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Wednesday, June 12, 2002

By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor

Here's how the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest love stories, announced last night on CBS-TV, defines romance: old, white, tragic.

	AFI's Top 100 most passionate movies

None of the top 10 movies on the fifth of AFI's annual "100 movies" projects -- each one seemingly designed to generate arguments -- was made after 1973. Only two of the 100 films are about a romance involving a black person ("Porgy and Bess," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,") and in the latter Sidney Poitier loves a white woman.

But in what is perhaps the most striking aspect of the list, many of these movies tell stories of doomed romance in which the guy and the girl get split up in the end.

Just look at the top 10 films. Only two conclude with the couple together: "An Affair to Remember," which takes the characters to the edge of heartbreak, and "It's a Wonderful Life," but only after Jimmy Stewart's character glimpses the horrible alternative.

Politics, war or duty separate the lovers in "Casablanca," "Roman Holiday," "The Way We Were" and "Doctor Zhivago." Death breaks up the romances in "West Side Story" and "Love Story." Rhett Butler tells Scarlett O'Hara he doesn't give a damn in "Gone With the Wind." And in "City Lights," Charlie Chaplin's hopes are dashed once the blind girl can see and learns her benefactor is a tramp.

Maybe American movies aren't so much of a fairy tale as we thought -- most of these people don't live happily ever after. Maybe the real romantic fantasy involves the concept of perfect love, noble and pure and unsullied by such distasteful matters as sex or the practical difficulties of actually settling down in marriage.

The highest-grossing film of all time, "Titanic," features the death of one of the principals. One of the surprises on the AFI list is that it ranked only No. 37 among the 100 films. That may be a factor of an undeniable bias among jurors (a group of filmmakers, critics, historians and movie executives) for older films -- or, at least, movies that reflect traditional Hollywood values.

Unfortunately, this may explain the virtual invisibility of minorities on the list -- or, perhaps, Hollywood's unwillingness to cast them in love stories (Natalie Wood was cast as the Puerto Rican heroine in "West Side Story").

For something different, we have to turn to "King Kong," where the attraction was strictly one-sided (and, unlike the lovers in "An Affair to Remember," this unlikely couple makes it to the top of the Empire State Building). "Lady and the Tramp" and "Beauty and the Beast" are the two animated films on the list, both worthy of inclusion (the former for the spaghetti-eating scene alone).

"Last Tango in Paris" is one of the few movies on the list that is graphically sexual in nature. Then there's "Double Indemnity," a great film noir that is more of a lust story than a love story, and one that leads to murder.

In "Notorious," we're supposed to think Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman are in love. Hah! He's an American spy who gets her to agree to marry a Nazi (Claude Rains) he's keeping an eye on, putting her in mortal danger. Rains shows more true affection for her than Grant does.

Grant, by the way, turns out to be Hollywood's greatest lover -- he's in six films on the list, followed by Humphrey Bogart in five. Their female counterparts are those unrelated Hepburns -- Katharine, in six movies, and Audrey, in five.

In case you were wondering, Grant and Kate Hepburn co-starred in two films on the list: "The Philadelphia Story" and "Bringing Up Baby."

So what's lacking on the list other than people of color? Teen movies, for one ("Grease" and "Dirty Dancing" are the closest thing). In case you were wondering, the 1968 "Romeo and Juliet" is not an American production and so is not eligible for inclusion -- it was the supreme make-out movie of its time.

And here are a few suggestions of movies that didn't make it but maybe should have: "Bull Durham," "Groundhog Day," "The Last of the Mohicans" (Daniel Day-Lewis version), "Robin and Marian," "Tootsie," "Rebecca," "Shampoo," "The Enchanted Cottage." And, of course, put in some more movies featuring black characters: "Waiting to Exhale," "Love and Basketball," "Mississippi Masala" or "Mo' Better Blues" would suffice.