A Cinematic Look at Love

Feature by Jean Lynch

A tour around love and romance on the silverscreen

‘Can a play capture the very truth and nature of love?’ It takes none other than Queen Elizabeth I (Judi Dench) to challenge the greatest writer, William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), with this deceptively simple quandary in John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love. Indeed, can it? To answer that question, one has to first find an answer to the question ‘what IS love?’ on par, or possibly the same as, the question “what is the meaning of life?” The answer, or at least a solution, is that it doesn’t matter, it’s the journey in trying to find it that’s the point. For Shakespeare, happily, he is able to satiate the Queen’s curiosity by the production of his latest play ‘Romeo and Juliet’, a now immortal tragic love story of star-crossed young lovers which is now considered to be one of the universal themes in storytelling. And yet, the story would never have been written, according to the film, if Will had been unable to find his muse. She arrives in the shape of cross-dressing Kate (Gwyneth Paltrow), and theirs is a tale of secret, forbidden love – she is expected to marry Lord Wessex (Colin Firth) whilst he is already married. It is a story which is destined to end – not so much tragically, but at least end and not happily. However, in the meantime, they are within an alternate magical little world of their own, drunk on the passionate feelings fuelled by its illicitness and stolen moments, and heightened by the poignancy that, although unspoken, they know it cannot last forever. As Viola says: “This is not life, Will. It is a stolen season”. And Will, venturing on this new journey, is thus able to tap into his soul and, drawing on his own experiences, is able to write a story which is emotionally truthful and strikes a chord in the hearts of all who see it. With great poignancy Will tells Viola as they part: “you will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.”

The imagined writing of Romeo and Juliet is a beautiful fancy, and a testimony to the strength of the play itself that a filmmaker would ponder the story behind its genesis, so apparent is its authenticity that its author must have been subject to a colossal and passionate love of his own. In Shakespeare in Love, the Queen acquiesces that the play does indeed achieve her directive.

So from writer to Subject. Director Baz Luhrmann secured a commercial and critical success with William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, and is credited with firmly re-acquainting a younger generation with the works of the Bard. He took the tale of feuding families and placed them in present day Miami, the families now rival ‘families’ in the ‘Godfather’ tradition, television news channels the narrators, added violent shoot outs, a hip soundtrack and the then up-and-coming Leonardo DiCaprio. What he didn’t do was to remove the language of the play itself, certainly a gamble despite the other post-modern elements of the film. The pre-16’s loved it. What it had proved, more than any classically conventional film retelling before it, is that it’s fundamental tale of newly-found romantic love, forbidden but passionate, was a theme which would always enthrall capturing, as it does, an immortally painful learning curve in the lessons of love and life.

1961’s re-working of the Romeo and Juliet story in the beautiful and Oscar-winning West Side Story was set against the backdrop of the social problems of street gangs and juvenile delinquency in a stylised but easily recognisable present day New York, and also dealt with racial issues, with the waspish jets taking on the Latin American sharks. A breath-taking musical it may be, but its sub-themes were considerably controversial and subversive for the time. The tragic tale remains a moral in how love can bring about a transformation in a person if only they open their hearts to it. Imagine how this tale would have ended had Viola’s family, Maria’s brother, and the Montague and Capulets had only said, ‘oh well that’s nice then – let’s put all the squabbling to one side and love each other.’ In fact, what we would have is My Big Fat Greek Wedding – American boy converting to Greek Orthodox in order to placate the family of his intended, being embraced into their collective bosom, having a great big fat wedding and living happily ever after. Sorted. Well, it’s a lovely tale, but somehow one can’t envisage MBFGW being revisited and remade for the next 500 years in the way Shakespeare has. One reason for this is that it’s too neatly packaged in that it resolves all its dilemmas. A human trait, it seems, is that we don’t want our lives neatly packaged – we perversely enjoy the existential angst. Daniel Day-Lewis chose to remain in perpetual bittersweet melancholy when he chose not to spoil his memories of his treasured lost love Michelle Pfeiffer with a meeting many, many years later in The Age of Innocence.

