Romance

The Single Standard (1929) John S. Robertson, Greta Garbo, Nils Asther, Johnny Mack Brown, Drama, Romance

The Single Standard (1929)
The wealthy Arden Stuart is bored in a party; after refusing the wedding proposal of Tommy Hewlett, she drives her car with her driver to a lonely place. She has one night stand with him and returns to the party; then she witnesses the driver being fired by a relative and committing suicide. In a rainy day, Arden goes to an exposition and meets the painter and aspirant boxer Packy Cannon. They sail to the South Seas together in his sailboat and Arden falls in love for him. However, a couple of months later, Packy dumps her and brings her back to her city, traveling to China alone. The heartbroken Arden is proposed again by Tommy and gets married with him. Three years later, Arden meets Packy by chance and becomes divided between her unconditional love for Packy and the love for her son.
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Akutô / A Scoundrel (1965) Kaneto Shindô, Nobuko Otowa, Kyôko Kishida, Eitarô Ozawa, Drama, Romance

Akuto (Kaneto Shindo, 1965)
A provincial warlord who has seized power after success in battle is our titular ‘scoundrel’. His court lady is one of those fallen down from her days in the imperial court and he intimidates her to help him seduce another ex-court woman now married to a smaller lord. She is a great beauty and his lust for her consumes him. However, true love cannot be corrupted by power and lust. The resulting tragedy unfolds as the wheel of dharma turns.
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War and Peace (1956) King Vidor, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer, Drama, Romance, War

War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956)
By 1812, Napoleon’s forces controlled much of Europe. Russia, one of the few countries still unconquered, prepares to face Napoleon’s troops together with Austria. Among the Russian soldiers are Count Nicholas Rostov and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. Count Pierre Bezukhov, a friend of Andrei’s and self-styled intellectual who is not interested in fighting. Pierre’s life changes when his father dies, leaving him a vast inheritance. He is attracted to Natasha Rostov, Nicholas’s sister, but she is too young, so he gives in to baser desires and marries the shallow, manipulative Princess Helene. The marriage ends when Pierre discovers his wife’s true nature. Andrei is captured and later released by the French, and returns home only to watch his wife die in childbirth. Months later, Pierre and Andrei meet again. Andrei sees Natasha and falls in love, but his father will only permit the marriage if they postpone it for one year until Natasha turns 17.
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The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) Karel Reisz, Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Hilton McRae, Drama, Romance

The French Lieutenant's Woman (Karel Reisz, 1981)
A film is being made of a story, set in 19th century England, about Charles, a biologist who’s engaged to be married, but who falls in love with outcast Sarah, whose melancholy makes her leave him after a short, but passionate affair. Anna and Mike, who play the characters of Sarah and Charles, go, during the shooting of the film, through a relationship that runs parallel to that of their characters.
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The North Star (1943) Lewis Milestone, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Drama, Romance, War

The North Star (Lewis Milestone, 1943)
In a peaceful Ukrainian village, the school year is just ending in June 1941. Five young friends set out for a walking trip to Kiev, but their travels are brutally interrupted when they are suddenly attacked by German planes, in the first wave of the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union. When the village itself is attacked and occupied, most of the men flee to the hills to form a guerrilla unit. The others resist the Nazis as well as possible, but soon the village is placed under the command of a Nazi doctor who begins using the town’s children as a source of constant blood transfusions for wounded German soldiers. Meanwhile, the small group of young persons tries desperately to take a supply of firearms to the guerrillas.
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Pane, amore e gelosia / Frisky (1954) Luigi Comencini, Vittorio De Sica, Gina Lollobrigida, Marisa Merlini, Comedy, Romance

Pane, amore e gelosia AKA Bread, Love and Jealousy (1954)
In a small Italian village, Maria De Ritis is engaged to army Lieutenant Pietro Stelluti. Stelluti’s superior officer, Marshal Antonio Carotenuto, is contemplating marriage to Annarella Mirziano, but he will be forced to resign if he marries Annarella, since she has an illegitimate child and that is against regulations for army officers. When Stelluti leaves town for a few weeks, the town-gossips create an affair out of the innocent relationship between Maria and Antonio. Stelluti returns and accuses Maria of infidelity, and, she, in reprisal, runs off and joins a traveling theatrical troupe as a dancer. Antonio, after convincing Annarella that he has not betrayed her love, encounters more trouble when the father of Annarella’s child shows up and asks that she and the child go away with him. Antonio tells Annarella that it is her decision to make, and she chooses the child’s father and leaves with him.
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Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) Curtis Bernhardt, Rita Hayworth, José Ferrer, Aldo Ray, Drama, Musical, Romance

Miss Sadie Thompson (Curtis Bernhardt, 1953)
At a lonely military outpost on American Samoa, sticky heat alternates with torrential rain. A ship quarantine strands here Sadie Thompson, a “breezy dame” who sets the Marines afire… and self-righteous Mr. Davidson, powerful head of the Mission Board, who suspects Sadie is a fugitive from the notorious Emerald Club of Honolulu. Meanwhile, Sadie is courted by crude but good-hearted Marine Sgt. Phil O’Hara.
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The Apartment (1960) Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Comedy, Drama, Romance

The Apartment (1960)
As of November 1, 1959, mild mannered C.C. Baxter has been working at Consolidated Life, an insurance company, for close to four years, and is one of close to thirty-two thousand employees located in their Manhattan head office. To distinguish himself from all the other lowly cogs in the company in the hopes of moving up the corporate ladder, he often works late, but only because he can’t get into his apartment, located off of Central Park West, since he has provided it to a handful of company executives – Mssrs. Dobisch, Kirkeby, Vanderhoff and Eichelberger – on a rotating basis for their extramarital liaisons in return for a good word to the personnel director, Jeff D. Sheldrake. When Baxter is called into Sheldrake’s office for the first time, he learns that it isn’t just to be promoted as he expects, but also to add married Sheldrake to the list to who he will lend his apartment.
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Robin and Marian (1976) Richard Lester, Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Adventure, Drama, Romance

Robin and Marian (Richard Lester, 1976)
A sort of tragicomedy/adventure film, “Robin and Marian” picks up the Robin Hood legend some twenty years after most versions of the story, with Robin and his sidekick Little John returning to their old Sherwood haunts world-weary from the Crusades and their sickening brutality. They’re informed by former cohorts Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett that Maid Marian now lives at the nearby priory, where she has become an abbess. Marian greets Robin’s return with mixed feelings, but after he rescues her from his longtime enemy, the Sheriff of Nottingham, who tries to arrest her on religious grounds, the two become lovers once again.
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Return to Paradise (1953) Mark Robson, Gary Cooper, Barry Jones, Roberta Haynes, Adventure, Drama, Romance

Return to Paradise (Mark Robson, 1953)
Based on the short story “Mr. Morgan” from “Return To Paradise” (James Michener’s sequel to “Tales of the South Pacific”). Morgan (Gary Cooper), a drifter and soldier-of-fortune washes up on a Pacific island that is a small dictatorial state under the puritanic rule of Pastor Corbett (Barry Jones), a missionary. They conflict but Morgan stays on and carves out a cozy life. He has a child out of wedlock with island native Maeva (Roberta Haynes), but departs the island after her death, leaving the young daughter behind. He returns years later in search of his daughter. It is circa the early years of WW II, and he finds that his daughter has fallen in love with an American pilot who has crash-landed on the island. It appears that the pilot will do for the girl what Morgan did for her mother, and then depart.
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