Oscar Flashback: When Oscar Fell in Love
In honor of Valentine’s Day, we thought it might be fun to highlight the films that entered the race as undeniable favorites. Somehow this usually means a love story. Believe it or not it isn’t very common for love stories to do well in the Best Picture race. Movies about people with disabilities and/or if Nazis figure in somehow, they are likely to throw their votes that way but every so often they are taken in. But of course, they can never just be love stories – They have to have something more to them. But let’s take a look back at the ones that captured the hearts of the Academy and the public at the same time.
For the best of the bunch I’ll have to go with Casablanca. It has aged so well, with no slip-ups – well, okay, so Ingrid Bergman refers to Sam as a “boy” and Sam himself is, well, okay fine. But the rest of it – it is the kind of movie that fools you into thinking that the trials and tribulations of love are actually worth the trouble. A good movie will do that. When I think of Casablanca I immediately start hearing the dialogue, “We’ll be there at six.” “I’ll be there at ten.” And “The Germans wore grey, you wore blue.” And “Is that canon fire? Or is it my heart pounding.”
The backstory of Casablanca is legendary – how they didn’t know the ending before filming finished so they wrote it as they went along. That helped Ingrid Bergman not know either, which man she would end up with. But it remains today one of a handful on unequivocal Oscar Best Picture winners that no one can complain about.
Casablanca
— MOVIECLIPS.com
— MOVIECLIPS.com
Here are the Best Picture winners over the years that have a love story at their center.
Casablanca*
Titanic
Gone with the Wind
The Sound of Music
The English Patient
Shakespeare in Love*
Slumdog Millionaire*
The Artist*
Rocky
Forrest Gump
Annie Hall*
Dances with Wolves
West Side Story*
Rebecca*
An American in Paris
Marty
Gigi
The Apartment*
Chariots of Fire
Out of Africa
It Happened One Night*
My Fair Lady
Midnight Cowboy*
My own random list of favorite love stories:
Moulin Rouge
A Single Man
Heaven Can Wait
Sense and Sensibility
Vertigo
The Year of Living Dangerously
The Graduate
Th Hunchback of Notre Dame (Charles Laughton)
Tootsie
The Truth About Cats and Dogs
Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn)
The Philadelphia Story
Breakfast at Tiffanys
Time Me Up! Tie me Down!
Drive
Brokeback Mountain
Tequila Sunrise
She’s Gotta Have it
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
A Place in the Sun
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
When Harry Met Sally
Bonnie and Clyde
Manhattan
Harold and Maude
Say Anything
Last Tango in Paris
Okay, readers — show me up. What you got for love stories? Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day!
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The English Patient is my favourite though I remember the Oscar Awards show getting monotonous as it won almost everything. I hope that does not happen this year. Gone With the Wind is another favourite. Forrest Gump shouldn’t have won.
I like it much better when there is a relationship in a film not central to the story, but that feels incredibly endearing and necessary. For some reason, I have always LOVED how Frances McDormand and John Carroll Lynch play off of each other in Fargo. You can tell they love each other so much. The moments they spend together bring McDormand back to earth and make her more than just a caricature of a Minnesota woman, what with the accent and all. Great all around film, but I just adore their relationship. For lack of a better word, they are just so “cute.”
Believe it or not it isn’t very common for love stories to do well in the Best Picture race.
I agree with that but even when that happens it provokes an outrage: How can that boring drama or rom-com win instead of some grim thriller or war epic? I’m talking about The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love particularly, cause for me those two movies are brilliant, but people seem to hate them just because they won Oscars instead of something else. Well, for me those two plus Casablanca, Gone With the Wind and Annie Hall (Midnight Cowboy too,but I don’t consider it a love story)are some of my favorite Oscar winners. Though I also like thrillers, which are even more neglected by the Academy.
Sleepless in Seattle, one of the best love stories ever.
Cyrano de Bergerac with Gerard Depardieu.
Pretty Woman, which somehow still works, and Ghost, as it was one of my date movies. Well, this date failed.
And, above all: One Fine Day with a very young George Clooney and a hot Michelle Pfeiffer. Well, it was my first date with a beautiful lady. 15 years, 11 years of marriage and 2 children later, she is more beautiful than ever…
@Stefan
That’s funny – the first movie I went to with my would-be-wife was The Departed. I wouldn’t say it’s quite a love story, though.
