love story movie review 1970

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I read Love Story one morning in about fourteen minutes flat, out of simple curiosity. I wanted to discover why five and a half million people had actually bought it. I wasn't successful. I was so put off by Erich Segal's writing style, in fact, that I hardly wanted to see the movie at all. Segal's prose style is so revoltingly coy -- sort of a cross between a parody of Hemingway and the instructions on a soup can -- that his story is fatally infected.

The fact is, however, that the film of Love Story is infinitely better than the book. I think it has something to do with the quiet taste of Arthur Hiller , its director, who has put in all the things that Segal thought he was being clever to leave out. Things like color, character, personality, detail, and background. The interesting thing is that Hiller has saved the movie without substantially changing anything in the book. Both the screenplay and the novel were written at the same time, I understand, and if you've read the book, you've essentially read the screenplay. Nothing much is changed except the last meeting between Oliver and his father; Hiller felt the movie should end with the boy alone, and he was right. Otherwise, he's used Segal's situations and dialogue throughout.

But the Segal characters, on paper, were so devoid of any personality that they might actually have been transparent. Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal , who play the lovers on film, bring them to life in a way the novel didn't even attempt. They do it simply by being there, and having personalities.

The story by now is so well-known that there's no point in summarizing it for you. I would like to consider, however, the implications of "Love Story" as a three-, four-or five-handkerchief movie, a movie that wants viewers to cry at the end. Is this an unworthy purpose? Does the movie become unworthy, as Newsweek thought it did, simply because it has been mechanically contrived to tell us a beautiful, tragic tale? I don't think so. There's nothing contemptible about being moved to joy by a musical, to terror by a thriller, to excitement by a Western. Why shouldn't we get a little misty during a story about young lovers separated by death?

Hiller earns our emotional response because of the way he's directed the movie. The Segal book was so patently contrived to force those tears, and moved toward that object with such humorless determination, that it must have actually disgusted a lot of readers. The movie is mostly about life, however, and not death. And because Hiller makes the lovers into individuals, of course we're moved by the film's conclusion. Why not?

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Screen: Perfection and a 'Love Story':Erich Segal's Romantic Tale Begins Run

By Vincent Canby

• Dec. 18, 1970

What can you say about a movie about a 25-year-old girl who died?That it is beautiful. And romantic. That it contains a fantasy for just about everyone, perhaps with the exception of Herbert Marcuse. That it looks to be clean and pure and without artifice, even though it is possibly as sophisticated as any commercial American movie ever made. That my admiration for the mechanics of it slops over into a real admiration for the movie itself.I'm talking, of course, about "Love Story," the movie from which Erich Segal extracted his best-selling non-novel, mostly, it seems, by appending "she said's" and "I said's" and an occasional "I remonstrated" to the dialogue in his original screenplay.The film, which opened yesterday at the Loew's State I and Tower East Theaters, is about a love affair so perfect that even the death that terminates it becomes a symbol of its perfection.When, at the end, Jenny (née Cavilleri), the self-styled social zero from Cranston, R. I., the daughter of an Italian baker, is dying of a carefully unidentified blood disease in the arms of her husband, Oliver Barrett 4th, the preppie millionaire from Boston, there is nothing to disfigure love, or faith, or even the complexion. It's as if she were suffering from some kind of vaguely unpleasant Elizabeth Arden treatment. Jenny doesn't die. She just slips away in beauty.The knowledge that Jenny will—how should I put it—disappear not only gives the movie its shape (it is told in flashback), but it also endows everything — from a snowball fight in the Harvard Yard to a confrontation with snob parents in Ispwich—with an intensity that is no less sweet for being fraudulent.Curiously, the novel, which I found almost unreadable (I think it might be as readily absorbed if kept under one's pillow), plays very well as a movie, principally, I suspect because Jenny is not really Jenny but Ali MacGraw, a kind of all-American, Radcliffe madonna figure, and Oliver Barrett 4th is really Ryan O'Neal, an intense, sensitive young man whose handsomeness has a sort of crookedness to it that keeps him from being a threat to male members of the audience. They are both lovely.Then, too, Arthur Hiller, the director, has framed what is essentially a two-character story of undergraduate love with such seeming simplicity that nothing confuses the basic situation. He also associates his film and his characters with all of the good things in life. Jenny and Oliver fall in love in the snow (snow, clean and pure, is very important in the movie.) They court in front of libraries, and they make love (nothing too explicit mind you) while doing homework.When Jenny swears, she fondly uses a four-letter word that was shocking in the fifties, but that even mid-American matrons have heard now. When Oliver graduates from law school, he takes a job with an old, extremely respectable, New York law firm, but it's one that specializes in civil-rights cases. When Jenny is growing weaker, she can't remember the Mozart Köchel listings she once knew. Jenny and Oliver have (middle) class."Love Story" not only revives a kind of movie fiction that I'd thought vanished, it also revives the rich, WASP movie hero who rebels, but not too drastically, and it brings back the kind of wonderful movie aphorism that persists in saying nothing when it tries to say the most ("love means never having to say you're sorry").Francis Lai's background score, mixes Bach and Mozart and Handel with Lai, and resolutely avoids rock. Although Jenny does disappear at the end, everyone in the audience can take heart in identification—the ladies, because they can see how much will be missed, and the gentlemen, who will have the honor of being abandoned by one of fiction's most blessed females. I might add that Oliver, though distraught, is also very rich, and he has promised Jenny to be a merry widower.I can't remember any movie of such comparable high-style, kitsch since Leo McCarey's "Love Affair" (1939) and his 1957 remake, "An Affair to Remember." The only really depressing thing about "Love Story" is the thought of all of the terrible imitations that will inevitably follow it.

The CastLOVE STORY, directed by Arthur Hiller; written by Erich Eegal; director of photography, Dick Kratina; music by Francis Lai; produced by Howard G. Minsky; released by Paramout Pictures. At Loew's State I, Broadway and 45th Street, and Tower East Theater, Third Avenue and 72d Street. Running time: 100 minutes. (The Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code and Rating Administration classifies this film: "GP—all ages admitted, parental guidance suggested.")Jenny Cavilleri . . . . . Ali MacGrawOliver Barrett 4th . . . . . Ryan O'NealOliver Barrett 3d . . . . . Ray MillandMrs. Oliver Barrett 3d . . . . . Katherine BalfourPhil Cavilleri . . . . . John MarleyDean Thompson . . . . . Russell NypeDr. Shapely . . . . . Sydney WalkerDr. Addison . . . . . Robert Modica

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Mega-hit of the 1970s isn't as powerful today.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Although Jennifer supports Oliver in law school, s

A love scene.

