A-List: Romantic Movies
By Josh Spiegel
February 11, 2010
City Lights
Oh, this movie. If you're looking for a movie that will make you laugh, and then make you cry because of how happy and moved you can feel, the movie you need to see is City Lights. Casablanca may make you cry at the end because of it being sad, but City Lights will do the same because of the joy you feel, the joy you share with the lead. This 1931 silent comedy classic stars Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp, the iconic character he played throughout his career. The Tramp, in City Lights, encounters a beautiful blind girl in his travails and immediately falls in love with her. She, in kind, is charmed by the Tramp, if only because he is unfailingly kind to her. Despite his impoverished nature, the Tramp decides to raise money for the blind girl to get a surgery to get her sight back.
In doing so, he moves forward in a series of vignettes, all meant to show off Chaplin's amazing physical skills as a comedian. There's no question that Chaplin was a gifted humorist, a brilliant actor, but he also manages to move us inexorably. I will not ruin the ending of City Lights to you, as I went in unspoiled and found that, by the end of the movie, the room I was in had gotten surprisingly dusty. Very strange. Still, most people will recognize shades of the end of City Lights in the recent Pixar film WALL-E, which was just as successful at making me all dusty at its end. City Lights is more poignant and classic than WALL-E; if a movie can work as well in the 21st century as it did more than 75 years ago, it can only be considered one of the great films. You may be turned off by silent movies, but you'll laugh at City Lights, and then you'll cry.
The Princess Bride
Oh, how could I not put this movie on the list? The Princess Bride is the most insanely packed movie. How can a movie that's shorter than two hours have action, adventure, intrigue, comedy, and a truly successful romance? How can that same movie also be structured with a storytelling device that's as meta as most movies ever get? Yes, it's The Princess Bride; granted, you have probably seen this movie, as it's managed to receive a weird cult status since its release in 1987. As told to a young Fred Savage by Peter Falk, The Princess Bride is about the undying romance between Westley, a simple farm boy, and Buttercup, the most beautiful girl in all the land. Westley is taken prisoner by an evil pirate, however, and Buttercup, after years of mourning, is set to be wed to the evil Prince. Will Westley return? Will - oh, now, do I need to ask these questions? We all know, because we've all seen The Princess Bride.
What makes The Princess Bride so romantic? What helps, for me, is its self-awareness. As swooning as the romance between Westley and Buttercup is, there's plenty of humor sandwiched in the middle, from the narrative breaks between Savage and Falk, to the supporting characters played by Billy Crystal, Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, and Andre the Giant. If you've never seen The Princess Bride, I can only hope it has nothing to do with the fact that you're not interested in a movie with man-eating eels, classic swordfights, magical potions, giants, evil princes, vocally-impaired clergymen, and meta humor. If it does...I feel very bad for you. The Princess Bride is the epitome of the modern romance film.
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