With The Awful Truth (1937), director Leo McCarey (who was also responsible for Love Affair) came up with a story line that Hollywood has plundered repeatedly. It’s one that goes back to silent clowns like Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin, but which found its greatest success in the screwball romances of the 1930s. The roots of This Mean War come from one of Hollywood’s favorite formulas, the romantic triangle. On the other hand, there’s This Means War, a romantic comedy in which love is a battle between two contestants vying for the same person. The only way Ingrid Bergman can prove her love for Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is to allow herself to be poisoned by a Nazi. The lovers in Brief Encounter both choose unhappiness to avoid hurting their families. Other, trickier devices have included car accidents ( Love Affair), an arrest for pickpocketing ( Remember the Night), brain tumors ( Dark Victory), domineering mothers ( Now Voyager), jealous wives ( In Name Only), jealous husbands ( The Postman Always Rings Twice), clowning around on a speedboat ( Magnificent Obsession), politics ( The Way We Were), ice bergs ( Titanic), and murder ( Ghost).Ī lot of the classic Hollywood romances look cruel today, with heroes and heroines martyring themselves for the sake of love. In films like 7th Heaven and Gone With the Wind, Hollywood seized upon war as a means of separating lovers. It’s a ploy that storytellers have used for centuries-not necessarily amnesia, but some outside force that prevents lovers like Romeo and Juliet, Guinevere and Lancelot, Beatrice and Dante from finding happiness.
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