Abstract
Passionate love is certainly not the only type of love that arises in cinema, but it does have a rich history across popular Hollywood that may broaden our knowledge of the representation of romance at the movies. The influence of passion goes beyond the parameters explored here and reaches a variety of texts, which raises questions about the way that conventions related to passionate love are adapted and moulded in other contexts. As Raphaelle Moine states, ‘The more familiar one is with a genre, the more one is in a position to appreciate its mutation, its evolution, and its diversity’.1 As such, in order to explore some further areas of investigation, two questions will be addressed here in closing.
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Notes
Raphaelle Moine. Cinema Genre. Malden: Blackwell, 2008: 103.
Alan Williams. ‘Is a Radical Genre Criticism Possible?’ Quarterly Review of Film Studies 9, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 124.
Rick Altman. Film/Genre. London: BFI Publishing, 1999: 206.
Rosalind Gill and Elena Herdiekerhoff. ‘Rewriting the Romance: New Feminiities in Chick Lit?’ Feminist Media Studies 6, no. 4 (2006): 497.
See Claire Hines. ‘Armed and Fabulous: Miss Congeniality’s Queer Rom-Com’ in Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema, edited by Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn, 117. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009.
See, for example, Martha Gever. Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality and Self-Invention. New York: Routledge, 2003.
See, for example, Judith Halberstam. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998: 211–213; Sarah Waters. “A Girton Girl on a Throne”: Queen Christina and Versions of Lesbianism, 19061933’ Feminist Review, no. 46 (Spring 1994): 41–60; Caroline Sheldon. ‘Lesbians and Film: Some Thoughts’ in The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics, edited by Larry Gross and James D. Woods, 301–306. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Umberto Eco. ‘Casablanca or the Clichés Are Having a Ball’ in On Signs, edited by Marshall Blonsky. 37. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985. Eco’s italics.
Harvey Roy Greenberg. ‘Cult Cinema: Casablanca — If It’s So Schmaltzy, Why Am I Weeping?’ In Screen Memories: Hollywood Cinema on the Psychoanalytic Couch, 50. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. In addition, Greenberg views Rick’s final decision to send Ilsa off with Victor as an instinctual need to be rid of her so that he can be with Renault instead (although this reading undercuts what makes the film so successful).
Catherine L. Preston. ‘Hanging on a Star: The Resurrection of the Romance Film in the 1990s’ in Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon, 227. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.
Deborah A. Moddelmog. ‘Can Romantic Comedy Be Gay? Hollywood Romance, Citizenship and Same-Sex Marriage Panic’ Journal of Film and Television 36, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 171. She states, ‘there has been a virtual explosion of films in the past fifteen years […] that might be considered gay or lesbian romantic comedies’ 164.
See, for example, Robin Wood. ‘On and Around Brokeback Mountain’ Film Quarterly 60, no. 3 (Spring 2007): 28–31.
See Georges Bataille. Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo. New York: Walker, 1962; De Rougemont. Passion and Society. Particularly 42–46.
See also Erica Todd. ‘Pepe le Moko, Cinematic Appropriations and the Passionate Love Story’ in Creative Imitations, and Appropriations: From Cinematic Adaptations to Re-makes, Research Colloquium Select Refereed Papers, edited by Erica Todd, Clement Da Gama, Ellen Pullar and Hilary Radner, 79–87. Dunedin: Centre for Research on National Identity, 2011.
Ginette Vincendeau. Stars and Stardom in French Cinema. London: Continuum, 2000: 62.
See, for example, Guy Austin. ContemporaryFrench Cinema: An Introduction. New York: St Martins Press, 1996: 9; Jean-Pierre Jeancolas. ‘Cinema des années trente: la crise et l’image de la crise’ Le Mouvement social, no. 154 (January-March 1991): 194–195; Vincendeau. Stars and Stardom in French Cinema. 62.
See also Todd. ‘Pepe le Moko, Cinematic Appropriations and the Passionate Love Story’ 83–86.
Janice Morgan. ‘In the Labyrinth: Masculine Subjectivity, Expatriation and Colonialism in Pépé le Moko’ French Review 67, no. 4 (March 1994): 639.
Maureen Turim. ‘French Melodrama: Theory of a Specific History’ Theatre Journa139, no. 3 (October 1987): 327.
Annette Kuhn and Susannah Radstone (eds). The Women’s Companion to International Film. London: Virago, 1990: 163–164.
Colin Crisp. Genre, Myth and Convention in the French Cinema 1929–1939. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002: 270–271.
Noel Burch. ‘La Garce et le bas bleu’ Lectora, no. 7 (2001): 24. ‘Contrairement aux studios hollywoodiens, des annees trente qui estiment s’adresser avant tout au public feminine […] le cinema francais pratiquera la marginalisation des femmes’. Author’s translation. As an example, Burch points out that American female stars had their images occupying publicity posters alone (without sharing the frame with any other stars), which did not occur in France (‘La Garce et le bas bleu’ 24).
Burch. ‘La Garce et le bas bleu’ 24. He suggests Danielle Darrieux and Michele Morgan as examples.
Diana Holmes. Romance and Readership in Twentieth-Century France: Love Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006: 8.
Barbara Creed. ‘Abject Desire and Basic Instinct: A Tale of Cynical Romance’ in Fatal Attractions: Re-scripting Romance in Contemporary Literature and Film, edited by Lynne Pearce and Gina Wisker, 174, 175. London: Pluto Press, 1998. Creed argues that ‘Un Chien andalou (Luis Bunuel, 1929) was one of the first to draw the connection between desire and death’ and that ‘the deadly femme fatale […] also offers the promise of taboo sexual passion’.
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Todd, E. (2014). Conclusion: The Changing Landscape of Passionate Love in Cinema. In: Passionate Love and Popular Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137295385_6
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