Every Valentine’s Day, the same list of romantic films gets recommended for viewing.  The danger of this overkill is to make love a ready-made candy confection with paint-by-numbers wrappings.  To change things up, I’ve listed many of the usual suspects and supplied somewhat lesser-known alternatives.  Whether you come to a well-worn classic or an undiscovered one, you ought to be rewarded for examining love in all its expansiveness and intimacy.

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The Obvious:  THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996)

The Alternative:  THE HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF (1995)

The Link:  Juliette Binoche in a costume romance as the world seems to go to pieces around her.

THE ENGLISH PATIENT was WW2 Italy and Africa.  In THE HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF, it’s France in the 1830s and cholera is wiping out village populations.  Binoche plays Pauline de Theus, an aristocrat who breaks through quarantine blockades in the hope of rejoining her husband.  Her travelling companion and gallant protector is Angelo played by the suitably handsome Olivier Martinez who was touted at the time as France’s answer to Brad Pitt.  Angelo is the horseman of the film’s title, an Italian on the run from the Austrian secret police.  He delays his own mission in order to see Pauline to safety.  Binoche blends courage with vulnerability.  It’s easy to see why Angelo feels passionately for Pauline even though he maintains a chivalrous distance.  The nude scene in this movie is not what you’d expect.  Martinez would later smolder in the more illicit and explicit UNFAITHFUL (2002) as Diane Lane’s lover, but I find HORSEMAN ultimately more satisfying than any other film he’s been in.  Binoche’s movie romances tend to be ill-fated and even tortured, but this film allows her a reprieve and it’s well-deserved. 

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The Obvious:  A MAN AND A WOMAN (1966)

The Alternative:  YOURS, MINE, AND OURS (1968)

The Link:  A widow and a widower, both with children, fall in love.

The swoony romance of A MAN AND A WOMAN is not echoed in YOURS, MINE, AND OURS, but Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball make a surprisingly warm and sexy couple in their mature years.  The film is based on a real-life story.  Fonda plays Frank Beardsley, a Navy man; Ball is Helen North, a nurse.  He has ten kids; she has eight.  Joining in matrimony also involves the blending of the family platoons.  Bedrooms and bathrooms are color-coded and specifically assigned amongst the children.  Meals must be supplied and prepared with military efficiency.  Of course, there are clashes between the North brood and the Beardsley brood as well as the cute moments of adjusting to one another.  But the film is carried by the grace of Fonda and Ball, two veterans of Old Hollywood who know how to bring class and integrity to the screen.  Jane Fonda asserts that her father was in love with Lucille Ball.  Whether or not that’s true, Henry Fonda does seem more comfortable here than he does in other screen matchups.

My favorite scene is when Helen goes into labor with her first baby with Frank.  The whole house is woken up and Helen’s oldest daughter Colleen is having a crisis about whether or not to lose her viriginity.  Her boyfriend is pressuring her to prove that she really loves him.  Fonda puts it into perspective for her in another one of his great screen summations (see THE GRAPES OF WRATH and THE MALE ANIMAL for more). 

As they assist Helen out of the house to the car, Frank tells Colleen:

“You want to know what love really is, take a look around you.  It’s giving life that counts.  Until you’re ready for it, all the rest is just a big fraud…Life isn’t a love-in.  It’s the dishes, and the orthodontist, and the shoe repairman, and ground round instead of roast beef.  And I’ll tell you something else, it isn’t going to bed with a man that proves you’re in love with him.  It’s getting up in the morning and facing the drab, miserable, wonderful everyday world with him that counts.”

Fonda’s monologue probably sounds pretty square to 21st century ears, but whenever I see reality shows about people organizing expensive weddings for themselves, I wonder if they really understand how unglamorous marriage is.  Love is pretty beautiful if you have a partner who muddles through with you. 

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 The Obvious:  TITANIC (1997)

The Alternative:  THE ROAD HOME (1999)

The Link:  An old woman looks back on an unforgettable love story from her youth.