So, to change our question slightly, what is it that makes a great love story? Romeo and Juliet seems to tick a good number of the boxes, namely love at first sight, the heightened experience of first and seemingly true love, the magical transformative effect that love has on the people in the union, discovery – of self, the other and a new way of seeing the world - and obstacles to that love. Whether those obstacles are successfully removed dictates whether the story will be a tragedy or a comedy or, as the writer Byron said: “comedies end in marriage and tragedies end in death”. Not necessarily always literally - to partner or not to partner, that is the question.

Many speak of their partners as their ‘other half’ and there’s a belief that the search for finding your soulmate is about meeting the soul’s need to find the missing part of you, that complementary missing piece of the jigsaw. Tom Cruise knew this when, in Jerry Maguire, he said to Rene Zellwegger “you complete me.” Of course, she already knew this, being in touch with her inner self, and possibly one of the reasons love stories are more appealing to women than men. Another train of thought follows the idea that we see in the chosen other a more idealised version of ourselves, that we admire the qualities in them that we would like to have for ourselves or, as Jack Nicholson so eloquently put it to Helen Hunt in As Good as it Gets: “You make me want to be a better man”. In psycho-speak, love is about ‘mirroring’ – we look at someone and see a better version of ourselves reflected back at us, and their reciprocated affections validates us as people. When those affections are removed, causing the mirror to break, it’s not so much the loss of the person we mourn, but a rejection of the self as not being worthy. This is why we call it a broken heart – the found part of the jigsaw is lost again, taking a few more pieces with it.

Ultimately, it seems, we are selfish. It’s that quest for external validation which drives us and which, on finding it, we’re prepared to risk everything not to lose. Way back in 1927, in Sunrise, F.W. Murneau depicted a man (George O’Brien), so taken in by the charms of a seductive city woman (Margaret Livingston) that he was prepared to kill his homely wife in order to be with her. We see the story repeated by Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun and, with a metaphorical killing, Laurence Harvey rejecting the worldly and older Simone Signoret for a society girl more in keeping with his desired social standing in Room at the Top.

With eternal triangles there will always be a winner and a loser in love, with baser, less savoury emotions being exhibited – hell for the characters but absorbing viewing for the audience. The shady world of Film Noir is inhabited by such creatures, the dangerous female latter-day Eves luring their obliging Adams into temptation. In both The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity a weaker, low-life male is pushed further off the tracks by falling for the charms of a neglected young, wealthy and sexually provocative housewife, and will risk anything, even murder, in order to please and keep her. For these men, by obtaining her they metaphorically gain the money and social standing that they have not had the prowess to gain by their own means – and securing and making love to a beautiful woman will always raise their status in the eyes of another man. He may well be driven by deep genuine emotion, but it arises from a lower part of the body than his heart and comes from having a powerful woman look favourably upon him and so make him feel like the man he doesn’t yet feel himself to be.

Men, the physically stronger of the sexes, respond favourably to the possibility that they may attract the attentions of a dangerous, worldly and sexually-provocative woman. In successfully wooing and winning her, she adds to the sense of his masculinity. The danger and the illicit thrill allow primal instincts to overrule reason, and in film this allows for plots that focus on suspense, intrigue, passion and, very often, shady dealings. Basic Instinct’s Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone) knew exactly what she was doing in the interview room and only a wimp or very sensible and secure man could fail to respond to her challenge and live a dangerous fantasy. Glenn Close’s deranged Alex in Fatal Attraction was a sharp wake-up call around the world for both sexes, with ‘bunny boiler’ entering the vernacular as a description of a dangerously-obsessed scorned woman. Men were forced to observe the consequential downside of enacting their fantasy-driven infidelities, and women quietly applauded it whilst at the same time making a mental note not to make themselves the possible target of having such a an accusation levied at them the next time they got dumped. They fared little better than men, however, with their own moral tales, with both Dressed to Kill and Looking for Mr Goodbar warning of the dangers of picking up strangers.

