Bumpy roads to happy endings
Jul 14 '04 (Updated Apr 24 '09)
The Bottom Line The second of three lists of roman[tic] movies, the upbeat one...
Tolstoi famously remarked that all happy families are the same. All happy endings may be, too, but as this list of movies with romantic happy endings shows, the paths to the happy endings are diverse and often very rocky. The complications are the fun (besides, many romantics are more than content to dissolve into tears; seven of the AFI's list of ten most romantic American films end with the lovers not together).
I would claim that only about half of the movies on my list of happy-ending romances are great films, and am sure that some inclusions will raise eyebrows (so make your own list!)
(1) Early in my epinions existence, I proclaimed The Shanghai Express (directed by Joseph von Sternberg in 1932) the most deliriously romantic movie ever (rivaled primarily by the earlier von Sternberg direction of Marlene Dietrich in "Morocco" in 1930 with her following Gary Cooper and the troops into the desert at the end). Dietrich's "Shanghai Lily" demands trust, undertakes great sacrifice, and receives Doc's (Clive Brooks) unconditional surrender at the end. Not only Dietrich, but Anna May Wong, are photographed in an apotheosizing glamour. (And who'd have thought that Eugene Pallette would appear twice in a list of the best romance movies? He adds more than comic relief to the mix here.)
(See my review at http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-4D7B-7343D46-395BEA47-prod3)
(2) The ending of Notorious (directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) is plenty romantic, too. It is more Cary Grant finally surrendering to the love for Ingrid Bergman he has been fighting through the movie, as she has placed herself in great danger out of love for him. Poor Claude Rains... (he ended up in better company in "Casablanca").
(See Cripper's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_82812112516)
(3) Jean Cocteau cast his lover Jean Marais as the beast in Beauty and the Beast (La belle et la bête, 1946). Marais suffers nobly as a beast (in the tradition of "King Kong"), and is disconcertingly ordinary after the love of the compassionate beauty (Josette Day) transforms him into a standard-issue prince.
(see JediKermit's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_54493089412)
(4) Although in real life the teaming of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall was finite, on film they are united forever. "To Have and Have Not" is a great movie (and "The Big Sleep" a fascinating one, but as a romance, the Bogart-Bacall ne plus ultra is the final beach cantina scene in Dark Passage (used in the music video of "Didn't we almost have it all/Just like Bogart and Bacall"). Getting there is not easy for them, and involves leaps of faith (and another kind of leap from Agnes Moorhead), nightmarish plastic surgery, escape from the prison of San Quentin, and a trek up San Francisco's Nob Hill.
(The only epinion is Eplovejoy's under appreciative one at http://www.epinions.com/content_12220534404; I agree with him that it is not the best movie with Bogart and Bacall: it's the most romantic one)
(5) "Love Affair" (1939) remade as "An Affair to Remember" is the canonical tearjerker with a happy ending. I prefer the considerably less noble turn by Charles Boyer (playing a Romanian gigolo unable to cross the border from Mexico to California) in Hold Back the Dawn (directed by Mitchell Leisen, 1941) with Olivia de Haviland as the brave woman set up to get him what he needs, and Paulette Goddard in a role similar to the one Helena Bonham-Carter plays in "Wings of the Dove."
("Hold Back the Dawn" is not on DVD and not in the epinions database; the 1939 "Love Affair" is on DVD but not in the epinions database)
(6) The canonical Bette Davis romantic roles are in "Jezebel" (1938 with Henry Fonda) and "Now Voyager" (1942, with Paul Henreid), but the Davis movie in which spurned and trampled-on devotion finally pays off is
Mr. Skeffington (directed by Vincent Sherman in 1944) with Claude Rains in the long-suffering title role.
(See Tbrown's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_29464891012
(7) Strictly Ballroom (directed by Baz Luhrmann, 1992) with the heart-throb Paul Mercurio sliding on his knees across the floor to exalt the ugly duckling (Tara Morice) into the swandom the audience has intuited. With longer takes than "Moulin Rouge" but already way over the top.
