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Movies To Break (or Heal) Your Heart

In honor of Valentine’s weekend, I’m taking a break from my usual ranting and raving. Instead, for those looking for something romantic to watch with a loved one, here’s a recommendation of eight films available on video and/or DVD that I think you might enjoy. These are eight “forgotten” classics — films that may not be as well-known as other romantic gems as Casablanca or When Harry Met Sally, but worth checking out.

City Lights (1931): Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited and composed the music for what many consider his masterpiece. Chaplin’s Little Tramp meets a blind flower shop girl (Virginia Cherrill) who mistakes him for a wealthy socialite who can finance an operation that will restore her sight. Although one of Chaplin’s funniest films, City Lights is perhaps best known for its heart-breaking ending. With no dialogue and a series of close-ups that took weeks to film, Chaplin manages to say more about love with just a few, simple shots than other films that prattle on and on about it.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940): It was re-made a few years back as the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan vehicle You’ve Got Mail, but nothing tops the original, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan play bickering co-workers in a Budapest notions shop who don’t realize they are lonely hearts pen pals. There are many romantic comedies about people who seem to hate each other only to end up falling in love, but no film does this with as much charm, wit and style. People still talk about the magic of “the Lubitsch touch.” Watch this film and find out why.

Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) (1945): Considered to be the French Gone With The Wind, this epic tale set in the Paris theatre world of the 19th century is all the more amazing when you realize that director Marcel Carne shot the film at great peril to himself and his crew during the Nazi occupation (some of his crew fought for the French resistance during breaks in filming). A circus mime (Jean-Louis Barrault) loves an actress (Arletty Brasseur) whose own feelings lie elsewhere. More than a simple love story, Children poignantly explores the relationship between art and love and how one feeds the other.

The Apartment (1960): In my opinion, the most perfect movie ever made. Billy Wilder’s The Apartment won multiple Oscars (including Best Picture) and is the standard by which all romantic dramas and comedies must measure themselves. Jack Lemmon plays an anonymous corporate drone who suddenly finds his career on the fast track when he lends his apartment to his superiors to conduct their extra-marital trysts. But when he realizes one of his bosses is having an affair with the woman he loves (a radiant Shirley MacLaine), Lemmon must decide if the corporate rat race is worth sacrificing his humanity for. If there is such a thing as a movie heaven, Billy Wilder would be God.

Woman in the Dunes (1964): The Oscar-nominated Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara directed this haunting story about an entomologist (Eiji Okada) who is tricked into living with a woman (Kyoko Kishida) who resides at the bottom of a sand dune from which there is no escape. The mutual respect and love that eventually develop between this man and woman is an apt metaphor for the ways in which our relationships with our significant others evolve over time. And you’ll never look at sand in quite the same way again.

My Own Private Idaho (1992): Before he went Hollywood with Good Will Hunting and the remake of Psycho, Gus Van Sant directed this moving drama about a narcoleptic street hustler (River Phoenix) searching for love with a runaway rich boy (Keanu Reeves) and his estranged mother. Many might consider this an inappropriate Valentine’s Day film, but just look at the campfire scene when Phoenix professes his love for Reeves and see if you can think of a more honest expression of the pain and uncertainty of first love.

Philip W. Chung is a writer and a co-artistic director of Lodestone Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles. His latest project is the Asian American horror film Children in the Mirror.