Miss Kenton: What's in that book? Come on, let me see!
Stevens: This is my private time. You're invading it.
Miss Kenton: Oh, is that so?
Stevens: Yes.
Miss Kenton: I'm invading your private time, am I?
Stevens: Yes.
In the late 1930's, in a stately home of England called Darlington Hall, Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) is the butler. He's the supreme commander of a vast staff that includes the housekeeper, the underbutlers, the cooks, the maids, the footmen, the scullery helpers, even those people who work outside the great house. As the members of his staff are expected to serve him, so Stevens serves his master, Lord Darlington (James Fox). He serves without question. Or, as he says at one point, "It's not my place to have an opinion."
The Remains of the Day, like the novel, is nothing if not metaphoric. Stevens is the proudly subservient, pre-World War II English working class. Darlington Hall is England. Stevens's fierce determination to serve, and the satisfaction it gives him, are the last, worn-out gasps of a feudal system that was supposed to have vanished centuries before. The film also has its roots in history. The people who gather around Lord Darlington recall the members of the so-called "Cliveden set." These were the high-minded, sometimes fascist-leaning, thoroughly wrongheaded English Tories who, in the years before Munich and the partition of Czechoslovakia in 1938, worked so hard to accommodate Hitler and to preserve England's rigid social hierarchies...
Stevens, as wondrously played by Mr. Hopkins, is a very strange romantic hero. He's fussy, uptight, humorless and seemingly asexual. As improbable as it might seem, The Remains of the Day is a love story, possibly two love stories. It is most immediately about the edgy relationship of Stevens and Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), the beautiful, lively and very efficient housekeeper whom he hires after the previous housekeeper runs off with the underbutler. link
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What is it about a romantic movie that draws us deeply into it? What elements of the plot appeal to us?
Romance films are love stories, or affairs of the heart that center on passion, emotion, and the romantic, affectionate involvement of the main characters (usually a leading man and lady), and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus. Oftentimes, lovers in screen romances (often romantic dramas) face obstacles and the hazards of hardship, finances, physical illness, racial or social class status, occupation, psychological restraints, or family that threaten to break their union and attainment of love. As in all romantic relationships, tensions of day-to-day life, temptations (of infidelity), and differences in compatibility enter into the plots of romantic films.
(Omar Sharif as Dr. Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago in Dr. Zhivago - 1965. Julie Christie starred as Lara Antipova, the great love of Zhivago's life.)
Romantic films often explore the essential themes of love at first sight, young (and older) love, unrequited love, obsessive love, sentimental love, spiritual love, forbidden love, sexual and passionate love, sacrificial love, explosive and destructive love, and tragic love. Romantic films serve as great escapes and fantasies for viewers, especially if the two people finally overcome their difficulties, declare their love, and experience life "happily ever after" - implied by a reunion and final kiss.
Many romantic films do not have fairy-tale, wistful-thinking stories or happy endings, although love serves as a shield against the harshness of the real world. link
Ilsa: Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake.
Sam: [lying] I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.
Ilsa: Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By."
Sam: [lying] Oh, I can't remember it, Miss Ilsa. I'm a little rusty on it.
Ilsa: I'll hum it for you. Da-dy-da-dy-da-dum, da-dy-da-dee-da-dum...
[Sam begins playing]
Ilsa: Sing it, Sam.
Sam: [singing] You must remember this / A kiss is still a kiss / A sigh is just a sigh / The fundamental things apply / As time goes by. / And when two lovers woo, / They still say, "I love you" / On that you can rely / No matter what the future brings-...
Rick: [rushing up] Sam, I thought I told you never to play...
[Sees Ilsa. Sam closes the piano and rolls it away]
The classic and much-loved romantic melodrama Casablanca (1942), always found on top-ten lists of films, is a masterful tale of two men vying for the same woman's love in a love triangle. The story of political and romantic espionage is set against the backdrop of the wartime conflict between democracy and totalitarianism...
[T]he film moves quickly through a surprisingly tightly constructed plot, even though the script was written from day to day as the filming progressed and no one knew how the film would end - who would use the two exit visas? [Would Ilsa, Rick's lover from a past romance in Paris, depart with him or leave with her husband Victor, the leader of the underground resistance movement?] And three weeks after shooting ended, producer Hal Wallis contributed the film's famous final line - delivered on a fog-shrouded runway.
The sentimental story, originally structured as a one-set play, was based on an unproduced play entitled Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison - the film's original title. link
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Tomas: I must go.
Sabina: Don't you ever spend the night at the woman's place?
Tomas: Never!
Sabina: What about when the woman's at your place?
Tomas: I tell her I have insomnia... anything. Besides, I have a very narrow bed.
Sabina: Are you afraid of women, Doctor?
Tomas: Of course.
Tomas is a doctor and a lady-killer in 1960s Czechoslovakia, an apolitical man who is struck with love for the bookish country girl Tereza; his more sophisticated sometime lover Sabina eventually accepts their relationship and the two women form an electric friendship. The three are caught up in the events of the Prague Spring (1968), until the Soviet tanks crush the non-violent rebels; their illusions are shattered and their lives change forever. link
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Martha: I looked at you tonight and you weren't there... And I'm gonna howl it out, and I'm not gonna give a damn what I do and I'm gonna make the biggest god-damn explosion you've ever heard.
George: Try and I'll beat you at your own game.
Martha: Is that a threat George, huh?
George: It's a threat, Martha.
Martha: You're gonna get it, baby.
George: Be careful Martha. I'll rip you to pieces.
Martha: You're not man enough. You haven't the guts.
George: Total war.
Martha: Total.
The film's title refers to Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), an influential British feminist writer who pioneered the 'stream of consciousness' literary style while examining the psychological and emotional motives of her characters... The names of the two major characters, George and Martha, are those of the first US President and his wealthy wife - a marriage of convenience...
The shocking content - the dramatic portrayal of the destructive, sado-masochistic, and cruel battles in one couple's tempestuous, love-hate relationship during a late night (2 am) to dawn brawling encounter while victimizing another young couple - was thought to be too vitriolic, frank, explicitly blasphemous and foul-mouthed for the film screen. [It was the first American film to use the expletive 'goddamn' and 'bugger'.] The MPAA ratings board gave the film a seal of approval after Warner Bros. appealed and made a few cuts of the most extreme profanity (such as "Screw you"). It was the first film to be released with a "Suggested for Mature Audiences" warning. link
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A Note About the Diary Poll
The other movies that I chose for the diary poll are:
6. Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991).
7. On Golden Pond (1981).
8. Sense and Sensibility (1995).
9. Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
10. The Philadelphia Story (1940).
11. Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).
12. Notting Hill (1999).
13. Love Story (1970).
14. The English Patient (1996).
These movies do not necessarily represent the best of romance films ever made. If your favorite movie is not listed on the poll, please refer to these web sites:
Don't forget to take the diary poll.