Jennifer's dialogue is peppered with mild expl

Parents need to know that some of the dialogue is peppered with mild expletives. Although Jennifer supports Oliver in law school, she promptly gives up her musical aspirations to be a housewife as soon as he finds a job.

Positive Messages

Although Jennifer supports Oliver in law school, she promptly gives up her musical aspirations to be a housewife as soon as he finds a job. Modern audiences may find the gender roles out of sync with the times.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Jennifer's dialogue is peppered with mild expletives.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that some of the dialogue is peppered with mild expletives. Although Jennifer supports Oliver in law school, she promptly gives up her musical aspirations to be a housewife as soon as he finds a job. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 2 parent reviews

A bit of an empty love story...

What's the story.

Radcliffe music major Jennifer Cavilleri (Ali McGraw) and Harvard man Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal) fall in love despite the differences in their backgrounds. Oliver is from an affluent WASP family while Jennifer grew up in her father's bakery in Rhode Island. Oliver is destined for Harvard Law School, while Jennifer's planning to study piano in Paris, but all of that changes when they announce their engagement. Unwilling to give in to his father's demand that they postpone their marriage, Oliver is cut off without a penny. Jennifer gives up music and takes a job as a teacher to support him while he's in law school. Her investment pays off when he graduates with honors and finds a well-paying job in New York. When Jennifer tries unsuccessfully to get pregnant, she's discovered to be terminally ill. She and Oliver spend their last days savoring every moment together.

Is It Any Good?

Although this corny reworking of Romeo and Juliet is almost saved by Ryan O'Neal's quietly smoldering charm, young viewers may be quick to hit the eject button. Jennifer's constant putdowns and continual sarcasm are so irritating that they undermine the plausibility of Oliver's love for her. Jennifer's illness and death is designed to evoke strong emotions, but viewers who can't get past her abrasive personality may have trouble summoning sympathy. However, sensitive teens may share in Oliver's intense feelings of loss and sadness.

Released in 1970, LOVE STORY was adapted from Erich Segal's best-selling novel and was equally popular onscreen. But the highly romanticized handling of Jennifer's death makes it unlikely to appeal to viewers today. Instead, audiences may cringe when they hear the famous line, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." These words were ubiquitous when this tearjerker was released, but their message hasn't aged particularly well.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how death and dying are portrayed in films. Was Jennifer's death portrayed realistically? Families who have experienced the dying and death of family member might compare that to the movie. Why do movie makers make death and dying either seem idyllic, as in this case, or gruesome, as in horror movies? Would you like to see movies that portray death realistically? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 16, 1970
• On DVD or streaming : April 24, 2001
• Cast : Ali MacGraw , Ryan O'Neal , Ray Milland
• Director : Arthur Hiller
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Romance
• Topics : Book Characters
• Run time : 100 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : language and a love scene
• Last updated : March 5, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Love stories: classic romance tales, related topics.

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Love Story Reviews

Some love stories just don't hold up well

Full Review | Feb 28, 2024

The production values here are not very strong as the imagery is bland and unmemorable, the costumes don’t tell you anything about the characters and the production designers seemingly forgot what it was like to be a university student.

Full Review | Feb 9, 2023

It wears its heart on its sleeve and makes no apologies (remember what love means ...), and more than anything that is what audiences responded to then and continue to respond to today.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 8, 2021

The impact of Love Story cannot be overstated. Yet despite its touchstone status, it's not a particularly good film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 12, 2021

Love Story certainly isn't the first or the last romantic drama that will grace the big screen but it has that intangible 'it' quality that makes it one of the best.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 5, 2021

A genuinely moving love story with vivid characters in a singularly cinematic romance.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Aug 30, 2020

Love Story is a three-handkerchief movie if you are hard boiled. Otherwise it rates six hankies.

Full Review | Apr 5, 2019

Ryan O'Neal gives the character of the neon scion a warmth and vulnerability entirely missing from the bestseller.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2018

MacGraw never could act her way out of a paper bag, but she dies very prettily, cuing Oscar winning violins and O'Neal's Big Scene.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 30, 2012

If you're going to make a serious tearjerker, somebody's got to die. It's in the handbook of romantic platitudes.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Jan 24, 2012

Mega-hit of the 1970s is a real cringer today.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2011

Guilty pleasure par excellence: How did this poorly-acted schmaltzy romantic melodrama ever get Best Picture Oscar nomination? Arthur Hiller's direction is inept, bringing out the novel's weaknesses instead of strengths.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Sep 23, 2008

By the time O'Neal gets around to intoning the famous tag line, you'll be so sick of hearing Francis Lai's love theme that you'll want to strangle the projectionist.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 19, 2007

Love Story is an excellent film.

Full Review | Dec 19, 2007

Cornball classic weeper is at least true to its book basis.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 10, 2006

Dated before it was made.

Full Review | Feb 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 10, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 22, 2005

The only really depressing thing about Love Story is the thought of all of the terrible imitations that will inevitably follow it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 9, 2005

Hiller earns our emotional response because of the way he's directed the movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 23, 2004

Minnesota's Local Source for Film Music and Reviews

Review: Love Story (1970)

Love story (1970).

Directed by: Arthur Hiller

Premise: College students (Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal) from different socioeconomic backgrounds fall in love.

