© RKO Radio Pictures
They meet at a party. She’s known for having a few drinks and more than a few playmates. He’s the quiet, controlled type. They go for a drive, and he wraps his arms around her from behind, tying a scarf around her bare midriff to ward off the breeze. Their connection grows over secret meetings in a park, conversation between kisses over dinner, a key she slips into his hand when she thinks no one is watching. Later, he comes to her when she needs him most, whispering cheek to cheek while the world swirls around them, everything lost but their own private moment.
“I love you,” he says. “I couldn’t see straight or think straight. I was a fat-headed guy, full of pain.”
I love this film. Cinephiles no doubt recognize this as “Notorious,” the 1946 film-noir starring the luminous Ingrid Bergman as an undercover agent and the incomparable Cary Grant as the government handler who fights his feelings while sending her into danger. The film industry’s morality code at the time restricted kisses to three seconds each, so director Alfred Hitchcock had dialogue cross their lips between pecks, deepening the intimacy.
The release of “Fifty Shades of Grey” seems primed to dominate the Valentine’s Day box office as the biggest pop-culture moment for bondage, submission, and other private bedroom practices. (Just ask the sex-toy industry, which noted an upswing in sales of blindfolds, cuffs, and other props after the 2011 book sold like wildfire.)
But if floggers aren’t your thing, the romances of Hollywood’s Golden Age (the late 1920s to the early 1960s) still pack plenty of ways to get your pulse pounding. Critics at The American Film Institute and RottenTomatoes.com rank these films consistently as among the greatest love stories of all time, with “Casablanca” (1943) as number one and “Gone With the Wind” (1939) in the top ten.
Because of the love heaped on Rick, Ilsa, Scarlett, and Rhett over the years, I cast an eye toward other films of this era at Word and Film today that readers might want to queue up for a romantic evening. “It Happened One Night,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “To Have and Have Not,” “An Affair to Remember,” “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” and “Roman Holiday” are among my 11 picks. Grab your sweetheart and swoon.