@Joshua: Not quite… But having a scared girlfriend in your arm which is longing for your comfort has its benefits…
Don’t think anyone could be scared by The Departed.
Favorite lovestory in a Best Picture-winner? That´s got to be “The Apartment”. Actually, one of the best Best Picture-winners ever!
One lovestory that I loved very much is from the not well-known film “Dogfight” by Nancy Savoca, featuring River Phoenix and Lily Taylor as a young couple in the early 60s. Their relationship is overshadowed by the beginning of the Vietnam War, Phoenix has to leave overseas.
An amazing film, everyone should see it at next opportunity!
My favourite romantic movie from last year is without any doubt “Norwegian Wood”. I know it strangely enough got mixed reviews in the US, but believe me, it´s a great film- very poetic and touching (with a brilliant score by Johnny Greenwood)!
Casablanca should make the list of unchallenged “A” films. One of the greatest scripts ever and you cannot buy chemistry like Bogart and Bergman.
For love stories…From Here to Eternity, American Beauty, Annie Hall, Klute…but yeah, Casablanca’s probably the best.
@ Voland: My wife would be…. One word: elevator.
By the way: Sasha, funny that you already list The Artist as BP winner.
I could also offer Last Chance Harvey, which benefits immensely from Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, and which is definitely one of the most romantic movies of the last years. And I go with Sasha: Moulin Rouge is awesome. I was sitting beside 6 or 7 women, distributing my handkerchiefs….. Apart from that it was 2001′s best. One of the shortcomings which I will never forgive the Academy.
How about “True Romance” and “Natural Born Killers”. Two very fucked up romances from a very young and up and coming Tarantino.
Good Piece Miss Stone:
Not very sure of “Midnight Cowboy” having a love story at its center. Is not it more a brotherhood kind of love?.
I think “The Godfahter” has a love story as a motivation in its story.
Great love stories for me in cinema (not Best Picture winners included): An Officer and a Gentleman, Sense and Sensibility, Tootsie, Back to the Future, Ghost, Dr. Zhivago, The Graduate, Funny Girl, Roman Holiday, On Golden Pond, Romeo and Juliet (1968), The Vow.
@Stefan and Voland: When I saw The Departed in theatres and the elevator scene happened, at least 3 men audibly yelled “Fuck!” Not a pleasant scene.
What about A Touch Of Class! Is that forgotten!
WALL-E!
We already include THE ARTIST in the above list of Best Picture winners? Ha!
You are right– we might as well already!
Also there are the un-love stories – Kramer vs. Kramer, Ordinary People come to mind.
Other best pic winners where love figured prominently include:
Tom Jones
The Great Ziegfeld
The Sound of Music
On the Waterfront
Terms of Endearment
All About Eve
The Best Years of Our Lives
And the foreign film winners include A Man and a Woman, La Strada. . . .
What about A Touch Of Class! Is that forgotten!
Not by me ginabb…it’s probably my favourite romance along with “The Way We Were”.
Casablanca, Godfather Part II and Unforgiven are the only Best Picture winners that I think were genuninely the Best Picture of their respective years- although it doesn’t mean there weren’t many genuinely great films that won as well.
Well Hollywood is known for its love stories and these films didn’t win BP but they are favorites of mine. Moonstruck,Bridges of Madison County,The Sum of Us,A Man and a Woman,Murphy’s Romance,The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Notorious. Love stories/romance and a grand time watching them.
One of my favorites is WHEN HARRY MET SALLY…. Some of the others mentioned are favorites too!
Oh, I love the Hunchback of Notre Dome although Rocky was my top favorite.
Actually, there seems to be an oscar winning love story missing from the list and it’s my favorite -> Sunrise.
Although my top favorite was the Lion King
@OCO300 me too, my favorite from the movie was Akuna Matata and I still can’t get that song out of my head.
@SC8Official yeah, I don’t know why it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture or Best Animated film……like the Adventures of Tin Tin.
Casablanca is my all-time favorite movie. I’ve always been fascinated by the stories that the production of Casablanca was supposedly a huge mess, with the script being written on the fly and constant bickering among the cast and crew. Ingrid Bergman described Bogart as moody and distant throughout the production. Yet somehow, despite all, they captured pure magic onscreen.
