With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, the thoughts of all couples, young and old turn to romance. With hearts and love floating through the air, people begin to plan that perfect gift or just what to do with the one they love, even if its just a quiet evening at home watching a romantic movie. To help with the decision, here’s a top 10 list of some of the most romantic movies ever made.
1. Gone With The Wind
Starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, this 10 time Academy award winner continues to be hailed as one of the world’s greatest love stories as 70 years later, viewers are still swept up into the tumultuous and tempestuous passion between Southern belle, Scarlet O’Hara, and the dashing rogue, Rhett Butler against the background of the American Civil War.
2. An Officer and a Gentleman
Starring Debra Winger and Richard Gere, this is a phenomenal love story due to its realism and its exploration of the less romantic sides of life like deception, dissolution, inner strength, grief and determination. It is a story about a man determined to change his life. He enters office candidate training and discovers in himself an inner strength he never knew he had. He falls in love with a young factory worker, but like many others, tries to deny it. Realising his love for her, he returns and sweeps her off her feet and into the sunset.
3. Romeo And Juliet
The well known, and much loved Franco Zeffirelli version of the Bard’s most famous play. A story of forbidden love, and of great tragedy. A town and two lovers divided by a feud between two families. Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers remains one of the most beautiful and well known love stories in the world as it has been for 400 years.
4. Casablanca
Starring movie legends Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, Casablanca weaves together the story of love amongst war, intrigue and heroism. Featuring marital infidelity, Casablanca reminds us of the choices to be made when morality and love collide. In the movie, Bogart is forced to make the decision to let his love go, for the sake of his marriage, giving us one of the most famous farewell scenes ever recorded.
5. The Notebook
One of the more recent movies on our list, The Notebook, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, has all the elements of the best love stories. The angst, young love, love lost and then found again, and true, happy ever after love in old age. This film carries the belief that love truly is worth living for, as well as dying for. And what love is really meant to be.
6. Love Story
This film showcases the sacrifices that two people who love each other are willing to make, no matter the cost and despite all the odds. Starring Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal, this film is a real tear jerker.
7. My Fair Lady
When Professor Higgins (Rex Harrison) takes on the job of teaching guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) how to be a lady by refining her manners and speech, neither guessed that love and romance would follow…. Even though it takes them a while to figure it out.
8. When Harry Met Sally
Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan play out the love/hate relationship so common in reality in this movie. Rich in humor, this movie also explored the long term friendship between a man and a woman.
9. Ever After
Ever After takes the traditional romance and love story of Cinderella and puts a more modern twist to it. Drew Barrymore makes a beautiful Cinderella, and Anjelica Houston was made for the role of the evil stepmother.
10. Titanic
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio recreate a sweet, but doomed romance aboard the decks of this tragic ship in this reenactment of the the happenings of that grief-laden day in April 1912.
