It’s always felt fitting that Titanic was called Titanic. It was a giant film about a giant ship and a giant disaster, and it was also massively popular and dominated pop culture for much of the final few years of the 1990s… and maybe even a bit longer. Like, Titanic still holds up and resonates, both as a great romantic film and as a remarkable disaster movie. You can’t really have one half of Titanic without the other.
Admittedly, the other movies below aren’t as ambitious, for the most part, and they’re also further away from the disaster genre than Titanic… but hey, romance plays a big role in Titanic, and in the following films. If you’re willing to define them all as romance movies, then these are a bunch that are on the same level, at the very least, as Titanic (and a few might well come close to being even better).
10
‘The Apartment’ (1960)
While it dealt with some pretty daring things by the standards of the early 1960s, you could probably still label The Apartment as a crowd-pleaser of sorts. It did indeed do pretty well at the Academy Awards the year it was competing, winning Best Picture and all, which means it can join Titanic as a romance movie that won the top prize at the Oscars, so… yay?
As for the daring stuff touched upon here, The Apartment is about a clerk working for an insurance company who lets higher-ups use his apartment as a place for them to carry out their extramarital affairs, so that’s a bit scandalous for mid-20th century cinema. Some of the comedy here is dark, too, but The Apartment is ultimately a good-hearted movie, balancing the wholesome parts with the satirical moments strikingly well.
9
‘Chungking Express’ (1994)
If you think you’re a little too cool for rom-coms, then Chungking Express is probably worth checking out, especially since this is technically an arthouse romantic comedy, and you don’t get a ton of them. Oh, and further, it’s not just romantic and comedic, because Chungking Express also works as a drama, and might well be more effective as a look at loneliness and the absence of love as it is a look at love.
But wait, there are more unconventional things here! Chungking Express abruptly stops being about one narrative, and switches to another at about the halfway point, but it works a whole lot better than you might expect. The two halves are largely distinct, but they also have similarities thematically and stylistically, with there ultimately being a little more hope at the end of the second one… sort of… depending on how you interpret the whole thing.
8
‘Brief Encounter’ (1945)
In Brief Encounter, the encounter certainly is brief, just as the ship in Titanic also lived up to its name (and the runtime of said movie lived up to such a title, too). Brief Encounter involves two people striking up a friendship, which is defined just as that, since they’re both married… but, whoops, they’re in a romance film, and so that means those feelings of friendship are inevitably going to intensify.
Once they do, things get dramatic, and also much sadder than you might expect for a relatively gentle and old film. Brief Encounter still earns its reputation as one of the great tearjerkers of its time, and you do more or less figure out why it’s going to be sad before it starts getting sad, but it’s all in the execution here, and this is one phenomenally well-executed movie.
7
‘The Handmaiden’ (2016)
Singling out the best Park Chan-wook movie is hard, since so many of his films have been generally high quality, but The Handmaiden is certainly a strong contender. It’s also likely his most romantic movie, and it has a love story while also being a thriller, all the while also making good use of its period setting (Korea in the 1930s under Japanese occupation).
The Handmaiden has a pulpy kind of premise that it handles with care and ultimately elevates.
There are two people working together to try and swindle two other people, but then one of the people doing the swindling ends up having genuine feelings for their target, and so things get complicated… but not in a clichéd or forced sort of way. The Handmaiden has a pulpy kind of premise that it handles with care and ultimately elevates, and it does a similar thing for the erotic genre, too, since it’s kind of an erotic film, but one much classier than most.
6
‘When Harry Met Sally’ (1989)
Rob Reiner was good at many things, as a filmmaker, including adapting the work of Stephen King at a point in time when maybe Brian De Palma was the only previous person to crack that code. Reiner did more than just horror (Misery) and coming-of-age (Stand by Me) King adaptations, though, with some of his best movies also counting as romance films, like The Princess Bride (sort of) and When Harry Met Sally.
When Harry Met Sally is the one that feels most worthy of being shouted out here, since The Princess Bride is more of a fantasy film, plus a bunch of other genres tackled. With When Harry Met Sally, it really is just about two people hating each other, then getting along as friends, and then thinking about whether they could – or should – become more than friends. That might all sound a bit too simple, but it’s wonderfully executed and quite perfect, for this kind of rom-com.