In terms of contemporary love stories, my favorite is Once, which sadly was only nominated (and won) for best song. When they realize they can’t be together and then he gives her the piano at the end — it slays me!
One of my favourite love stories is “Up”. Those first ten minutes are killer and never cease to make me cry, but then the grandfatherly love that the old man finds for the kid is so uplifting. Leave it to Pixar to make an animated movie about an airborne house and turn it into one of the best love stories ever.
Have you already locked The Artist in best picture winner??
I didn’t like that very much.
Happy Valentine’s!
However my fav BP Love Story is Rebecca, it’s awesome
Some really good romances would have to be Slumdog Millionaire, Sideways, and Before Sunset. Out of Sight is a lot of fun, and (500) Days of Summer, Adventureland, and Brokeback Mountain are pretty good too.
Oh, and don’t forget The Princess Bride and Up in the Air!
Dammit!! Forgot Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Four Weddings and a Funeral too.
Not to go too far back in time but Dodsworth and Wuthering Heights would both have been legitimate BP winners in theie respective years 1936 and 1939. Dodsworth makes me cheer every time. “Love has to stop somewhere short of suicide!” Indeed.
There are two wonderful films by John cassavettes that I would add to this list of “love themed” movies
“Love Streams” and “Minnie and Moskowitz”
There is a film from the 70′s with Maggie Smithand Timmothy Bottoms called ” love,pain,and the whole dam thing” ( i think thats the title!)
also worth a mention :
THE GOODBYE GIRL
REDS
MRS SOFFEL
and one of the most under rated films of the past year ” JANE EYRE”
One of my favorite love stories is The Lady and the Tramp.
Casablanca DID age well … Some others where love, happy endings or not, is involved:
- Last Tango in Paris
- Shakespeare in Love (I know, it didn´t deserve to win BP against SPV and especially The Thin Red Line, but when you look at the romcoms of the 00′ and going into the 01′, it feels like a masterpiece …)
- Singing in the Rain (another romcom that aged well)
- Annie Hall
- When Harry met Sally
- West Side Story
- Brokeback Mountain
- Lust, Caution
@Dino: I was going to include Reds too …
Most of my favourite films are romances, though typically dark and doomed ones.
Some of my favourites:
In the Mood for Love
Brief Encounter
Casablanca
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Once
Before Sunrise
Far from Heaven…
My favorite love stories:
Brief Encounter
Tootsie
Annie Hall
The Apartment
Casablanca
Trouble in Paradise
Pride and Prejudice
The Graduate
@DBiddy.. oh yes “in the mood for love” ..and also “happy together” and “weekend”…
A few that come to mind:
From Here to Eternity
Annie Hall
Bonnie & Clyde
Sunrise
City Lights
A Place in the Sun
Moulin Rouge
Shakespeare in Love
Romeo & Juliet
Brief Encounter
Maurice
There’s a small Peruvian movie called UNDERTOW.
I liked it more than BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.
It actually got a release in Los Angeles
Other great romantic movies for me: “City Lights”, “An Officer and a Gentleman”, “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Limelight”
I just finished watching Love Story, a classic 1970 cinematic time capsule. It sure brought me back in time. It was nominated for 7 Oscars and it won for it’s “tear out your guts” tear jerking score. Okay i admit it…that music got to me again!
Other great love sotories: “The Bridges of Madison County” and “The Remains of the Day”
Summer of 42. This is a good one.
A Little Romance.
Malena.
The Goodbye Girl
Moonstruck
The Postman
Sense and Sensibility
Ghost
Working Girl
Witness
Thanks for this Casablanca tribute, my favorite film of all time! I saw it as a 16 year old, 12 years and thousands of films later, it still is my number 1. The plot, the script, the acting, the romance, the war, the music, the setting, the ending, it’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a movie.
As for romantic films, too many to list, but just recently I saw the French film Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, a wonderful offbeat romantic comedy well-deserving of it’s Oscar best foreign language film win.
Well, my second favorite movie of all time, Rocky, isn’t a love story but it has a love story in it. But out of my favorite films, the highest ranking straight up love story is Dr. Zhivago in at #6.
