100 Greatest American Romantic Films - AFI

The American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California conducted their fifth polling, 100 Years...100 Passions, celebrating the centennial of American cinema, and highlighting "the complex, cinematic tales of the heart that have become an abiding part of American film history."

See also this site's informative section on the Romantic Films Genre and the Greatest Romances of All Time.

1. Casablanca (1942)
2. Gone With the Wind (1939)
3. West Side Story (1961)
4. Roman Holiday (1953)
5. An Affair to Remember (1957)
6. The Way We Were (1973)
7. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
8. It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
9. Love Story (1970)
10. City Lights (1931)
11. Annie Hall (1977)
12. My Fair Lady (1964)
13. Out of Africa (1985)
14. The African Queen (1951)
15. Wuthering Heights (1939)
16. Singin' In The Rain (1952)
17. Moonstruck (1987)
18. Vertigo (1958)
19. Ghost (1990)
20. From Here to Eternity (1953)
21. Pretty Woman (1990)
22. On Golden Pond (1981)
23. Now, Voyager (1942)
24. King Kong (1933)
25. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
26. The Lady Eve (1941)
27. The Sound of Music (1965)
28. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
29. An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
30. Swing Time (1936)
31. The King and I (1956)
32. Dark Victory (1939)
33. Camille (1937)
34. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
35. Gigi (1958)
36. Random Harvest (1942)
37. Titanic (1997)
38. It Happened One Night (1934)
39. An American in Paris (1951)
40. Ninotchka (1939)
41. Funny Girl (1968)
42. Anna Karenina (1935)
43. A Star is Born (1954)
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
45. Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
46. To Catch a Thief (1955)
47. Splendor in the Grass (1961)
48. Last Tango in Paris (1972)
49. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
50. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
51. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
52. The Graduate (1967)
53. A Place in the Sun (1951)
54. Sabrina (1954)
55. Reds (1981)
56. The English Patient (1996)
57. Two For the Road (1967)
58. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
59. Picnic (1955)
60. To Have and Have Not (1944)
61. Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
62. The Apartment (1960)
63. Sunrise (1927)
64. Marty (1955)
65. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
66. Manhattan (1979)
67. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
68. What's Up, Doc? (1972)
69. Harold and Maude (1971)
70. Sense and Sensibility (1995)
71. Way Down East (1920)
72. Roxanne (1987)
73. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
74. Woman of the Year (1942)
75. The American President (1995)
76. The Quiet Man (1952)
77. The Awful Truth (1937)
78. Coming Home (1978)
79. Jezebel (1938)
80. The Sheik (1921)
81. The Goodbye Girl (1977)
82. Witness (1985)
83. Morocco (1930)
84. Double Indemnity (1944)
85. Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)
86. Notorious (1946)
87. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
88. The Princess Bride (1987)
89. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
90. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
91. Working Girl (1988)
92. Porgy and Bess (1959)
93. Dirty Dancing (1987)
94. Body Heat (1981)
95. Lady and the Tramp (1955)
96. Barefoot in the Park (1967)
97. Grease (1978)
98. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
99. Pillow Talk (1959)
100. Jerry Maguire (1996)

Facts (and Commentary) About the 100 Greatest American Romance Films Chosen:

• The number of films from each decade: the 1920's: (3), the 1930's: (15), the 1940's: (13), the 1950's: (21), the 1960's: (14), the 1970's: (10), the 1980's: (13), and the 1990's: (11). The 50s had the greatest number of films represented. The only 1990s films to make the top 30 were Ghost (# 19) and Pretty Woman (# 21).
  
  
• The oldest film of the 100 selections was Way Down East (# 71) from 1920, and the newest was Shakespeare in Love (# 50) from 1998.
  
  
• Twenty-four films from the 1980's and 1990's (the last twenty years), almost one quarter of those selected, is too high a percentage, in this author's opinion. These more recent films (i.e., The Way We Were (1973) - # 6, Love Story (1970) - # 9, Moonstruck (1987) - # 17, and Ghost (1990) - # 19) should never have been ranked higher than any number of timeless romantic classics, such as: Now, Voyager (1942) - # 23, Camille (1937) - # 33, Random Harvest (1942) - # 36, The Philadelphia Story (1940) - # 44, Splendor in the Grass (1961) - # 47, A Place in the Sun (1951) - # 53, Sabrina (1954) - # 54, or A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) - # 67.
  
  
• Remarkably, none of the nominated films with these great romantic stars appeared in the final list: Rita Hayworth (Cover Girl (1944), Gilda (1946), and The Lady from Shanghai (1948) - unnominated), Robert Mitchum ( Out of the Past (1947)), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) - unnominated), Errol Flynn ( The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) - unnominated), Tyrone Power (The Mark of Zorro (1940) - unnominated), and Joan Fontaine ( Rebecca (1940), Jane Eyre (1943), Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) , and Ivanhoe (1952)). Also, Marilyn Monroe, Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and James Dean were missing from the top 100 film selections.
  
  
• No film made in the last 40 years was included in the top 5 selections. And only two films from the 1970s (The Way We Were (# 6) and Love Story (# 9)) made the top 10.
  
  
• Both Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn had six films on the list:
  Grant: An Affair to Remember (# 5), The Philadelphia Story (# 44), To Catch a Thief (# 46), Bringing Up Baby (# 51), The Awful Truth (# 77), and Notorious (# 86).
  Hepburn: The African Queen (# 14), On Golden Pond (# 22), The Philadelphia Story (# 44), Bringing Up Baby (# 51), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (# 58), and Woman of the Year (# 74). [NOTE: Hepburn was not a lead romantic character in # 58.]
  