What Works: The success of a movie romance will usually depend on two things. First, the couple must be believable and the viewer must want to see them together. This is where chemistry, as vague a term as any in film criticism, is critical and cinematic romances may be doomed before they even begin because of miscasting. Second, the filmmaker must move the viewer by tapping into the passion that we want to experience but they mustn’t do it so obviously that the machinations of the movie become plain. This is when romance becomes sentimentality and it turns off a viewer like a false note in a familiar piece of music. Love Story is one of the most successful cinematic romances ever made because it succeeds in both of those criterions. The movie presents the viewer with a pair of lovers played by Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal and they are among the most watchable and memorable of on-screen couples. The two are pleasing enough on the eye but they also possess a liveliness that is unusual not only in movies but in real life romances as well. Part of what viewers seek in a romantic story is an idealized version of courtship and partnership and the couple played by MacGraw and O’Neal embody that ideal. They are the couple that viewers would want to double date with and they represent the vibrant relationship that many of us desire. This is partly achieved through the film’s snappy dialogue and MacGraw in particular gets a lot of clever and caustic lines. Yet, as snarky as the characters of Love Story can be, they are not obnoxious and the film does not come across as cynical or too cool for its own good. That is one of the extraordinary elements of the film. Love Story was released in 1970 but the picture is strikingly contemporary and yet many of today’s filmmakers would do well to learn from the subtle successes of this film. The wit of the characters makes them smart but they are not so glib as to be alienating and the filmmakers never give the impression of being above the material. Love Story also comes across as contemporary in its regard for sexuality, romance, and religion but here too the filmmakers demonstrate a great degree of subtlety. The couple is not traditional but the movie does not belittle tradition and it makes an effort to make clear that the couple is in love, not above it. In that respect, Love Story is very much a picture of its time; the film captures the optimism of the counter cultural generation but that optimism crashes headfirst into reality and that tension speaks to viewers of any age.

What Doesn’t: In terms of its filmmaking style, Love Story is clearly a movie of the early 1970s. This was a time of newfound creativity that produced many of Hollywood’s greatest works but it was also a period of transition, particularly in acting as the stagy performances of classic Hollywood movies gave way to the naturalistic style of contemporary films. The movie noticeably shifts between these styles from scene to scene, with the actors sometimes playing it subtly but at other times performing more like they are in a theater. The other element of Love Story that comes across as off-key is the subplot between Ryan O’Neal’s character and his father, played by Ray Milland. The conflict between the two men is sometimes forced and the final moments of the movie pass up an opportunity to give their narrative a satisfying closure.

DVD extras: Featurette.

Bottom Line: Love Story is a nearly perfect movie romance. It provides the viewer with an engaging couple that possess a vibrant affection and the filmmakers put the audience through exactly the kind of emotional wringer that viewers seek from a movie of this kind.

Episode: #478 (February 16, 2014)

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Love Story (1970): A Timeless Tale of Love and Loss

• December 9, 2023

Love Story is a 1970 American romantic drama film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. It tells the story of Oliver Barrett IV, a wealthy Harvard University student, and Jenny Cavilleri, a working-class Radcliffe College student, who fall deeply in love despite their contrasting backgrounds.

Oliver, heir to a prominent family fortune, is expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and attend law school. He plays hockey for the university team and leads a privileged life. Jenny, on the other hand, comes from a modest background and works several part-time jobs to support herself while pursuing her passion for music.

Their paths cross at a Harvard-Radcliffe ice hockey game, and they are immediately drawn to each other. Despite their differences, they fall madly in love and defy societal expectations by getting married. Oliver’s disapproving father disinherits him, forcing the young couple to start their new life together on their own.

Through witty banter, shared dreams, and unwavering support for each other, Oliver and Jenny create a world of their own. They rent a small apartment in New York City, where Oliver lands a job at a law firm. Their love seems to conquer all, but their happiness is tragically short-lived.

Jenny is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and their once bright future takes a devastating turn. Oliver dedicates himself to caring for Jenny, cherishing every remaining moment they have together. Faced with mortality and the inevitable, their love shines even brighter, reminding the audience of its strength and resilience.

Love Story is not just a love story; it is a poignant and heartbreaking tale of loss and the enduring power of love. The film’s emotional impact is further amplified by Francis Lai’s unforgettable score, which includes the iconic song “Love Story,” a timeless ballad that perfectly captures the essence of the film.

The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $100 million at the box office and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1970. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor and Actress for O’Neal and MacGraw.

Love Story remains a beloved classic, capturing the hearts of audiences for generations. It reminds us to cherish every moment, to embrace love in all its forms, and to find beauty even in the face of tragedy.

Here are some of the key themes explored in the film:

• Love conquers all: Despite their social and economic differences, Oliver and Jenny’s love proves to be unyielding and enduring. • The importance of family and support:  While Oliver’s family rejects him, Jenny’s love and support provide him with strength and resilience. • Facing mortality:  The film tackles the difficult subject of terminal illness and the impact it has on individuals and their loved ones. • Living life to the fullest:  Despite knowing her time is limited, Jenny embraces life with courage and joy, inspiring others to do the same. • The power of memory and love:  Even after Jenny’s passing, Oliver finds solace in the memories they shared and the love that continues to bind them together.

by Gary Arnold The Washington Post , 1970

When it comes to a movie like Love Story, criticism and immunology necessarily overlap. It was quite apparent from the clearing of throats and muffling of sobs and blowing of noses going on at the preview showing that if one resists Love Story, one probably resists it in vain. Many people—perhaps a clear majority of the human race—are not just willing to be sapped by this sappy mate­rial; they’re also willing to grab the emotional blackjack out of the hands of writer Erich Segal, director Arthur Hiller, composer Fran­cis Lai and friends and happily sap themselves. Indeed, I’m not sure the material would work unless people were predisposed to swallow it whole and helped wash it down with lots of self-pity.

For the record, one notes that Love Story has been grossly successful in print both here and abroad and that the film version should be more grossly successful yet. Curiously, the story began as a movie scenario and was then recast as a wafer-thin, best-selling novel. This genesis may cause problems of categorization for the Motion Picture Academy, unless screenwriters have enough self-respect to decline blessing the script with an Oscar nomination at all.

Once one has conceded Love Story its popularity and profits, however, the diagnosis is gloomy. I found this one of the most thoroughly resistible sentimental movies I’d ever seen. And I mean resistible on commonplace grounds. There is scarcely a character or situation or line in the story that rings true, that suggests real sim­plicity or generosity of feeling, a sentiment or emotion honestly experienced and expressed. Moreover, the film simply compares poorly with countless decently or indecently sentimental movies one recalls with affection.

Having been susceptible to Camille or Dark Victory or Jezebel or Goodbye, Mr. Chips or Lassie Come Home or The Rainmaker or Tiger Bay or Breakfast at Tiffany’s and heaven knows what else doesn’t necessarily make one ready for Love Story. In fact, really vivid memories may be a hindrance, since they’d illustrate how elementary Segal & Co. are at the tearjerker game, how dependent they are upon our capacity for self-hypnosis.

