Brief Encounter

Top 25 romantic movies, by the Guardian and Observer’s critics

“Romantic longing has provided the cinema with some of its most glorious and idealistic movies: Casablanca and Brief Encounter are films with an unabashed, unironic passionate flame at their centre,” said film critic Peter Bradshaw.

Movies such as Gone with the Wind and Doctor Zhivago lent something grand and epic to romantic love, but it was perhaps the much-loved weepie An Affair to Remember that did the most to introduce us to the more domestic idea of the chick flick or the date movie – the romantic film adored by women and tolerated by their husbands and boyfriends.

The romantic comedy was a further refinement, almost invented in its modern sense by Woody Allen and revived by Rob Reiner with his smash-hit, When Harry Met Sally, a success that has spawned a thousand sucrose imitations. Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is probably the most potent, old-fashioned romance of recent times. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung have that seductively heart-breaking self-sacrifice shown by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman or Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. Love will never go out of fashion.

These are the 25 best romantic films of all time according to the critics of the Guardian and Observer.


[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B00M0HUUZG&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy]
14. [amazon text=The Umbrellas of Cherbourg&template=custom_title&asin=B00M0HUUZG&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy] (1964)
Director: [amazon text=Jacques Demy&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Jacques Demy] Stars: [amazon text=Catherine Deneuve&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Catherine Deneuve], [amazon text=Nino Castelnuovo&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Nino Castelnuovo], [amazon text=Anne Vernon&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Anne Vernon]
[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B00M0HUUZG&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy]

The Guardian (founded in 1821) is a British national daily newspaper, and the Observer (founded in 1791) is its Sunday sibling. They are amongst the most influential papers in the world. The Guardian and its journalists have won numerous journalism awards, especially in the last decades.

Source: The Guardian
Last checked on: 16 January 2016
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