But that’s the thing about love – it is the stuff of fantasy. As Viola says on the morning after the consummation of her affair with Will Shakespeare: “It’s a whole new world”, and the air about her allows Good Queen Bess to correctly guess that she has been “plucked” since she last saw her. Cynics say that ‘love is temporary insanity engineered to securing the continued procreation of the human race’. Well, scientifically this may well be true, but it’s hardly the first thing that flashes through one’s mind when the mere thought of a new lover imbues the world with a rose-tinted glow. Love, it seems, is designed to both transform us as people and in how we perceive the world. Look at the dinner scenes in The Terminal and Punch Drunk Love, the way the lighting takes on ethereal colours and bestows an other worldly glow on the faces of the lovers, or note how often neon lighting is used to imbue an otherwise ordinary setting with the magical. In Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl, homely failing actor Richard Dreyfuss knew the secret of romance – candlelit dinner on the rooftops, overlooking a night lit city, successfully charming Marsha Mason in the process. Anything which, for a time at least, takes us away from the everyday is romantic.

Love stories are akin to the fairytale, and let’s not be quick to discount the impact they hold even as we mature. A common saying amongst today’s modern women is: “to meet the handsome prince you have to kiss a lot of frogs”. It’s generally a flippant, throw away comment, loaded with cynicism, but it does demonstrate that women (and men too, I’ll bet) are always looking for that elusive happy ending. Many film plots are the legacy of universal stories played out in the fairytales of our childhood – indeed, they speak to our inner child. My Fair Lady, Sabrina, Pretty Woman, Never Been Kissed, and Pretty in Pink are all variations, amongst many, on the Cinderella theme. Autumn/winter romances, in which the protagonist is awakened to true love, often for the first time, or re-awakened relatively late in life – Waiting to Exhale, Harold and Maude, Shirley Valentine – are derivatives of the Sleeping Beauty story, the propensity for deep meaningful love having laid dormant in them awaiting love’s true kiss. And ever wondered why a predatory male is called a ‘wolf’? Bridget Jones’s Daniel Carver (Hugh Grant) certainly ensnared his little red riding hood but, as in good fairytales, the baddie has to lose out in the end. And, of course, there’s Beauty and the Beast, a tale that may be translated literally, such as in the classic La Belle et Bete and Disney’s wonderful animated version, but also metaphorically, with films that centre around a man who is transformed by the love and understanding of and for a good woman. Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, Mel Gibson in What Women Want, and even King Kong are good examples, although the latter didn’t have the best of endings for the male, so let’s hope that’s not a moral to the tale. Then there’s the beautiful woman who recognises the better qualities of a not-so-attractive male, as Cameron Diaz did with Ben Stiller in There’s something about Mary.

Love, it seems, is about two people meeting and each helping the other overcome the human condition leading to transformation. Even put into everyday terms it sounds romantic. This is why love figures so much in the ancient myths – the universal truths of mankind – which then are translated onto the screen by modern filmmakers of the day. In Moulin Rouge, Christian undergoes a journey similar to that of Orpheus in the Underworld, moving from an idealistic youth to realising that life rarely plays out the way you would like it to, and having to come to terms with that. In fact, many a good and heartrending love story is based on such principles. Each time events overcome the successful coupling of the protagonists, it’s Orpheus revealing himself. So, we don’t have the happy ending we would hope for but – like the characters – the audience also learns to deal with it life’s crushing disappointments, and both they, and the character on their behalf, have developed a little more as individuals.

Impossible love is addictive. If the characters on the screen manage to successfully navigate the obstacles before them it offers the viewer redemption and hope that they will manage to do so in their own lives. The question is, what constitutes forbidden love? In the most part, it’s down to the social constraints of the time, very nicely allowing a film to reveal much about the social norms of the period in which it was made. Anna and the King couldn’t get it together because he was, after all, the King of Siam and his treatment of women, as was the custom there, was abhorrent to the refined western governess. The wealthier Cathy couldn’t follow her instincts and marry a lowly farmhand like Heathcliff and opted for the stuffy Edgar Linton instead. The colour of Sidney Poitier’s skin was the issue being tackled by parents meeting their daughter’s fiancé for the first time in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and this – and culture clashes in general – remain a staple part of impossible love stories. One of the harshest meterings of a society punishing one of its members is the death of the young widow who has enjoyed a night of passion with Alan Bates in Zorba the Greek. Perhaps a reflection of the times we live in, stories such as East is East and Bend it Like Beckham are allowed a happier ending, although harder-hitting films such as Yasmin demonstrate that race and social culture are still contentious issues.