What this means, of course, is that in rejecting Love Story one is essentially rejecting the side of people that makes them fall for it, or even want to fall for it. But, under the circumstances, what else can one do? This material tries to establish a very unhealthy relationship with our most morbid apprehensions and regrets, then flat­ters us for feeling susceptible. It’s a smug tearjerker, worth resisting on principle, because it’s been so deliberately designed as a mass-cultural bromide, a reactionary bridge over all the troubled political and artistic waters of the last few years, leading backward and go­ing nowhere.

There is Dick Shawn on the Tonight Show , subbing for Johnny Carson and congratulating Erich Segal on the success of his pint-sized powerhouse of a scenario-novella. Shawn remarks how re­freshing he found the book to be and hopes, like thousands of others, no doubt, that it’s a great trend-turner and trend-setter, the sort of entertainment we’ll all be “getting back to.” Segal accepts the accolades humbly but declines to make any far-reaching specu­lations about the drift of American morals and letters.

The situation would be laughable if it didn’t have such perni­cious implications. The book was, of course, widely promoted as an antidote to the “sort of thing” that “went too far,” particularly Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. Even if one were prepared to disapprove of Roth, the maudlin thing Segal is getting back to has never been a vital or wholesome part of American literature. Love Story is economy-sized Fannie Ilurst written in economy-sized Er­nest Ilcmingwaycse. Ironically, college romance is a Roth spe­cialty, and his accounts of it—in both Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy —expose the shallowness of Segal’s material.

Or.e can imagine a new Rip Van Winkle, asleep for the past generation, waking and entering a theater playing Love Story. Ex­cept for details—clothes, hairstyles, the fact that Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker didn’t quite look like themselves and that Rav Milland had somehow gone old and bald—he would probably feel right at home.

Segal himself must have mixed feelings about getting away with this smarmy, anachronistic piece of idealization. There’s something rather anomalous and tragicomic about a professor of classical literature becoming a mass-cultural hero, adored for that book that doesn’t take any effort to read and doesn’t assault you with sex, sex, sex. Surely it’s occurred to him that Plautus would have gone for Portnoy’s Complaint.

One infers the ambivalence from the writing, which is surpris­ingly awkward. It was a chore to get beyond the following sentence on page 2: “I ambled over to the reserve desk to get one of the tomes that would bail me out on the morrow.” Huh?

Segal drops this unwieldy sportive—if that’s what it is—diction for his first-person narrator after a while, but the falsely snappy note remains in the dialogue:

“What the hell makes you so smart?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t go for coffee with you,” she answered.

“Listen—I wouldn’t ask you.”

“That,” she replied, “is what makes you stupid.”

To put it mildly, this is not particularly witty or winning repar­tee, and characters who speak it sound rather subhuman. “Listen—I wouldn’t ask you” also sounds a bit echt Jewish for the hero, a Harvard WASP named Oliver Barrett IV, and the heroine, an Ital­ian-Catholic Radcliffe girl, often repeats this locution. Is it inten­tional, accidental, mistaken, gratuitous? Who knows? I doubt if Segal himself does. What he’s probably done is simply indulge an indiscriminate personal taste in kitsch, schmaltz, and whimsical-whamsical banter. He doesn’t get it quite right, but if the rest of us are similar softies it won’t matter. Finally, even the lousy emotional punch lines, like the heroine’s great, dubious platitude, “Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry,” will touch the heart while they insult the ear and the brain.

The story’s basic sentimental notion is derived from Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Ollie Barrett, the emotionally buttoned-up rich boy, is humanized by his marriage to Jenny Cavilleri, the warm, gay, mag­nanimous poor girl. The denouement partakes a little more of Camille. Jenny dies of leukemia, but her death results in the recon­ciliation of Ollie and his estranged Brahmin father.

At least this was the way it was supposed to work in print. There were stumbling blocks—the synthetic nature of the writing, the bathos, and, largest of all, a nauseating proportion of masochism. It was extremely distasteful to hear the smart little heroine getting the last aphoristic-shrewish word on her husband from first ac­quaintance to last gasp. Much of the book’s appeal depends upon our sharing the hero’s unattractive and life-denying notion that he was unworthy of this brave, noble, beautiful, understanding crea­ture. Scenes like the following inspire one to question her divinity:

“It’s nobody’s fault, you preppie bastard,” she was saying. “Would you please stop blaming yourself!”

I wanted to keep looking at her because I wanted to never take my eyes from her, but still I had to lower my eyes. I was so ashamed that even now Jenny was reading my mind so perfectly.

“Screw Paris,” she said suddenly.

“Screw Paris and music and all the crap you think you stole from me. I don’t care, you sonovabitch. Can’t you believe that?”

“No,” I answered truthfully.

“Then get the hell out of here,” she said. “I don’t want you at my goddamn deathbed.”

The Camille you love to hate?

The movie, as one would expect, is virtually word for word from the original “book,” and Arthur Hiller’s direction—now clumsy, now obvious—is syntactically faithful to the author’s prose. How­ever, there are some new stumbling blocks, which will require re­doubled efforts at ignoring reality and surrendering to fantasy on the part of customers who want their money’s worth.

To get away with a role like Jenny on screen, an actress doesn’t need great talent. It will be enough if she simply looks beautiful and warm. For some reason, Ali MacGraw has been allowed to “interpret” the role, and she plays it as superciliously as the hero­ine’s worst lines read. It’s a performance that only makes sense if one decides that it’s satirical—maybe a Wellesley girl’s revenge on snotty-superior Radcliffe girls.

Miss MacGraw wears a permanently smug expression and fails to temper the vain, emotionally bullying tone of the dialogue. I realize there are people who still find her adorable, but I thought it one of the most effectively hateful characterizations I’d ever seen. When this little angel breathed her last, remorse and I were light-years apart. The performance is so wrongheaded that the emotional balance of the material turns upside-down: one prefers Oli­ver, in the amiable, steady presence of Ryan O’Neal, to Jenny.

Because Miss MacGraw is coming on shallow and disagreeable, viewers will almost have to substitute real loved ones or themselves for “the beautiful girl now dead.” The film’s one stroke of genius is to make this imaginative substitution more likely by building in longeurs.

There are lots and lots of longeurs in the final reel. Ryan O’Neal, stricken by the news of his beloved’s incurable illness, is discovered sleepwalking his way along Fifth Avenue, while Francis Lai’s som­berly schmaltzy, fake-Chopin piano score encourages us to get way down in the mopey spirit of things. If you’re sufficiently detached, you may feel a bit cheated: why not real Chopin, or red Rachman­inoff. instead of these cheesy imitations? Still, this is beside the point: people do begin to snivel in precisely the way the movie begs them to.

