Top 100: Are these the most-loved romantic films of all time?
Love is in the air in the lead up to Valentine’s Day and we’ve surveyed our resident movie buffs to find out their 100 most-loved romance films. Do you agree with their pick of the flicks?
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Who needs flowers and chocolates for Valentine’s Day? Just stay in and watch a romance movie.
What’s not to love about a film that tugs on your heart strings.
In the lead up to February 14, we asked a panel of our resident movie buffs to name their favourites to create a list of 100 much-loved romantic films.
They included epic tales Gone With The Wind and Dr Zhivago, tear-jerkers like Love Story, bittersweet sagas such as The Way We Were and a reel of rom-coms including My Best Friend’s Wedding and You’ve Got Mail.
Here they are:
1 WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
A 1980s rom-com famous for an infamous one-liner has topped our poll.
Starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in the titular roles, the film, directed by Rob Reiner, was a modern take on the screwball comedies of the 1940s which focused on the battles of the sexes with women often coming out on top.
Written by Nora Ephron, the script included a scene in which Meg fakes an orgasm.
At Ryan’s insistence it was shot in a restaurant, with Crystal suggesting the addition of the “I’ll have what she’s having” line.
2 CASABLANCA
Coming in at a close second was this 1942 masterpiece.
With its classic quotes “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”, “We’ll always have Paris” and “Here’s looking at you, kid”, the film was The Advertiser entertainment editor Antimo Iannella’s top pick.
“Michael Curtiz’s epic drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman is one of the most popular and romantic films ever made, with iconic dialogue that has been recited for decades since,” he says.
“Ultimately its bittersweet ending is about sacrificing love … but I always ask myself, “Why did Ilsa get on that plane?” and then watch it again.”
3 ROMAN HOLIDAY
In third spot was 1953’s Roman Holiday, for which leading lady Audrey Hepburn won an Oscar in what was her breakthrough role.
It is the all-time favourite of reporter and movie buff Shashi Baltutis.
“Gregory Peck is impeccable and Audrey Hepburn is having the time of her life as the pair prance around the Eternal City,” he says, adding: “Peck and Hepburn’s chemistry makes one believe the improbable meeting between journalist and princess and always leaves me with tears in my eyes at the inevitable but soul crushing ending.”
4 AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
A remake of an earlier film, 1939’s Love Affair, this 1957 melodrama directed by Leo McCarey provided inspiration for another movie in our top 10, Sleepless in Seattle.
With its charismatic, compelling coupling of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr as “international playboy” Nickie and former nightclub singer Terry – and also starring the Empire State Building – the tear-jerker includes the much-quoted: “Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories. We’ve already missed the Spring.”
5 NOTTING HILL
Just as Sleepless in Seattle is an homage to An Affair to Remember, this 1999 rom-com with a boy-meets-princess storyline is a nod to Roman Holiday. Julia Roberts pretty much plays herself; her character Anna Scott is Hollywood royalty and hounded by the press. Hugh Grant, meanwhile, is bumbling bookshop owner William Thacker. With a screenplay by Richard Curtis and directed by Roger Michell, Notting Hill opens with Elvis Costello’s superb cover of Charles Aznavour’s She and includes the much-parodied but adorable line delivered by Anna, the superstar, “I’m also just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her”, plus brilliant performances by its stellar supporting actors including Rhys Ifans as Spike.
6 BEFORE SUNRISE
Dubbed “Brief Encounter for Generation X” by one reviewer back in the day, this 1995 film doesn’t have a particularly involved plot but is about a relationship, albeit fleeting, that belongs in the “it’s complicated” category. Basically, Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Celine, played by Julie Delpy, meet on a train in Europe and end up roaming the streets of Vienna as they bare their souls to one another – and fall in love – before they go their separate ways.
Directed by Richard Linklater, who was also co-writer with Kim Krizan, Before Sunrise spawned a 2004 sequel Before Sunset, set in Paris, and, again nine years later, Before Midnight where we catch up with Jesse and Celine in Greece.
7 THE PRINCESS BRIDE
This 1987 film, also directed by Rob Reiner, turned soapie star Robin Wright into Hollywood hot property. National music writer Kathy McCabe’s and reporter Aden Hill named The Princess Bride as their most loved romantic film.
“Universally described as a swashbuckling, damsel-in-distress fairytale, The Princess Bride charts the timeless romantic arc of unspoken infatuation blooming into true love, before the star-crossed soulmates are separated by tragedy and reunited to prove love conquers all petulant princes.” McCabe says.
Hill adds: “As the child at the start of the film asks his grandfather, ‘is this a kissing story?’. Yes, but it’s one of the best.”
8 SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
Directed and co-written by Nora Ephron, this 1993 rom-com stars “America’s sweetheart” Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. From the get-go there’s captivating chemistry between Hanks’ character, widower Sam, and Ryan’s reporter Annie – despite the two having very little screen time together. The references to An Affair to Remember also make it a must-watch for lovers of the romance genre. As Ephron, who died in 2012, once said: “Our dream was to make a movie about how movies screw up your brain about love, and then if we did a good job, we would become one of the movies that would screw up people’s brains about love forever.”
