Bittersweet Romances

 

I can’t stand “Love Story” and other predictable boy meets girl, one’s rich, the other, poor, daddy hates the union. One dies…the end… snore. There are many romantic films..many…but I decided to center on the bittersweet romances of which there are…many. Here are 3 I chose for this week…

1. WATERLOO BRIDGE-1940

This film is a full on romantic melodrama that I should not like but I do. It stars Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor as 2 people who meet on the bridge and fall for each other in the span of  a day or hours. She is a ballerina and he is upper class and they will be together no matter what. When shrivelled apple face Maria Ouspenskaya finds out his star ballerina went out despite her disapproval, she abruptly fires Vivien. Vivien soon finds out her love of her life has died in WW1 and soon becomes a lady of the night only, a year later, to see him very much alive. He is over the moon to see her again but can she tell him what she has become? This was Vivien’s  favourite film of hers as well as Robert’s favourite. It’s well acted and both stars are beautiful but I get frustrated by people making life so difficult. Stop being martyrs, tell them the truth and then hit the hay. 

2. SUMMERTIME-1955

This is a beautifully romantic drama that stars Katherine Hepburn as a spinster on her once in a lifetime trip to Venice who meets pouty-lipped Rosanno Brazzi and falls for his charm. When she decides to get all dolled up for her big date, I laughed because her hair was exactly the same…lol. This was directed by David Lean so it is a step above the typical romance plus you have Katherine Hepburn who is so good as a woman who has never given in to her impulses but decides to let Venice speak to her. Hepburn did her own stunts so that is her falling into the canal and she paid for it because she got something from it which resulted in her eye constantly tearing until the day she died. 

3. SUITE FRANCAISE-2014

We just watched this film starring Michelle Williams as a French woman who is living with her prickly mother in law, played by Kristin Scott Thomas while her husband is fighting in the early days of WW2. The Germans have just taken Paris and are sprawling all over France. Their small town is no different and a German unit takes over this town with the Captain staying at the fancy home where Williams and her mom in law live. The German, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, is a gentleman who hates the war and what Hitler is doing. He is a composer who loves music and hates having to do his duty which is repugnant to him. He and Williams fall in love but everything and everyone is against this union. A farmer kills a German, who deserves it, but now he is a hunted man and the German must find him. It is so well acted and sad. This is based on a book by Irene Nemirovsky, a Jewish woman who died in the concentration camps. Her daughter had the book and her mom asked her to read it and see about publishing it but, after the war, when she found out her mom died, she assumed it was her mom’s diary and could not read it. In the 1980s, she found the book and finally sat down to read it and realized it was not a diary but a fictional book set during WW2. Watching this movie made me think of my mom..when the Russians marched in, they were brutal especially since many were from prisons and were rapists and murderers which is what they did all around the German landscape. Sadly, my mom was a victim of gang rape( over many hours by 7 Russians) but 6 months later a Russian Captain and his troop set up camp on my grandparents’ home and made sure that the family was safe. While there he fell in love with my aunt, Tante Ilse, but, to my mom’s knowledge, they never acted on any feelings. Tante Ilse was already married and in love with her husband and this Russian was a true gentleman and made sure the killings and raping stopped in this area. One day, they got their orders to leave and that was that. 

That movie so bothered me that I dreamed a different ending which was much more positive and happy and how I wish it did end like that. Sadly, there were many French women that did get involved with German soldiers and officers but when the allies won, these women were vilified with their hair being shaved off and openly ridiculed. Sad how we humans can act because not all these women were collaborators.