It’s interesting to note, finally, that the movie drops the reconcil­iation scene between Oliver and his father (played by Milland— and it’s quite disconcerting to see him aged and baldish). Instead, Oliver leaves poor old Dad with the same morally superior egg-on-the-face that Jenny used to dish out to him. One is compelled to conclude that this truly stupefying lack of generosity is the Great Lesson of Their Love. Real sweeties, these two.

Presumably, the new ending is intended to feed the resentments and moral vanity of the young audience. In a work this flagrant to begin with, maybe anything goes, but if I were the film makers I’d shoot the original conciliatory ending and give audiences a choice. Ideally, one would have a twin theater and get the kids for the version where Oliver is a snob and parents for the version where Oliver cries in his father’s arms. It’s one of the few messy but profitable possibilities the men responsible for this jerker seem to neglect.

by Arthur Knight Saturday Review

In these days when the old movie formula seems to have been reduced to boy meets girl, boy gets girl, period, there is something not only refreshing but downright exhilarating about Love Story, a frankly sentimental, frankly tear-jerking, four-handkerchief picture. It reminds us, suddenly, of what movies once were all about: the kind of unabashed emotional involvement with beauti­ful, admirable characters whose triumphs and woes we shared so completely that we laughed and wept and cowered helplessly in our chairs, then left the theater still in the thrall of a catharsis that was all the more joyous because it reaffirmed our essential humanity. If we could respond so readily to those shadows, perhaps we could also respond to real people.

Since Erich Segal’s brief novel (developed, incidentally, from his screenplay, and not, as is customary, the other way around) has been a runaway best seller since publication, presumably just about everyone in America knows that it is a combination of Cinderella and Iloratio Alger, transplanted to Radcliffe and Harvard, and given the twist of an unhappy ending. Cinderella dies of an un­specified but incurable disease, and nobody lives happily ever after. What even the most ardent devotee of the novel will be unpre­pared for, however, is the emotional intensity achieved by its young stars, Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal, by Francis Lai’s affecting and often inventive score, and by Arthur Hiller’s unobtrusive yet probing direction.

While Miss MacGraw and the engagingly handsome O’Neal could probably carry the picture on their charm alone, Hiller never makes this necessary. He lets their relationship—he the scion of a wealthy Boston family, she the daughter of a humble Italian baker —unfold and enfold through innumerable small, affecting details. There is O’Neal’s original hostility to a “Radcliffe bitch,” and the girl’s self-protective scoffing despite her obvious attraction to the young man. There is a delightful sequence of horseplay in the snow and, for once, a serious premarital discussion of how marriage might affect their respective careers. The visits to the prospective in­laws are beautifully managed, particularly in the choice of flash­backs to highlight the girl’s reception into the chilly bosom of the Brahmin family.

Best of all is a quarrel that flares up between the newlyweds when the girl tries vainly to effect a reconciliation between her husband and his estranged father. The crosscurrent of emotions in each of them is extraordinarily visible with a minimum of words; when she runs out of the apartment, it leads to a prolonged search through the corridors of a music conservatory (she was a music student) ingeniously orchestrated by Lai as O’Neal dashes from one rehearsal room to the next. When he at last finds her, shiver­ing on the porch of their apartment building, he is abject with apologies. “Love,” she tells him, “means never having to say you’re sorry.” It is a small enough nugget of wisdom to carry away from a picture, but it is embedded in such a flow of emotion that one grasps at it as at a profound truth.

For Ali MacGraw, Love Story merely confirms what Goodbye, Columbus earlier suggested—that, properly handled, she is one of the most attractive and capable young actresses around. For Ryan O’Neal, who has been floundering in a succession of second-rate pictures, this film should mean instant stardom. No less impressive are John Marley and Ray Milland in the relatively minor roles of the two fathers. But when an entire cast is as consistently good as this one is, it is generally because of the director, and Arthur Hiller, who demonstrated that he could tap the emotions in last year’s Popi, here has struck the mother lode. I predict that, like Airport, Love Story is going to bring back to the theaters large sections of that “lost audience” that hasn’t gone to a movie in years.

by Philip T. Hartung Commonweal

Not having read Erich Segal’s novel, Love Story, I came on the movie cold. In spite of the tears one is supposed to shed at this contrived film, I left it—still cold. Since the picture opens with the girl’s funeral and then consists of a long flashback showing the boy and girl meeting, dating, falling in love, sleeping together, getting married (in a sort of do-it-yourself ceremony), enjoying life in an elegant New York apartment, it comes as no surprise that the girl dies. What did surprise me, however, is the girl’s continued use of foul language, particularly the popular four-letter word for ordure. It seems to me that if scriptwriter Segal wanted to indicate how mod this girl is, he could have let her use the word once or twice. But Ali MacGraw uses it again and again—even in the classroom where she is teaching youngsters. So, long before this Jenny dies, I was tired of her aggressive modishness. As the young man from the very wealthy Boston family, Ryan O’Neal is fine. So are the music and good photography.