9 ROMEO+JULIET
Directed, produced, and co-written by Australia’s Baz Luhrmann, this 1996 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play stars the then 21-yerar-old Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, then 17, as the star-crossed lovers. Some critics, notably the late, great Roger Ebert, seemed to love to hate Romeo+Juliet upon its release but it fared well with our panel. Ebert said: “I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of Romeo and Juliet makes of Shakespeare’s tragedy.” But that’s exactly why fans of Luhrmann’s grungy take on The Bard’s ill-fated romance dig it so much.
10 ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
Arguably the movie with the most unconventional plot in our top 10, this 2004 sci-fi rom-com was born out of conversations between director Michel Gondry and co-writer Pierre Bismuth. It explores something everyone who has loved and lost has, no doubt, at some time (even if momentarily) wished they could do – completely erase their ex from memory. Kate Winslet’s Clementine has had a procedure to do just that but when her former partner Joel, played by Jim Carrey, decides to do the same, halfway through he changes his mind.
11 From Here to Eternity
12 Love Actually
13 Ghost
14 Titanic
15 An Officer and a Gentleman
16 Call Me By Your Name
17 Four Weddings and a Funeral
18 Moonstruck
19 While You Were Sleeping
20 La La Land
21 Past Lives
22 You’ve Got Mail
23 Brief Encounter
24 The English Patient
25 Love Story
26 West Side Story
27 Out of Sight
“Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 gem Out of Sight might not be regarded as a classic of the genre by many – in fact it might not technically even be a romance – but the hill I will die on is that George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez are the hottest couple to ever grace a movie screen. In fact if a way could be found to retrospectively harness their crackling, electric chemistry as charming rogue bank-robber Jack Foley and Karen Sisco, the US Marshal on his trail, the world’s energy problems would be solved forever. Movie reviewer Leigh Paatsch described their steamy meet-cute in the boot of a car as “the dirtiest ‘clean’ love scene of all time” (literally, he’s just climbed out of prison escape tunnel) and if the risqué rendezvous when they finally embrace their irresistible attraction – despite all the obstacles – in a hotel as the snow swirls outside doesn’t set your pulse racing, you might already be dead.” – National Entertainment Writer James Wigney.
28 My Best Friend’s Wedding
29 Bridget Jones’ Diary
“This is my favourite romantic movie mostly because of the famous line uttered by Mark Darcy to Bridget, “I like you, very much, just as you are” and what it represents.
Isn’t that what everyone wants, to be liked just as they are, without reservation and despite (or perhaps because of) our imperfections and quirks?
This film explores the pressure felt by women to fit into a perceived physical and societal ideal, slim and successful in order to bag a man.
However, the titular character finds love and realises she did so without needing to transform herself into something she thinks her partner needed, either through weight loss or by achievements in career and personal life” – Adelaide Advertiser librarian Milly Wise
30 The Notebook
31 The Remains of the Day
32 A Star is Born (2018)
33 His Girl Friday
34 Like Water for Chocolate
35 Chocolat
36 Breakfast at Tiffany’s
37 The Way We Were
38 The Philadelphia Story
39 To Catch a Thief
40 Pretty Woman
41 Gone With The Wind
42 Jerry Maguire
43 A Room With A View
44 Sabrina
45 Strictly Ballroom
46 Brokeback Mountain
47 Breathless
48 Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
49 10 Things I Hate About You
50 Love and Other Catastrophes
51 High Society
52 Lost In Translation
53 Bringing Up Baby
54 Moulin Rouge!
55 Singing in the Rain
56 My Girl
57 Pretty In Pink
58 Silver Linings Playbook
59 Notorious
60 The Wedding Singer
61 How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
62 Intolerable Cruelty
63 Cinema Paradiso
64 Muriel’s Wedding
65 Midnight in Paris
66 Annie Hall
67 Say Anything
68 It Happened One Night
69 Twilight
70 In the Mood for Love
71 Top End Wedding
72 The Bridges of Madison County
73 Portrait of a Lady on Fire
74 Razing Arizona
75 What’s Up Doc?
76 Working Girl
77 Fifty First Dates
78 Only You
79 How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
80 The Lake House
81 Singles
82 High Fidelity
83 Down With Love
84 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
85 Pierrot Le Fou
86 500 Days of Summer
87 Doctor Zhivago
88 Once
89 Portrait of a Lady on Fire
90 Ice Castles
91 Love Hard
92 Jules and Jim
93 About Time
94 Groundhog Day
95 Wall-E
96 Punch-Drunk Love
97 The Circus
98 City Lights
99 Meet Joe Black
100 Rust and Bone
THE MOST-LOVED ROMANTIC FILMS VOTING PANEL
Shashi Baltutis – Reporter, Adelaide Advertiser
Darren Chaitman – Reporter, Adelaide Advertiser
Aden Hill – Reporter, Adelaide Advertiser
Antimo Iannella – Head of Entertainment, Adelaide Advertiser
Kathy McCabe – National Music Writer
Anna Vlach – Deputy Head of Arts and Entertainment, Adelaide Advertiser
James Wigney – National Entertainment Writer
Milly Wise – Librarian, Adelaide Advertiser
* The poll was decided by personal passions. It is not a critics’ list; it’s the favourite romance movies of people who love cinema.
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