GREAT LOVE STORIES, ONCE A STAPLE OF British cinema, have pretty much vanished from our screens. The reasons why filmmakers have fallen out of love with the genre include cynicism, changing relationship dynamics and a retreat into solitude. But it is a loss we should feel because a good romantic film can teach us so much about the human condition.
A quick scroll through my local cinema listings reveals just how far we have strayed from the path of true love. The week I selected, much like any other, includes an all too familiar and American conveyor belt of rehashed superheroes and kick-ass kiddie-flicks and something called Bottoms about two teenage girls who “start a fight club in order to find someone to have sex with before graduation” — as a premise, the antithesis of a romantic love story. Those seeking an amorous night out will struggle to find anything even remotely smooch-worthy.
Go back to the cinema listings for 1945 when, starring Lawrence Olivier and perhaps the best-loved romance of all, Noel Coward’s . Here were films about personal salvation that gave audiences the opportunity to see beyond the carnage of the war years.