Screen: Perfection and a ‘Love Story’: Erich Segal’s Romantic Tale Begins Run

by Vincent Canby The New York Times , December 18, 1970

What can you say about a movie about a 25-year-old girl who died? That it is beautiful. And romantic. That it contains a fantasy for just about everyone, perhaps with the exception of Herbert Marcuse. That it looks to be clean and pure and without artifice, even though it is possibly as sophisticated as any commercial American movie ever made. That my admiration for the mechanics of it slops over into a real admiration for the movie itself. I’m talking, of course, about Love Story , the movie from which Erich Segal extracted his best-selling non-novel, mostly, it seems, by appending “she said’s” and “I said’s” and an occasional “I remonstrated” to the dialogue in his original screenplay. The film, which opened yesterday at the Loew’s State I and Tower East Theaters, is about a love affair so perfect that even the death that terminates it becomes a symbol of its perfection. When, at the end, Jenny (née Cavilleri), the self-styled social zero from Cranston, R. I., the daughter of an Italian baker, is dying of a carefully unidentified blood disease in the arms of her husband, Oliver Barrett 4th, the preppie millionaire from Boston, there is nothing to disfigure love, or faith, or even the complexion. It’s as if she were suffering from some kind of vaguely unpleasant Elizabeth Arden treatment. Jenny doesn’t die. She just slips away in beauty. The knowledge that Jenny will—how should I put it—disappear not only gives the movie its shape (it is told in flashback), but it also endows everything—from a snowball fight in the Harvard Yard to a confrontation with snob parents in Ispwich—with an intensity that is no less sweet for being fraudulent. Curiously, the novel, which I found almost unreadable (I think it might be as readily absorbed if kept under one’s pillow), plays very well as a movie, principally, I suspect because Jenny is not really Jenny but Ali MacGraw, a kind of all-American, Radcliffe madonna figure, and Oliver Barrett 4th is really Ryan O’Neal, an intense, sensitive young man whose handsomeness has a sort of crookedness to it that keeps him from being a threat to male members of the audience. They are both lovely. Then, too, Arthur Hiller, the director, has framed what is essentially a two-character story of undergraduate love with such seeming simplicity that nothing confuses the basic situation. He also associates his film and his characters with all of the good things in life. Jenny and Oliver fall in love in the snow (snow, clean and pure, is very important in the movie.) They court in front of libraries, and they make love (nothing too explicit mind you) while doing homework. When Jenny swears, she fondly uses a four-letter word that was shocking in the fifties, but that even mid-American matrons have heard now. When Oliver graduates from law school, he takes a job with an old, extremely respectable, New York law firm, but it’s one that specializes in civil-rights cases. When Jenny is growing weaker, she can’t remember the Mozart Köchel listings she once knew. Jenny and Oliver have (middle) class. Love Story not only revives a kind of movie fiction that I’d thought vanished, it also revives the rich, WASP movie hero who rebels, but not too drastically, and it brings back the kind of wonderful movie aphorism that persists in saying nothing when it tries to say the most (“love means never having to say you’re sorry”). Francis Lai’s background score, mixes Bach and Mozart and Handel with Lai, and resolutely avoids rock. Although Jenny does disappear at the end, everyone in the audience can take heart in identification—the ladies, because they can see how much will be missed, and the gentlemen, who will have the honor of being abandoned by one of fiction’s most blessed females. I might add that Oliver, though distraught, is also very rich, and he has promised Jenny to be a merry widower. I can’t remember any movie of such comparable high-style, kitsch since Leo McCarey’s Love Affair (1939) and his 1957 remake, An Affair to Remember . The only really depressing thing about Love Story is the thought of all of the terrible imitations that will inevitably follow it.

• More: Arthur Hiller , Gary Arnold , Love Story (1970) , Movie reviews

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

• A boy and a girl from different backgrounds fall in love regardless of their upbringing - and then tragedy strikes.
• The love story of young adults Oliver Barrett IV and Jenny Cavilleri is told. Oliver comes from an extremely well off and old money New England family, the Barrett name which holds much gravitas and which is plastered especially all over Harvard where Oliver is in pre-law. Like those before him, he plans on attending Harvard Law School, which is not an issue in either the school not accepting him or he not wanting to attend. He has an extremely stiff relationship with his parents, especially his father, Oliver Barrett III, who loves his son in the old school way. Jenny, a music student at Radcliffe, comes from a working class Rhode Island background, she working her way through the program before she plans on going to Paris to further her studies. Unlike Oliver's relationship with his father, Jenny has a very casual one with her baker father, who she calls by his given name Phil. When Oliver and Jenny meet, there are immediate fireworks - she always with a quick quip to put him in his place - both of a good and bad kind, but they both quickly come to the realization that they are in love with each other. They have many obstacles to overcome in having a committed relationship, outwardly his father's disapproval of someone like her not being Barrett material being arguably the the biggest. However, other things that happen in the natural course of life and death may trump all. — Huggo
• Harvard law student Oliver Barrett IV, and music student Jennifer Cavilleri, share a chemistry they cannot deny--and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men but to no avail. Oliver and Jenny continue to build their life together. Relying only on each other, they believe love can fix anything. But fate has other plans. Soon, what began as a brutally honest friendship, became the love story of their lives. — Nick Riganas
• When wealthy Harvard University law student Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal) meets Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw), a middle-class girl who is studying music at Radcliffe College, it's love at first sight. Despite the protests of Oliver's father (Ray Milland), the young couple marry. Oliver finds a job at a legal firm in New York City, but their happy life comes crashing down when it's discovered that Jenny has a terminal illness. Together, they try to cope with the situation as best they can. — FilmsNow
• The film tells of Oliver Barrett IV, who comes from a family of wealthy and well-respected Harvard University graduates. At Radcliffe library, the Harvard student meets and falls in love with Jennifer Cavelleri, a working-class, quick-witted Radcliffe College student. Upon graduation from college, the two decide to marry against the wishes of Oliver's father, who thereupon severs ties with his son. Without his father's financial support, the couple struggles to pay Oliver's way through Harvard Law School with Jenny working as a private school teacher. They rent the top floor of a house near the Law School at 119 Oxford Street, in the Agassiz neighborhood of Cambridge, adjacent to a local laundromat (still in existence today - MyOxfordLaundry.com). Graduating third in his class at Harvard Law, Oliver takes a position at a respectable New York law firm. With Oliver's new income, the pair of 24-year-olds decide to have a child. After failing, they consult a medical specialist, who after repeated tests, informs Oliver that Jenny is ill and will soon die. Oliver then tries again. While this is not stated explicitly, she appears to have leukemia. As instructed by his doctor, Oliver attempts to live a "normal life" without telling Jenny of her condition. Jenny nevertheless discovers her ailment after confronting her doctor about her recent illness. With their days together numbered, Jenny begins costly cancer therapy, and Oliver soon becomes unable to afford the multiplying hospital expenses. Desperate, he seeks financial relief from his father. When the senior Barrett asks if he needs the money because he got some girl "in trouble", Oliver says yes instead of telling his father the truth about Jenny's condition. From her hospital bed, Jenny speaks with her father about funeral arrangements, then asks for Oliver. She tells him to avoid blaming himself, and asks him to embrace her tightly before she dies. They lie together on the hospital bed. The novel also includes the double meaning of a love story between Oliver and his father, highlighted by the scene between Oliver and his father at the end of the book. When Mr. Barrett realizes that Jenny is ill and that his son borrowed the money for her, he immediately sets out for New York. By the time he reaches the hospital, Jenny has died. Mr. Barrett apologizes to his son, who replies with something Jenny once told him: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

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1970 Directed by Arthur Hiller

Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV and music student Jennifer Cavilleri share a chemistry they cannot deny - and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men, but to no avail.