(See Minorthreat78's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_116859047556)
(8) Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959) has happy endings all around and the immortal last line, "Nobody's perfect" from the determined Joe E. Brown. The movie has too much George Raft, but the right amount of Marilyn Monroe. (And Tony Curtis looked good in drag—or out of it in those days...)
(See Pffrdfdus7's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_31456988804)
(9) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (directed by Mike Nichols, 1966) has one of the bumpier verbal roads to a measure of redemption for George and Martha as played by Dick and Liz, a canonically ferocious screen couple on and offscreen. I think that George Segal is unusually good, though it is Sandy Dennis playing his wife who picked up an Oscar (as did Ms. Taylor). Stagy? I don't really care when the camera is capturing bravura performances, but the movie is not visually static. As John Ford was wont to say, the landscape of the human face is infinitely fascinating.
(See George_Chabot's appreciation at http://www.epinions.com/content_112022752900)
(10) In contrast to the party games of "Who's Afraid," Il Postino (directed by Michael Radford, 1994) is heartwarming and upbeat, with Philippe Noiret as the love poet Pablo Neruda helping a not very Dantesque Italian postman (Massimo Troisi) woo his Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta). That Troisi more or less died for love of the story adds reverberations (like the casting of Burton and Taylor as George and Martha in "Who's Afraid"). (The 1983 Spanish-language version "Ardiente paciencia" is also touching.)
(See Murasaki's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_8782253700 and Metalluk's at http://www.epinions.com/content_143607893636)
(11) Cary Grant has already appeared on this list, carrying Ingrid Bergman down the grand stairway of the Nazis in Rio de Janeiro. But Grant was the champion of verbal jousts (and not a few pratfalls) through the course of a movie leading to the coming-together happy ending. The ideal onscreen match for him was Irene Dunne. I have trouble distinguishing The Awful Truth (directed by Leo McCarey, 1939) and My Favorite Wife (directed by Garson Kanin, 1940, with some offscreen frisson from Grant's living with Randolph Scott) in my memory, so will toss them in as a double-feature of bickering that does not prevent reunion in the end. And in between these two movies with Grant, Dunne made the tear-jerking romance with a belated reunion "Love Affair" (directed by Leo McCarey, 1939) with Charles Boyer.
(See the reviews by Weirdo_87 at http://www.epinions.com/content_72733200004 and Terra1 at http://www.epinions.com/content_28819951236)
(12) The Lady Eve (1941) is the most romantic of the string of great Preston Sturges comedies, with Barbara Stanwyck reducing Henry Fonda to as complete surrender as Clive Brooks's to Dietrich in "Shanghai Express." Charles Coburn is also very funny as Stanwyck's grifter father. More hilarious support is offered by reliably funny men Eugene Pallette and William Demarest. And there's the snake... (Sturges's last masterpiece, "Unfaithfully Yours" also has a happy ending.)
(The movie is not in the epinions database)
(13) The Crying Game (written and directed by Neil Jordan, 1992) involves the slaying by IRA terrorists of Jaye Davison's great love, Forest Whittaker, but she takes up with Fergus (Stephen Rea) an IRA member involved in his killing, and he proves to be a devoted lover in the most violent entry on this list (with a very scary Miranda Richardson). (See Mrs. Maine's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_24793550468)
(14) My Beautiful Laundrette (directed by Stephen Frears from a revelatory script by Hanif Kureishi, 1985) also features an unusual business venture of Gordon Warnecke and Daniel Day-Lewis, who overcome considerable racial/ethnic animosity from others on the way to their bliss. Shirley Anne Field is also quite wonderful as Saeed Jaffrey's mistress. (See Mgscmwa's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_16033156740)
(15) The Americanization of Emily (directed by Arthur Hiller, 1964) almost made my list of best WWII movies, since James Garner does get into combat (the Normandy beach landings. Although mostly about being in the military and dodging combat (of whom does that remind you?), there is an astringent romance between the smooth Garner and an adult Julie Andrews (plus a James Coburn lothario and Melvyn Douglas as a general who is flipping out).
(See Isinga's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_21033356932)
(16) Ninotchka (1939), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and scripted by Billy Wilder, is a comedy about a very prim Soviet agent played by Greta Garbo being corrupted by the suave capitalist Melvyn Douglas. (I prefer Horst Bucholz as the dour comedy in Wilder's One, Two Three (1961), but ending up with Pamela Tiffin can't be considered a happy ending!)
