride Got bored, gave up. Considering how many people I know who love this film, it has to rank alongside Gone with the Wind as one of the most disappointing experiences ever.
89 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
90 The Bridges of Madison County
91 Working Girl
92 Porgy and Bess
93 Dirty Dancing
94 Body Heat
95 Lady and the Tramp
96 Barefoot in the Park
97 Grease
98 The Hunchback of Notre Dame
99 Pillow Talk
100 Jerry Maguire Saw it, wouldn't ever recommend it. Ack.

I think Notorious is possibly my favourite film ever. It's not flawless, but damn, it's gripping. I was watching it again about 6 months ago, when I was suddenly smacked on the head by one of those dramatic revelations, and I realised that I love Notorious for a lot of the same reasons I love slash, and many of the fandoms that I do. Notorious takes the conventions of the genre, and the societal norms of the time, and joyfully stuffs them in the bin. It takes a woman who drinks too much and indulges in casual sex, and presents her as a romantic heroine. It takes two screwed up people, both bitter and snarky, and makes them simultaneously good for one another, and appallingly bad for one another. It's the romance that shouldn't be, that society and circumstances condemn, and fuck all that, they do it anyway. Not your standard 1940s Hollywood fare. Add in Hitchcock, and how could it possibly fail?

Comments

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Man, this list is pathetic! I can think of many many better movies to put on it!

I'll have to take a whack at this today and tack on movies that they should have recommended and didn't. Bah.

You should totally see Ninotchka, but then once she actually falls in love, stop watching. Cause apparently love turns you from a kick-ass, smart-ass, no-nonsense piece of awesomeness into a swoony, goofy, pathetic milk-sop.

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Jerry Maguire does not belong on any list of best films for any reason at all.

A few of the films I've never heard of - Splendor in the Grass? It can't be that much of a classic.

Thanks for the warning on Ninothchka - I hate it when a film goes downhill that hard and fast!