Love movie

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A romance film is a film about the love between two people. If this love is fulfilled in a happy ending , the romantic aspects of the story are in the foreground. If love remains unfulfilled, the love story has a melodramatic character.

Characteristics

The romance film is not a consistent genre with fixed conventions. Its elements, the representation of amorous interpersonal relationships, are contained in the majority of all narrative films, from westerns to comedies and musicals to horror films and thrillers . The motifs of love and desire can be found in the works of all national film cultures and in all forms of understanding of the medium from entertainment cinema to auteur films . An important indicator of whether a film is to be rated as a love story is the reception of the work. Films like Casablanca , Gone with the Wind and Titanic are mainly considered love films ; The inclusion of the love story as the dominant aspect conceals the affiliation of these works to film genres such as the crime film , the historical film or the disaster film .

If the focus on the couple relationship in a film is so dominant that one can speak of a love story, it can position itself in the field of tension between romance and melodrama. In romance, the wish for love is fulfilled against all odds and leads to a happy ending. In order not to let the romance slide into triviality and to avoid being accused of kitsch , these films often have a comedic tenor, such as Rendezvous after the store closes (1940) or bed whispers (1959). In melodrama the longing for love remains unfulfilled, external or internal conditions make love's fulfillment impossible. Douglas Sirk was the master of these melodramas with films such as In the Wind (1956) or Time to Live and Time to Die (1958). Most love films mix romantic and melodramatic elements, give a romantic love story a tragic end ( Love Story , 1970) or add romantic aspects to a predominantly melodramatic story ( Jenseits von Afrika , 1985).

history

Love has been a motif in film since the beginning of film history. William Heise caused a scandal as early as 1896 with The Kiss , which shows the two actors in a deep embrace. Hollywood's studio system used love stories to promote its stars and marketed actresses such as Greta Garbo (in the service of MGM ) and Marlene Dietrich (active for Paramount ) through the romantic events . These studios exaggerated the play of their female stars with the typical style in brilliant and glamorous, brightly lit images. Romantic or tragic love stories were written for screen couples like Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy or Myrna Loy and William Powell , which served as a catalyst for their audience attractiveness.

Due to the restrictions of the Hays Code , the relationships portrayed in the American film remained chaste, eroticism and sexuality were only hinted at. After the decline of the studio system, the representation of sexuality became more explicit and the representation of love was not always subject to clichés. Topoi such as same-sex ( Mein wunderbaren Waschsalon , 1985), overcoming ethnic barriers ( Guess who comes to eat , 1967) and cross-generational love ( Harold and Maude , 1971) expanded the subject area of ​​the love story. Particularly in European film, individual previously neglected aspects of love were worked out: the private, sometimes self-destructive character ( The Last Tango in Paris , 1974), the problem of triangular stories ( Jules and Jim , 1961) or the impossibility of love in a social environment ( Angst eat the soul up , 1974).

The modern Hollywood film dramaturgically integrates love stories into popular genres such as the thriller or the science fiction film, but also meets the demand for conventional love films with a happy ending with the love comedy ( em @ il for you , 1998).

See also

literature