Boy meets girl, boy loses girl – it’s the age-old convention that Hollywood uses to keep the movie-going public happy – well, at least some of us happy.
Gone With The Wind (1939)
Southern girl (Vivien Leigh) survives the Civil War but finally loses the only man she cares for. The essential appeal of Gone With The Wind is that of a romantic story with compelling characters and immaculate production values. Unusually for a Hollywood movie it makes a fair attempt at capturing the power of at least some of the original novel.
- Starring Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard.
- Written by Sidney Howard, based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell. Directed by George Cukor and later by Victor Fleming.
Gone With The Wind won eight Oscars, two honorary Oscars and received five Oscar nominations.
Love Story (1970)
Two students marry; one of them dies. That’s about it. A liberal dose of ripe old love story clichés spiced up with some edgy language to attract a younger audience. Under the circumstances, however, it’s a well made and astonishingly popular movie.
- Starring Ali MacGraw, Ryan O’Neal and Ray Milland..
- Written by Erich Segal and directed by Arthur Hiller.
Love Story won an Oscar and was nominated for six more.
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
An eight-year old boy encourages his recently-widowed father (Tom Hanks) to air his grief on a radio phone-in show. A Baltimore news reporter (Meg Ryan) hears his plight and is keen to meet him. The boy believes she is the right match for him and contrives to bring them together. Based on the familiar Cupid’s arrow premise, Sleepless In Seattle is a surprisingly successful mixture of smart dialogue, sentiment and tears, all applied with style and professionalism.
- Starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan and Ross Malinger.
- Written by Jeff Arch and directed by Nora Ephron.
Sleepless In Seattle was nominated for two Oscars.
Brief Encounter (1945)
A suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) on her weekly trip to the shops develops a love affair with a local doctor (Trevor Howard), but he gets a job abroad and they agree not to see each other again. An outstanding example of wartime British cinema turned by sheer professional craft into a masterpiece; even those bored by the theme must be riveted by the treatment, especially the use of a dismal railway station and its trains.
- Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard and Stanley Holloway.
- Written by Noel Coward, based on his play, Still Life. Directed by David Lean.
Brief Encounter was nominated for three Oscars and won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Titanic (1997)
A romantic tale told by 100-year old Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) to her grandchildren about her love affair with a working-class migrant (Leonardo Di Caprio) on the ill-fated Titanic voyage. Overlong and rather mawkish fable enriched by moments of technical wizardry and directorial stylishness; however, these qualities do not quite atone for the slow pace of the storyline and its sickly-sweet sentimentality.
- Starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet.
- Written and directed by James Cameron.
Titanic won 11 Oscars and received three more nominations.
Peter John Shearing - I live in London and act as a consultant to a group of property investors compiling reports on international locations. This entails ...
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