What's the most romantic movie ever?

[crestofwaves]

Men, you can answer this one too.  I actually think men are more romantic day to day than women, but we seek it more often.  Anyway, I won't put mine here yet.

[Marianne Kiendl]

Titanic, the new version

[Snagg]

I can't speak for anybody else, but the kind of "romantic movies" that I like include "Casablanca", Woody Allen's "Love And Death", "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan", "The Princess Bride", "Before Sunrise" and it's sequels, "High Fidelity", "Edward Scissorhands" and "Starman" - Movies that don't look as love as something that's cute and simple and "meant to be".

(And I think that "Gone With The Wind", aside from it's scope and production values, is one of the least romantic, as well as one of the biggest artistic failures of all time. Yeah, I said it, and I'll explain my views to anybody who wants to hear them.)

[crestofwaves]

Snagg:  OK.  I'll bite.  Why do you see GWTW as a failure?

[Snagg]

Where it fails is not in it's production values or it's scope; What it gets 1,000 % wrong is it's insistence on romanticizing the Southern Gentry - Hands down, some of the Worst People Who Ever Lived.

A gang of privileged, spoiled brats who grew up trying to revive a class system that their own grandfathers had fought a revolution to drive from their shores, barely a hundred years before - And who didn't mind destroying the lives of several generations of enslaved people in the process, convincing themselves that this somehow kept their own hands clean.

And "GWTW" pretends - Hell, what it it INSISTS - That the sent-from-heaven kick in the balls these monstrous swine received was some sort of tragedy - That we should feel sorry for them.

Look at it this way: If a modern film maker made a movie about Saddam Hussein and his sons, portraying them as brave, cultured and noble aristocrats, beloved and adored by their fellow countrymen, while utterly ignoring the horrors that they perpetrated on Iraq - And then portrayed the invading American forces as big meanie party-poopers who spoiled all of poor Saddam's well-deserved fun - You'd be OUTRAGED.

But that's EXACTLY how "GWTW" treats Scarlett O'Hara - Surely one of the most selfish, conniving, sociopathic bitches in history - and everybody else in her social circle. O'Hara is lucky that the total destruction of her appalling lifestyle is the worst thing that happened to her, yet she believes herself to be the victim in all of this - and the film makes no effort to suggest otherwise.

Hell, Rhett Butler himself only looks heroic because he's not quite as loathsome as almost everybody else in the movie. He's a bastard, but at least he admits it. (I'm of the opinion that Leonardo DiCaprio''s portrayal of Calvin Candie in "Django Unchained" is an unvarnished riff on Butler's character - A less sympathetic angle from which to view a ruthlessly self-serving man who believed himself so much better than the people he enslaved and exploited.)

"GWTW''s dressing up of these animals in swanky finery and grand ballroom fantasy life, it's downplaying of their culpability - And Hollywood's insistence on treating "GWTW" as a classic, as "Art" even - resonates to this very day with ignorant white trash who see their despicable way of life as something to aspire to, as something admirable and even worth resurrecting.

[frenchy]

well i saw it pretty much like that too snagg except for one thing .. it was intended .. because unless those people really believed they were supposed to have that kinda life where they made their livin off the backs of others we wouldn't have had a war .. i'm not sayin their side was right .. i'm just sayin they thought they were right and thats what spurred it all on .. just like hitler made the germans believe they were the master race .. history is full of bigots and people who think they're entitled and double standards .. and i thought the movie showed that pretty well .. and you obviously got that message too .. so in that way they succeeded .. i'm sure most people picked up on that even if it was only subliminal .. i doubt there were that many women who came away from that movie wantin to be scarlett ohara .. 

[Snagg]

Except - "GWTW" WASN'T trying to make that point; That the Southern "nobility" were actually vicious, deluded monsters. It set them up as the nobility they saw themselves as, and at the time - the late 1930's - The rest of America mostly bought into that, and granted "GWTW" a status that it didn't deserve, actually legitimizing (in some people's eyes) the gentry's behavior and moral code.

"GWTW" has a creepy hold on those people to this day, though the tide is starting to turn, and maybe some day it will be seen not as a masterpiece of romantic spectacle, but more like that other sprawling epic of hate and bigotry, "Birth Of A Nation", which tried to make heroes of the KKK.

And, that modern women see Scarlett O'Hara for what she really was is a testament to enlightening attitudes, and not a pass for "GWTW" - Because the movie itself still portrayed her as victimized heroine.

[crestofwaves]

Wow.  I just thought it had lots of pretty colors in it--like a magazine.

Seriously, I can see what you are saying. They great thing about being an English teacher is that if I TAUGHT the book, this would have all come out in discussion.  Much like the despicable people in Gatsby, including the sham of Gatsby's greatness, the characters in GWTW were part of a way of life that thought it was RIGHT.  The difference is that Fitzgerald depicted his "rich" as despicable, but he did it with nuance so much so that when kids read it, they really don't see how bad the people were, they think Gatsby was a romantic hero, they think Daisy is naïve and brutalized by her husband.

The way I look at it, time and place has struck once again. The 30s weren't too different from the slave days for the people in the South.

 

Interesting. Thanks Snagg-O.

[Merry]

My very , all time fav is The Piano. A woman comes to realize that her arranged marriage during Victorian times is a sham and choosing her soul mate is risky business.

[Snagg]

Come to think of something...While "It's A Wonderful Life" isn't one of the great screen romance movies, it does show one of the most devoted and respectful relationships in movie history...

There's a story (an ugly one) attached to my memories of "It's A Wonderful Life", but I won't spoil the general vibe here by passing it on. I'll just say that "IAWL" made me appreciate the importance of not letting Hollywood  cliches' of "romance" cloud your own view of reality.

[frenchy]

ehh.. thats hollywoods job snagg .. they give us happy endings almost all the time because thats what makes us feel good .. they let the good guy win .. and they manipulate us .. to the point of not knowin what real life should be like .. how many women and men too for that matter have seen all these hollywood romances and wonder why we never got that kind of thing and then ruin the relationship we have cause its not happily ever after ?? nobody gets happily ever after .. but if we're lucky we can get happy sometimes .. along with all the other shit that comes with it .. the best we can hope for is that the bad don't grossly outweigh the good .. life is a bunch of mundane shit with some really excitin shit thrown in here and there and some scary shit here and there and some really bad shit thrown in here and there and some really good shit too .. but inbetween its mostly everyday mundane shit day to day .. hollywood tosses out all the mundane shit and compresses all the romantic stuff into an hour and a half and badabing .. you got a romance movie .. or all the bad shit ??badabing .. you got a tragedy .. and so on and so on .. yeah i know they're manipulatin me .. but thats why i watch .. sometimes i wanna be manipulated .. hey i got a girlfriend with big knockers .. i don't complain about that either ..