History of film and genre - Romance
Until 1927, motion pictures for films were produced without sound. This era is referred to as the silent era of film. To enhance the viewers' experience, silent films were commonly accompanied by live musicians in an orchestra, a theatre organ, and sometimes sound effects and even commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist. There was a non-commercial attempt to combine the motion picture with a combination of slides and synchronize the resulting moving picture with audio. The film included hand-painted slides as well as other previously used techniques. Simultaneously playing the audio while the film was being played with a projector was required. This monumental production, released in 1915, was entitled "The Photo-Drama of Creation" and lasted eight hours.The year 1900 conveniently marks the emergence of the first motion pictures that can be considered as 'films' - at this point, film-makers begin to introduce basic editing techniques and film narrative.
Romance films are love stories, or affairs of the heart that center on passion, emotion, and the romantic, affectionate involvement of the main characters (usually a leading man and lady), and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus. Oftentimes, lovers in screen romances (often romantic dramas) face obstacles and the hazards of hardship, finances, physical illness, racial or social class status, occupation, psychological restraints, or family that threaten to break their union and attainment of love. As in all romantic relationships, tensions of day-to-day life, temptations (of infidelity), and differences in compatibility enter into the plots of romantic films.
In mid-June 2002, the AFI selected America's "100 Greatest Love Stories" - these 100 films were "the complex, cinematic tales of the heart that have become an abiding part of American film history.
The Earliest Romance Films:
- The Lon Chaney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) - a tragic tale of love between a deformed bellringer named Quasimodo and gypsy dancer Esmeralda (Patsy Ruth Miller).
Alexandre Dumas' famous story of a Parisian courtesan, Camille (1915), with Clara Kimball Young, was remade in the silent era in 1917 (with Theda Bara), in 1921 (with Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino), and in 1927 (with Norma Talmadge).
D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) was subtitled, "Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages," and in one of its four stories featured unrequited love between animal skin-wearing, onion-eating Mountain Girl (Constance Talmadge) and Babylonian Prince Belshazzar (Alfred Paget).
Famous Screen Couples: Garbo and Gilbert:
Two of the earliest romantic (or quasi-erotic) screen couples in the silent era were the seductively-beautiful, beguiling and bewitching Greta Garbo and her handsome screen counterpart John Gilbert, two MGM stars who first appeared together in Flesh and the Devil (1926) with three artistically-lit extended sensual love scenes. Reportedly, they had Hollywood's first French (open-mouthed) kiss on screen in a shadowy garden scene, and the first-ever horizontal-position kisses in an American film. Garbo and Gilbert continued to carry on a passionate romance both on- and off-screen. They also went on to make a loose adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina titled Love (1927). The film's original title was changed from Heat, due to the awkward marketing that would have developed (Gilbert and Garbo in 'Heat'). Soon after, they were paired in MGM's melodramatic silent film A Woman of Affairs (1928), the story of a tragic love affair for a fallen woman. [Later, Garbo's three greatest romantic films were Queen Christina (1933), Camille (1936) with the luminous actress as a dying Parisian courtesan in love with a young nobleman (Robert Taylor), and Ninotchka (1939).
Romantic Pairings in the 80s:
The ruinous, forbidden affair of a 19th century Victorian Englishwoman (Meryl Streep) with a French Lieutenant and a contemporary gentleman (Jeremy Irons) in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)
The most unlikely bond between a stranded alien and a young boy (Henry Thomas) in Spielberg's E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - with ET's heart-warming promise at its finale: "I'll be right here."
The mysterious romance The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), with Nathalie Baye and Gerard Depardieu as a reunited couple who - after a period of war - may/may not be husband and wife.
The first ever romance movie
The Kiss (also known as The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss and The Widow Jones) is an 1896, actuality, and was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public. The film is around 47 seconds long, and depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical, The Widow Jones.
The film was directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison. At the time Edison was working at the Black Maria studios in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1999 the short was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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