5
‘Before Sunrise’ (1995)
The most romantic of the Before trilogy movies would have to be the first: Before Sunrise. The premise here is wonderfully simple, since it’s about two young people who meet on a train, while traveling. Both have to go their separate ways the next morning, so they spend the day – and then the night – with each other, then realize that they might not want to treat the whole thing like a one-night st– uh, a one-day stand?
If you know it becomes a trilogy, then you know they meet again nine years later, in Before Sunset, and then nine years later, Before Midnight explores their time together after having been in a relationship for years, now dealing with middle-aged woes. But that youthful energy and hard-to-resist romance in Before Sunrise… yeah, you know, the other two might be more mature and dramatically powerful, but as a purely romantic watch, Before Sunrise is almost as good as it gets.
4
‘Vertigo’ (1958)
Though the content in Vertigo isn’t extreme, in terms of, like, what’s shown with violence or sexual activity, it is about as intense as a movie about love and desire could be on a thematic front. It’s what you’re made to feel here, rather than what you’re shown, which keeps Vertigo unsettling. In that sense, it’s a bit like Alfred Hitchcock’s later film, Psycho, which makes you think you’ve seen worse things than you have.
Vertigo makes you feel darker things than the sights it actually shows you. It doesn’t need to get grim or bloody or transgressive, because what the main character does here, because of obsession, is massively unsettling the way it’s depicted and explored. That’s a long-winded way of saying that Vertigo is one of Hitchcock’s best and darkest films, and on both counts, that’s saying quite a lot.
3
‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ (2004)
Okay, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind isn’t only here because Kate Winslet was in both it and Titanic, but maybe it helps a little. Or, at the very least, it’s just a funny thing to note. There are some massive differences between the two movies narratively, of course, though they’re both sad in their own ways, with Titanic being about a love that couldn’t be, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind being about the pain of a love that already was, and has burned out.
The conflict here comes about when Winslet and Jim Carrey’s characters both want to erase memories of the other, post-break-up, but then find they regret that decision while the whole procedure’s being undertaken. Said procedure also ensures Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind further functions as a sci-fi movie, on top of being a downer romance film and a psychological drama, so it’s got a lot on its plate, but does very much still manage to get it all down (and it feels surprisingly coherent, too, in the end).
2
‘Cinema Paradiso’ (1988)
You’ve got some hyperbole incoming, but too bad: Cinema Paradiso is the ultimate movie about movies, specifically about how one’s love of cinema can basically define a life the same way that a love with a person can. No, no one does anything weird with pieces of film or a camera, it’s not a sicko film, but the love of creating and sharing movies with people? Like, there is a love for that stuff, and a real celebration of it.
In that sense, Cinema Paradiso often feels romantic even if not all of it’s about two people falling in (and maybe out of) love, though that does factor into the whole coming-of-age tale here. The main character is shown at three stages in his life, but movies are a constant throughout, and a way for him to hold onto the past that’s now otherwise gone, just like how the films he saw in his youth allowed him to picture a limitless and exciting future.
1
‘Casablanca’ (1942)
It’s a movie iconic enough that even if you haven’t seen it, you probably know the deal regarding Casablanca. There is a guy, and he’s bitter. He has lost a woman he loved and he’s cynical and World War II is being fought and he just doesn’t care. But then the woman re-emerges in his life, yet her new partner is a genuine war hero, and someone who might be able to turn the tide of the conflict if he can escape his current predicament. And the cynical, heartbroken guy might be able to help, even if it would mean definitely losing the love of his life… again.
Which all sounds very melodramatic, and maybe it is, but Casablanca is perfect melodrama. Or, potentially, it did this kind of story so well and went on to influence countless melodramatic works in its wake. It’s one of the greatest World War II films ever, too, and the timelessness of the love story here makes it flat out – and quite simply – just one of the best movies ever made, like, of any genre.
Casablanca
- Release Date
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January 15, 1943
- Runtime
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102 minutes
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Humphrey Bogart
Rick Blaine
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