Two of the greatest film love stories – Brief Encounter and Casablanca – are about impossible love, with Celia Johnson choosing not to fall into the scandal of an adulterous affair and it’s ensuing divorce for the sake of her marriage and the expectations of society of her as a respectable doctor’s wife, and Ingrid Bergman choosing to get on the plane with her husband rather than stay with the man she loves. Note too that Casablanca is a wartime tale and, with love and war being two extremes, it is always the perfect backdrop for an epic, heartbreaking story as lovers die, are forced to return home (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) or are thought lost only to return after the love back home has committed some action that will stop their love picking up where they left off (Waterloo Bridge, Pearl Harbor, Charlotte Gray). Love is also about sacrifice and where better than a good wartime tale to re-enact this. Lovestruck Joseph Fiennes, remorseful that his jealously had endangered the life of Jude Law, the man his loved one (Rachel Weisz) loved, gave them both the chance for happiness by sacrificing his own life in Enemy at the Gate.

However, as society changes and becomes less unforgiving, we have to find new forms of impossible love. Charles (Hugh Grant) is still allowed his happy ending despite jilting Duckface (Anna Chancellor) at the alter in Four Weddings and a Funeral, unthinkable in previous years, and its ok for Jennifer Lopez to fall for her client’s fiancé in The Wedding Planner. Whereas in the past such events would have been scandalous, today we are more liberal in our approach to relationships. So, instead we have such films as The Crying Game or, as one our writers recently put it, is Brokeback Mountain the new Brief Encounter? Career and time commitments also come into play in today’s fast-paced society. Before Sunrise was a nice little interlude in what might have been should external factors be taken out of the equation, with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke spending a very brief time together in Europe after meeting on a train and then going their separate ways back to their respective lives, and Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening learned too late how to rise above the strain of their careers in American Beauty.

But let’s not end our look at cinematic love on a downbeat. After all – as Christian tells Satine – ‘love is a many spendoured thing’ ‘love lifts us up where we belong’ and ‘all you need is love’. Because sometimes, love does indeed find a way, and when it does we do want to jump across stardust scattered rooftops and be serenaded by the moon. It allows Meg to hear Tom’s voice on a radio show and to leave her fiancé and climb the empire state building because he might be ‘the one’ in Sleepless in Seattle; for While You Were Sleeping’s Sandra Bullock to think the man of her dreams is the man in the coma in the bed only to discover really it’s his brother standing next to her, and for Patrick to return from the dead in Ghost to look after Demi and to give her a penny as proof of his continuing love.

Yes, the magic of love is that sometimes it seems that a force outside our own is at work, one of the reasons Ghost was such a huge hit. But then, there’s Serendipity, in which Kate Beckinsale leaves a number in a book for newly-met John Cusack, saying that if their love is meant to be then the number will find them, or Robert Downey Jnr reincarnating as Cybill Shepherd’s dead husband only to help her find a new love in this life in Chances Are, or even Matthew Modine pretty much doing the same coming back as a Labrador in Fluke. There’s also Richard Dreyfuss in Always, Alan Rickman in Truly, Madly, Deeply, James Caan in Kiss Me Goodbye and even Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, all returning from the other side to look out for their grieving loved ones.

So, on that hopeful note that true love does indeed transcend all, even death, we close our tour of love on the silverscreen, and hand over to you to snuggle down with a bottle of champagne – or chardonnay even – and let you take another look at some of film’s immortal stories of love and romance.

Happy Valentine’s Day!