Ali MacGraw Ryan O'Neal John Marley Ray Milland Russell Nype Tommy Lee Jones Sydney Walker Robert Modica Katherine Balfour Sudie Bond Walker Daniels John Merensky Andrew Duncan Charlotte Ford Julie Garfield Kevin O'Neal Milo Boulton

Director Director

Arthur Hiller

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Peter R. Scoppa

Producer Producer

Howard G. Minsky

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Robert Evans

Writer Writer

Erich Segal

Casting Casting

Andrea Eastman

Editor Editor

Robert C. Jones

Cinematography Cinematography

Richard C. Kratina

Art Direction Art Direction

Robert Gundlach

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Philip Smith

Composer Composer

Francis Lai

Makeup Makeup

Martin Bell

Hairstyling Hairstyling

William A. Farley

Paramount Love Story Company

Releases by Date

• Theatrical limited

05 Feb 2021

16 dec 1970, 09 mar 1971, 20 mar 1971, 29 mar 1971, 01 apr 1971, 05 apr 1971, 10 apr 1971, 16 apr 1971, 05 may 1971, 02 jun 1971, 10 jun 1971, 17 jun 1971, 29 jun 1971, 09 jul 1971, 18 aug 1971, 26 aug 1971, 03 sep 1971, 09 sep 1971, 16 sep 1971, 27 sep 1971, 01 nov 1971, 19 dec 1971, 01 sep 1972, 01 jul 1982, 16 jun 2011, 12 feb 2013, 06 feb 2002, 07 may 2002, 07 feb 2007, 08 feb 2007, 12 dec 2017, 17 feb 2021, releases by country.

• Physical DVD

El Salvador

• Theatrical U
• Physical Blu-Ray
• Theatrical 12 West Germany
• Theatrical Re-release

Netherlands

Philippines, south korea.

• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical PG

United Arab Emirates

99 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by ele ★★★ 3

maybe i wanna eat snow off of ryan o’neal’s face did you ever think about THAT

Review by Sam Meltzer ★★★ 80

It’s weird to me how forgotten this movie feels especially since it was like the highest grossing movie ever at the time. 

This movie really isn’t anything special, and it made me realize how much I want a boyfriend. And the editing is terrible. And sometimes the script is cheesy. But I don’t care, I had such a good time watching this movie. Both Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal deliver such smart and emotionally compelling performances, it’s hard to take your eyes off of those two. They make the seemingly cheesy dialogue work much better than it has any right to be. The music is also better than it has any right to be, and so is this movie’s pacing. It’s just something that shouldn’t work but weirdly does. I can definitely understand hating this movie but I had a good-ass time.

Review by Dwilder ★★½

f you take Love Story seriously and really examine it on any kind of deep, intellectual level then it’s an utter disaster but if you watch it when you are either under the influence of alcohol or deeply depressed at your failure in relationships it’s quite entertaining I find.

So plot wise Love Story is absolutely horrific. The dialogue is hilariously corny and weak with “love means never having to say your sorry” being the irresistibly dumb highlight of an extraordinary bunch of awful dialogue. The depth of characterisation is also remarkably light here with both the leads being extremely dull and gorgeous stereotypes and their central relationship really at times just doesn’t make any sense or hold any kind…

Review by russman ★★★½ 1

Why did I like Love Story ? Because

Review by ele ★★½

this is a horror movie actually

Review by Sucheing ★★★½

I'm sad, preppie

Review by Cole Duffy ★ 1

And now, a selection from the 1972 screwball classic What’s Up Doc? , starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal:

Judy: “Let me tell you something. Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Howard: “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!”

Indeed, reader, it really is one of the dumbest  lines ever written for a film.

Review by joereid ★★

Where do I begin? This movie hits you hard, from the very first second, with two of the least endearing characters you'll ever set eyes or ears on, then has them mostly yell at each other about Ivy League insecurity beneath a score so oppressive I'm going to be walking with a hunch for a week. Right when the movie gets you to say out loud "I pray for death," it obliges. (That said, "Love means never having to say you're sorry" is genuinely so funny. Also Snacky Lee Jones!)

Review by claira curtis ★★★★★ 8

In January 2020, the Regal pre-preview previews were constantly playing trailers for the 50th Anniversary of Love Story . I was intrigued, threw it on my watchlist and finally got to it a year later. 

The outfits alone are so incredible, I want to own both Oliver and Jennifer’s entire wardrobes. They have queer academia aesthetic written all over them (but please note, this is not a queer story). 

The romance of Love Story is razor sharp, a combination of truly impressively written teasing and genuine moments of pure devotion. The side characters are all interesting enough on their own while still pointing back to the main focus, Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw’s characters, who are the new standard for what…

Review by alan ★★★★ 1

ryan o'neal i'm single

Review by Alexa ★★★

Today I learned somebody did the "Okay?" "Okay." thing decades before The Fault in Our Stars.

Review by Dylan ★★

Yikes. Despite the fact that it isn't entirely devoid of entertainment, Love Story is frustratingly incoherent and unsatisfying in every manner. As a love story, it was uninteresting, and as a tragic drama, it was plodding. The plot was consistently tedious, the dialogue was frequently clichéd, and the acting was often wooden. Perhaps if I'd watched this when it first came out, I'd have some sort of sentimental appreciation for it, but nothing about it ever truly impressed or hooked me.

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Love Story Ending Explained: What Love Really Means

When people think of open-air ice skating in New York City, well, they probably conjure up the festive Christmas-y confines of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Unless they're old. Baby Boomer old. For members of the generation that protested the Vietnam War before turning into conservative zombies who treat Fox News as an informational IV drip, there is first and foremost the image of the late Ryan O'Neal's Oliver Barrett IV gazing forlornly at the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park as Francis Lai's brilliantly overwrought main theme jerks tears from our ducts with a vicious intensity worthy of Pinhead.