This year is particularly devoid of love stories. The best is definitely Drive. What else is there? I’m not counting The Artist because that’s mostly about the dude’s career. Him and the chick come in 3rd after him and the dog.
Meryl Streep’s acceptance Speech – Berlin Honor Awards 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qAXqcOX40KE
“Once” is one of the most gorgeous and underrated love stories ever put to film. At least the Academy recognized it for original song, an Oscar which the two leads were able to share.
Nothing beats the perfection of Annie Hall. So amazing that such a hilarious film manages to be genuinely touching and poignant.
Tired of Streep’s award acceptance antics
Damn it – half the movies on these lists make me cry.
I can’t watch Toy Story 2 when Jesse goes to the dump while Sarah McLachlan sings. In fact, I have to turn off the TV when I hear “Hi. I’m Sarah McLachlan …”
To me, it’s always been About Last Night. The greatest relationship movie ever made. No one is dying, no one is going to war…just tackles it head on.
I like most of the films above, but I don’t see them as films about love, exclusively.
Al Pacino & Penelope Miller in Carlito’s Way was a fully realized relationship. Sexy, honest and heartbreaking.
Gee, if only they made a Simon & Garfinkel film – Penn would be a shoo in,
I’ve never been one or romance, but I LOVE Before Sunrise/Sunset, those movies get me every single time, especially the end of the second film.
Also, I just watched Andrew Haigh’s Weekend last night and it was incredible, one of the most realistic, raw, love stories I can remember seeing. God I loved those characters and just want to spend more time with them!
http://www.holymoly.com/film-dvd/news/vue-releases-list-uks-favourite-films-doesnt-quite-match-critics-lists61729
“If ever you need incontrovertible proof that there’s very little similarity between what film critics think makes a good film and what people actually watch at the cinema, then a list of the public’s top films usually does it.
Don’t get us wrong though, as critics we’ve still got a God-given right to turn up our noses at anything that doesn’t have elongated metaphors for the frailty of love and life itself in, but it just means that no-one listens to us when we’re telling them about it. Heathens. (Although, having said that, we did like Harry Potter and it’s number 1 on the list, while we hated Tree of Life and BAM, it’s not there. WE ARE THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE)
Anyway, as you can see below, 2011′s favourite film topics (according to Vue Cinemas’ extensive poll) included magic, rape, insanity, monkeys, booze, fighting and Colin Firth. AND THAT WAS JUST OUR VOTES.
No, seriously, it was all the votes.
1) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
2) The King’s Speech
3) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
4) Bridesmaids
5) The Inbetweeners Movie
6) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
7) Black Swan
9) Hangover Part II
10) X-Men First Class
11) Tangled
12) The Help
13) Paul
14) Drive
15) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
16) Senna
17) Transformers: Dark of the Moon
18) Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
19) Fast and Furious 5
20) Thor
21) The Adventures of TinTin
22) Super 8
23) The Fighter
24) Jonny English Reborn
25) Hugo
26) True Grit
27) Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
28) Puss in Boots
29) Cars 2
30) One Day
31) Crazy Stupid Love
32) Kung Fu Panda 2
33) Midnight in Paris
34) Moneyball
35) Jane Eyre
36) The Skin I Live In
37) The Ides of March
38) Paranormal Activity
39) TT3D: Closer to the Edge
40) Life in a Day.”
One of my all time favorites is Simon Birch, my favorite scene was when he saved that little from the sinking school bus, I mean that was amazing and heroic man.
I’m way too late for anyone to see this, but I don’t care, I have to get in when I can, and I never have enough opportunities to talk about my favorite love story of all time, Brief Encounter. Trevor Howard terrified me as a kid because of Superman and tv previews of Windwalker. But I fell in love with him when I was a 20 year old college student. And now to be married with children, it’s so easy to relate to Celia Johnson’s character Laura. Sigh.
MeredithLeigh,
Never too late. Seen by me, and I agree.
Brief Encounter, not just one of the all-time great romance movies — it’s one of the all-time great movies of any kind.
I don’t get the love for “Casablanca”. When we talk about “When Oscar fell in love” the quintessential movie is “Gone with the wind”. A movie that is a million times better than “Casablanca”.