Best films about love

It's the time of year when Hallmark makes all its money and florists convince you to buy the extra large bouquet. But Valentine's Day needn't be so bad. After all, there are so many films to watch: Casablanca, When Harry Met Sally, The Graduate... Once you've rewatched that marvellous trio, open the chocolates, keep a bumper back of Kleenex nearby and take a look at our shortlist of cinematic passion:

1. Brief Encounter (1945)

"This can't last, this misery can't last." Only the English could have made this tale of a chaste affair between a bored suburban housewife and a suave doctor. David Lean brings Noël Coward's play to the screen with wit and style, Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson are wonderful as the lovers, and the result is one the very finest films about the violent blindness of secret love. This is so moving, so stirring and so damn heartbreaking that even writing about it can reduce you to tears. www.amazon.co.uk

2. Lost in Translation (2003)

Sophia Coppola's best film to date. This meeting of lost souls in a Tokyo hotel is funny, touching and quietly affecting. The scene in the karaoke bar when Bill Murray's Bob sings More Than This to Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte is beautifully judged. In one exchange of looks we have the fate of this pair, torn between the pull of longing and the demands of responsibility. www.amazon.co.uk

3. Dirty Dancing (1987)

"Nobody puts baby in the corner." Emile Ardolino's low-budget film became a worldwide sensation. Great moves, wonderful songs, genuine on screen chemistry between Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, this tale of sexual awakening in a summer holiday camp for nice, well-to-do American families is irrepressible fun. Just remember to point out where your dance space is. www.amazon.co.uk

4. Harold and Maude (1971)

There aren't many that films about relationships between septuagenarian free spirits and young men struggling to make their way in the world, but this is the best of them. Hal Ashby's black comedy set the template for quirky independent American filmmaking and unlike its many imitators manages to inspire without being punchabley cute. A revelation towards the end helps to position Maude's seize-the-day attitude within a context of survival, making her joie de vivre seem positively heroic. www.amazon.co.uk

5. Annie Hall (1977)

"Most of us need the eggs." Annie Hall more or less invented modern romantic comedy. Diane Keaton excels as the eponymous Annie, the love that Woody's Alvy Singer loses and looks back on. This captures the magic of the beginning of romance, the yearning regret of its ending, and the impossibility of replicating experience. The most beguiling and bitter-sweet film that Woody Allen has made. www.amazon.co.uk

6. Gregory's Girl (1981)

Bill Forsythe gets the gawky awkwardness of teenage love so well that it's almost as painful to watch his film as it is to be an adolescent. John Gordon Sinclair has never been better as Gregory, who becomes besotted with Dorothy, the girl who takes his place as centre forward on the school football team. www.amazon.co.uk
 
5 February 2010