Admittedly, the link between the two movies is tenuous.  It won’t get much stronger, either, when I mention that the poster for TITANIC appears in the background of THE ROAD HOME.  TITANIC, for all its numerous flaws, is still regarded around the world as an all-time love story, competing for screen time with one of the worst disasters of the 20th century.   On the other hand, THE ROAD HOME is a very small story set in rural China.  It’s probably not known the world over, but it is much more potent and pure than TITANIC.  In fact, I would categorize THE ROAD HOME as one of the few perfect movies ever made -- perfect in tone, execution, and performance.  Director Zhang Yimou would later work with Zhang ZiYi in the mesmerizing martial art dramas HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, but their first collaboration in THE ROAD HOME rings truest.

It’s love at first sight for Di (Zhang ZiYi) when she sees the new village school teacher for the first time.  The moment is so charmed for her that she runs home like a child, unable to stop herself from smiling.  Her whole being reels with anticipation and schemes to “accidentally” run into him.  She cooks her best dishes in the hope that he will eat them and she walks past the schoolhouse daily just to hear his voice.  When he runs into some political trouble (it’s the era of the Cultural Revoluton) and must leave the village abruptly, Di waits for his return.  She literally waits by the roadside on the appointed day, while snow frosts over her face and her simple clothes (no North Face puffer jackets here).  Her devotion is heartbreaking but not pathetic in the least.   She is in fact, a brave soul, unveiled in her emotion.

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The Obvious:  CASABLANCA (1942)

The Alternative: GILDA (1946)

The Link:  Of all the gin joints in all the world, an ex-love walks into his.  Adding to the sting, she’s married to the man he has to help out of a jam.

In CASABLANCA, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman wax nostalgic to happier days in Paris, listening to “As Time Goes By”.  But the song is also used sadistically.  Bitter and drinking heavily, Bogart’s Rick growls at piano man Sam, “You played it for her, you can play it for me!  If she can stand it, I can.”  Later, when Bergman shows up with her husband at Rick’s nightclub, Bogart feigns cordiality, “I’ll have Sam play ‘As Time Goes By.’  I believe that’s your favorite tune.”  He’s not ready to forgive and forget.

In GILDA, the song that drives a dagger into Glenn Ford is “Put the Blame on Mame”.  He hears it when he’s reunited with his ex-flame Rita Hayworth except now she’s married to his boss.  He winds himself tight trying to prove that she means nothing to him.  The song and Hayworth’s siren beauty, though, boil him over.  She turns up the heat by performing “Put the Blame on Mame” at her husband’s nightclub and doing a scandalous strip tease.  Glenn Ford is apoplectic and punishes her with a slap – not romantic, to be sure.  But the overall effect of Ford and Hayworth’s relationship reminds us how demanding and unbridled the emotions can become, how jealousy and hate replace finer feelings when a passionate couple separates.  But this is not an Eminem and Rihanna music video.  In classic Hollywood fashion, the brutality is glossed over and all the fuss only proves that Ford and Hayworth were made for each other and no good can come of keeping them apart.

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The Obvious:  PRIDE & PREJUDICE (2005)

The Alternative:  PERSUASION (2007)

The Link:  Yummy MI-5 spy turns Austenian hero.  Complications involving hurt pride, embarrassing and interfering relatives, and a pivotal letter.

The world of Jane Austen deals with the finer feelings of love.  The courtesy of extending an invitation to dance, employing the written word to reveal thoughts and emotions dearest to one’s heart, and keeping faith when all hope seems lost – these are definitive marks of excellence for Austen’s favorite couples.  If you saw the Keira Knightley version of PRIDE & PREJUDICE, you were treated to a haughty and surprisingly shy Mr. Darcy played by Matthew Macfadyen.  But before he portrayed the most famous of Austen’s heroes, MacFadyen spent two seasons on British television as Tom Quinn on SPOOKS (known in the U.S. as MI-5).  When he left the show, Rupert Penry-Jones was brought in as the male lead and the standard of dreamy continued.

Made for television, PERSUASION cast Penry-Jones to play the dashing Captain Wentworth, a man who went to sea after being rejected by Anne Eliot (Sally Hawkins).  Anne was persuaded by her class-conscious family not to accept Wentworth who had no title or real money to speak of.  Years pass, Anne loses her bloom, but keeps her love for Wentworth.  Wentworth makes a name for himself in the Navy and becomes rich.  He returns suitably eligible and ready to take a wife.  At first, he is resentful when he meets Anne again, but the old feelings aren’t gone and Austen provides one of the most stirring letters to bring her lovers together.  Penry-Jones is tall and fair-haired – a prettier version of Daniel Craig, if you will.  He does wonders with Wentworth especially compared with Ciaran Hinds’ more sour portrayal in the 1995 version.  Penry-Jones’ Wentworth is in turn sexy, a little cocky, brooding, courtly and susceptible to love.  And what’s more attractive than such a man who falls in love and stays in love?