(No epinions on this to recommend)
(17) Bagdad Cafe (directed by Percy Aldon, 1987) has a wonderfully offbeat romance between a loopy aging painter (Jack Palance) and a Rubensesque German woman far from home (Marianne Sägebrecht) along with some other quirky characters and an out-of-the-way enterprise (the cafe and motel).
(See my review at http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-4614-506EDE9-39CA43E7-prod5)
(18) In general, Buster Keaton would move heaven and earth to reach and/or to please the bland objects of his affection. The General (1927, allegedly directed by Clyde Bruckman) is widely recognized as a great Civil War movie and a great train movie, but the goal of all his heroism is romantic, and there is a happy ending.
(See Pambo's review at http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-156D-168035E0-3A12C354-prod2)
(19) The other silent-era movie on my list, The Scarlet Letter (directed by Victor Sjöström, 1926), has a woman (Lillian Gish's Hester Prynne) suffering long to protect the reputation of the man she loves, the Rev. Arthur Dimmsdale (Lars Hanson, who also played the third point in a triangle with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in "Flesh and the Devil") . Finally, he steps out from behind her veil or shield and acknowledges his paternity of her child. (Unreviewed hereon)
(20) Mark Andrus provided Jack Nicholson the most romantic line I can remember from any movie ("You make me want to be a better person") in As Good As It Gets (directed by James L. Brooks, 1997). Not a great movie, and providing too many opportunities for Jack Nicholson shtick, it nonetheless works for me. Good support is provided by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Shirley Knight.
(See Artbyjude's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_27727203972)
(20--added) Tom Tykwer's movie "Run, Lola, Run" with Franka Potente in the title role is an amazing and very kinetic movie. It shows how seemingly trivial choices can have major ramifications. What the characters do with chance is also the subject of their 2001 collaboration The Princess and the Warrior (Der Krieger und die Kaiserin). Potente looks like Renee Zellweger in "Nurse Betty" and has some of Nurse Betty's single-mindedness and obliviousness to what most people consider reality. She meets Bodo Riemer (Benno Fürmann) in a very unusual way, searches him down again, meets in another very strange circumstance, and eventually breaks through his thick walls (less mannered than Jack Nicholson's; Bodo borders on catatonia except with his brother). There is a literal leap of faith and many surprises in this long and rich (visually and actorly) film.
(See my review at http://www.epinions.com/content_148272680580)
Other worthy candidates for inclusion:
the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire-Rita Hayworth movies,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, North by Northwest, Night of the Iguana, Two for the Road, The Graduate, Moonstruck, Bull Durham, Groundhog Day, Shakespeare in Love, Nurse Betty
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For my list of romantic movies in which the lovers have split, see
http://www.epinions.com/content_4006060164
My third list of romantic movies, involving characters who die or are dead, at the moment will draw from the following (unranked) list:
Romeo and Juliet (the Zefferelli version, of course)
World of Apu (Apu sunar)
Burnt Money (Plata quemada)
King Kong (the original, of course)
Tabu
Krimhilde's Revenge
Truly, Madly, Deeply
Orpheus
Black Orpheus
Camille
Senso
A Place in the Sun
Farewell, My Concubine
Always
A Matter of Life and Death (aka, Stairway to Heaven)
The Red Shoes
You Only Live Once
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I've also posted lists of the
ten greatest movies of all time,
my favorite movies,
best non-English-language movies by country,
best noirs,
best French organized crime movies,
best English organized crime movies,
best westerns not set in the American west,
best romantic movies in which the lovers do not end up together for reasons other than the death of one or both of them,
best romantic movies including the death of a lover,
best religious movies celebrating a religious figure,
best movies portraying the dark side of religion,
best holidaze (Christmas and Thanksgiving) movies,
best rock-n-roll movies,
best musicals,
best gay feature film,
best gay documentary film,
best cult movies,
best black comedies,
best World War II movies,
best post-WWII German films,
best epics,
and best anti-epics,
best movies of the 1940s, the 1970s, the 1980s,
1939, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,
and 2007.
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