  
• Both Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn appeared in five films:
  Bogart: Casablanca (# 1), The African Queen (# 14), Dark Victory (# 32) - in a very minor, non-romantic role, Sabrina (# 54), and To Have and Have Not (# 60). [NOTE: Bogart was not a lead romantic character in #32.]
  Hepburn: Roman Holiday (# 4), My Fair Lady (# 12), Sabrina (# 54), Two For the Road (# 57), and Breakfast at Tiffany's (# 61).
  
  
• There are two animated films on the list: Beauty and the Beast (# 34), and Lady and the Tramp (# 95), and one non-human love story, King Kong (# 24).
  
  
• Notice how many classic films inspired later remakes, although both films appear on the list: An Affair to Remember (# 5) inspired Sleepless in Seattle (# 45). Bringing Up Baby (# 51) inspired What's Up, Doc? (# 68). Double Indemnity (# 84) - a film noir rather than a purely romantic film or love story, inspired Body Heat (# 94). And King Kong (# 24) was reworked for Beauty and the Beast (# 34). [In fact, King Kong seems terribly out of place in the listing, especially at such a high ranking.] The nominated Cyrano De Bergerac (1950) would have been a better choice than the selected film that it inspired, Roxanne (# 72).
  
  
• The two nominated Shakespeare renderings, Romeo and Juliet (1936), and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996) were not selected, although the tale was honored by West Side Story (# 3), a modern re-telling. [Note: Franco Zefferelli's superior version, Romeo and Juliet (1968) wasn't even nominated.]
  
  
• Two directors had four films apiece on the list:
  William Wyler: Roman Holiday (# 4), Wuthering Heights (# 15), Funny Girl (# 41), and Jezebel (# 79).
  George Cukor: My Fair Lady (# 12), Camille (# 33), A Star is Born (# 43), and The Philadelphia Story (# 44).
  
  
• Four directors had three films on the list:
  Mike Nichols: The Graduate (# 52), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (# 89), and Working Girl (# 91).
  Rob Reiner: When Harry Met Sally... (# 25), The American President (# 75), and The Princess Bride (# 88).
  George Stevens: Swing Time (# 30), A Place in the Sun (# 53), and Woman of the Year (# 74).
  Billy Wilder: Sabrina (# 54), The Apartment (# 62), and Double Indemnity (# 84).
  
  
• According to the AFI, seven of the top 10 greatest love stories featured star-crossed couples that did not end up together by the film's finale, due to either terminal illness, heroic sacrifice, gang warfare, impossible circumstances, or frustration. Two films where the lovers clearly end up together, in their happy endings, include: An Affair to Remember and It's A Wonderful Life. The list contains approximately 187 fights and 260 kissing scenes, "proving that lovers quarrel, but more often than not, they make up."
  
  
• The top 100 included one prostitute love story, Pretty Woman (# 21), at least one aberrant sex love story, Last Tango in Paris (# 48), and one cradle-robbing love story, Manhattan (# 66).
  
  
• The AFI's criteria stated that the selected films must contain "significant creative and/or production elements from the United States," so one can argue about the following choices: Doctor Zhivago (# 7), Last Tango in Paris (# 48), The English Patient (# 56), Two For the Road (# 57), Sense and Sensibility (# 70), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (# 87). Or the following nominees: The Remains of the Day, Robin and Marian.
  
  
• The following films were surprisingly not chosen (from AFI's own list of nominees) to be on the list of 100 films: Broken Blossoms (1919), The Big Parade (1925) , Flesh And The Devil (1926), Seventh Heaven (1927), Tabu (1931), A Farewell To Arms (1932), Trouble In Paradise (1932), Queen Christina (1933), Of Human Bondage (1934), Alice Adams (1935), My Man Godfrey (1936), Holiday (1938), Love Affair (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Rebecca (1940), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Hold Back the Dawn (1941), That Hamilton Woman (1941), Laura (1944), The Enchanted Cottage (1945), Duel in the Sun (1946), Gilda (1946) , Humoresque (1946), Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948), Portrait of Jennie (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), The Heiress (1949), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), Love In The Afternoon (1957), Raintree County (1957), Sayonara (1957), South Pacific (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), Lolita (1962), Charade (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), A Patch Of Blue (1965), The Taming Of The Shrew (1967), Carnal Knowledge (1970), Summer Of '42 (1971), Badlands (1973), Robin And Marian (1976), Rocky (1976), Days Of Heaven (1978), Somewhere In Time (1980), About Last Night (1986), Children Of A Lesser God (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), Bull Durham (1988), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), The Little Mermaid (1989), Say Anything... (1989), Wild At Heart (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Basic Instinct (1992), The Last Of The Mohicans (1992), Groundhog Day (1993), The Remains Of The Day (1993), Before Sunrise (1995), While You Were Sleeping (1995), As Good As It Gets (1997), Chasing Amy (1997), and The End Of The Affair (1999).
  
  
• The following were glaringly absent from the nominated films list: Dodsworth (1936), Maytime (1937), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Old Maid (1939), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Lydia (1941), Meet John Doe (1941), Penny Serenade (1941), Suspicion (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), Since You Went Away (1944), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Brief Encounter (1946), To Each His Own (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), In a Lonely Place (1950), The Band Wagon (1953), On The Waterfront (1954), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Giant (1956) , North by Northwest (1959) , Romeo and Juliet (1968) , Baby, It's You (1983), Flashdance (1983), Sixteen Candles (1984), A Room With a View (1985), Something Wild (1986), Cousins (1989), Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991), The Crying Game (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), Shadowlands (1993), Untamed Heart (1993), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998), Out of Sight (1998), and Rushmore (1998). (Some of the above films were undoubtedly considered 'non-American' films and therefore ineligible.)