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The Obvious:  WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)

The Alternative: BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945)

The Link:  A platonic couple agonizes over consummating their relationship.

The link between these two movies is another leap of imagination, but while there have been vague or cheap imitations of WHMS, there isn’t a viable copycat of BRIEF ENCOUNTER out there that I know of.  Directed by David Lean, BRIEF ENCOUNTER is about a man (Trevor Howard) and a woman (Celia Johnson) who happen to meet in a train station coffee room.  It’s WW2 England and life on the homefront is about carrying on as usual though the world is in transition.  Johnson plays, a married woman with a son.  Her life is comfortable and not discontented.  She lives in the country and takes a train to town every week for a day of shopping and perhaps a movie.  One day, she has something in her eye and a stranger who happens to be a doctor (Howard) helps her out.  The meeting is coincidental and easily forgotten except that she runs into Howard in town and ends up sharing a lunch table with him.  Their relationship progresses so that they’re arranging to go to the movies and walks together.  And gradually, that’s how it happens — they’re in love.

What registers so quietly in outward appearance actually takes them by storm emotionally.  They are both married to other people and not free to commit to another relationship.  But human nature will lead them to consider consummating their love.  They are wrecked with guilt and lament that their honest feelings have to take on a sordid pallor.  It’s their regard for one another that I find enormously powerful.  They love, but they will not degrade themselves or ruin their families’ lives.

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 The Obvious:  AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957)

The Alternative:  LUCKY STAR (1929)

The Link:  Love triumphs over infirmity and culminates with a satisfying weep.

In AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are an elegant pair together.  They live a life of easy cocktails and photo-ready outfits.  But trouble does find them and keeps them apart until the crucial ending when Grant susses out why Kerr never kept their very important date at the top of the Empire State Building.  After countless viewings, I can see the outcome without even trying, but I’m still soggy-eyed for the finish.  The same also happens every time I see Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell in LUCKY STAR. 

Along with the aforementioned THE ROAD HOME, LUCKY STAR is a film with the purest emotions and another perfect film.  LUCKY STAR is a rare silent that was included in a pricey, but totally-worth-it DVD boxed set of F.W. Murnau, Frank Borzage, William Fox films.  (You can rent it through Netflix if you don’t want to spring for the actual set.)  It stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, a popular screen couple who exuded youthfulness and passion at the end of the silent era and the early years of talkies.  In LUCKY STAR, Farrell is a wounded WWI vet confined to a wheel chair.  Gaynor is a backwoods girl living in scraping poverty with numerous younger siblings and their quick-tempered mother.  Farrell takes Gaynor under his wing as a kind of social project and because he’s in need of a friend.  When an unscrupulous rival (the always palooka-ish Guinn “Big Boy” Williams) threatens to marry Gaynor and take her away, Farrell finds the strength and motivation to use his legs again and to rescue Gaynor.

The plot of LUCKY STAR is intentionally simple so that the emotions can be given the space to breathe.  Farrell doesn’t pity himself for his handicap, but he does admit to loneliness.  Gaynor is abused by her own mother and doesn’t understand love until she meets Farrell.  When our young lovers are finally able to be together, the moment just descends on the heart and takes over one’s emotions.  Love becomes real, undisguised, and a salvation from an otherwise cruel world.  For me, the ending rates right up there with the end of Charlie Chaplin’s CITY LIGHTS. 

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 • Souls Made Great: Frank Borzage, Gaynor, & Farrell (Part 1 posted February 16, 2010)

• Souls Made Great: Borzage, Gaynor, & Farrell (Part 2 posted Feb. 25, 2010)

• Top Films of the Decade (posted January 5, 2010; Editor’s Pick)

• Why Movies As Old As Granny Are Sexy (Part 1 posted August 25, 2009)

• Why Movies As Old As Granny Are Sexy (Part 2 posted August 26, 2009)

• A Love Affair With Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” (posted May 3, 2009)

• Worth Seeing: The Incandescence of Chaplin’s “City Lights” (posted Sept. 15, 2008; Editor’s Pick)