Most Boomers won't get that reference. And for those born as early as the Reagan era who are generally incurious about movies, you probably haven't watched Arthur Hiller's "Love Story." It is a film of its time, but, oh, what a film it was, at least commercially. Based on Erich Segal's bestselling weeper of a novel about a rich boy-poor girl romance that ends tragically, the movie was a New Hollywood anomaly that can charitably be compared to a ruthlessly sentimental mugging like King Vidor's "Stella Dallas." Greenlit by hedonistic executive Robert Evans at the moment he was saving Paramount Pictures from financial ruin, it stood out from the heightened style of genre flicks like Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" or Peter Yates' "Bullitt" by being unabashedly what it was meant to be.

There's no subversion at work when a grief-stricken Oliver leaves the hospital room of a freshly expired Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw), verbally accosts his status-obsessed father (Ray Milland) and strides purposely to the rink where his wife once watched him skate. It's a skull-shattering cudgel of a finale, and it was effective enough to make "Love Story" the top grossing movie of 1970. Would you like to know more? There's precious little meat on this bone, but here goes nothing!

What you need to remember about the plot of Love Story

Oliver is the bright, beautiful heir of an old-money East Coast family. He attends Harvard College and is a standout player for the school's hockey team. He becomes smitten with Jenny (Ali MacGraw), the daughter of a blue-collar baker (John Marley). He's destined for Harvard law school, while she is eager to put her Radcliffe College classical music degree to use as a teacher. Oliver is a glowing exemplar of New England privilege, but he's sensitive. He leads with his heart, which infuriates his parents who want him to marry into more money. When Oliver announces he intends to wed Jenny, his family cuts him off financially.

Look, the movie works. We're as smitten with these kids as they are with each other, and as we watch them struggle to make ends meet, we really want to do bad things to Ray Milland. Amazingly, they pull through, with Oliver landing a high-paying gig at a corporate law firm in New York City. Alas, just when it appears they've weathered the worst, despite Oliver's family's cruelly punitive efforts, Jenny is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The rest of the film is a predetermined wallow, but O'Neal and MacGraw play their sad-sack parts with emotive zeal. Our abhorrence of Milland goes nuclear when he unwittingly agrees to pay for Jenny's cancer treatment because Oliver lies to him about having knocked up another woman (something the patriarch clearly did during his backsliding days), but we know this is going south because Oliver's kiss-off line to his father is the poster's freaking tagline.

What happened at the end of Love Story

Jenny absolves Oliver of any guilt he might feel about contributing to their predicament before she dies. He meant more to her than her love of music (which diminishes her tremendously as a character, but, hey, we're here for Oliver's heartbreak, not her misfortune). Milland has a change of heart once he learns of Jenny's illness, and rushes (too late) to her bedside. Oliver confronts his father outside of the hospital. When Milland tells him he's sorry, the furious Oliver unleashes a full-scale nuclear strike of despondence at his pops, (which happens to be a passed-along piece of wisdom from Jenny).

"Love? Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Cue Francis Lai and the audience's waterworks .

What the end of Love Story means

Love means never having to say you're sorry? You sure about that?

It's a terrific quip, and it sure beats the hell out of Ray Milland (he hadn't been this distraught since hallucinating a bat killing a mouse on the business end of a long drunk in Billy Wilder's "The Lost Weekend"), but this sentiment goes sour when you mull it over for all of a nanosecond. Let's say you get into a heated argument, and you call your spouse's mother "a great big poopyhead." Let's take this a step further and say the matriarch in question is not "a great big poopyhead," but is, in fact, a loving woman who just happens to care for her daughter's future, and she's just a tad miffed that you've been squandering the kids' college fund at an off-track betting establishment (without doing the bare minimum of research on owners, breeders and jockeys, which any degenerate gambler will tell you is just throwing your money away).

I believe an apology is warranted at this point in time. Furthermore, I think Milland, within a minute of his son storming his way down 5th Avenue, came to his senses and decided Oliver's utterance was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard in his life (while still feeling not altogether great about Jenny having kicked the bucket).

What the cast and crew of Love Story said about the ending

Ali MacGraw is loudly on record as disapproving of the film's valedictory. As she told Town & Country in 2016 :

"That moment absolutely shows that I didn't know anything about acting; any more seasoned actress would have said, 'What? This is rubbish.' But there I was, crying away in Boston. I think it's the opposite. If you've done something frightful to someone you love, you don't just say you're sorry; you change your behavior."

For his part, O'Neal didn't get the line upon speaking it, and as late as 2021 , wasn't entirely sure what it meant. "Neither of us knew at the time. But over the years, we have come up with answers that ... I don't know. I had to say 'I'm sorry' a lot in my life, that's all I know!"

What the end of Love Story meant for the franchise

You can't have a meaningful discussion about ill-advised sequels without bringing up 1978's "Oliver's Story." Based on the equally ill-advised novel by Erich Segal, the film opens with Oliver hanging out at Jenny's burial , waiting bitterly for her coffin to be lowered into the earth. Francis Lai's theme kicks up once more, and the moviegoers that bothered to show up for this late-breaking sequel (there weren't many of them judging from the film's poor box-office performance) presumably broke into tears.

The rest of the 91-minute movie is a clinic in disastrous narrative decisions. Oliver mopes until he falls in love with the vapid heiress (a shame-faced Candice Bergen) of the Bonwit Teller department store fortune. The entire movie is about Oliver making peace with being a child of privilege, and learning to kind of love it. At this point, the "Love Story" franchise was as dead as Jenny, and no one was sorry about it.

"We waste our money so you don't have to."

"We waste our money, so you don't have to."

Movie Review

US Release Date: 12-16-1970

Directed by: Arthur Hiller

Starring ▸ ▾

• Ali MacGraw ,  as
• Jennifer Cavalleri
• Ryan O'Neal ,  as
• Oliver Barrett IV
• John Marley ,  as
• Phil Cavalleri
• Ray Milland ,  as
• Oliver Barrett III
• Russell Nype ,  as
• Dean Thompson
• Katharine Balfour ,  as
• Mrs. Barrett
• Sydney Walker ,  as
• Dr. Shapely
• Robert Modica ,  as
• Dr. Addison
• Walker Daniels ,  as
• Ray Stratton
• Tommy Lee Jones ,  as
• Hank Simpson
• John Merensky as

Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal in Love Story .

I don't really believe in the term, "Guilty Pleasure". I've always thought that if you enjoy a movie, or a song, or a book, then why feel guilty about it? Love Story though, is probably the closest I'll ever come to feeling a little bit embarrassed by how much I enjoy something. It's quite sappy and very, very dated, but I still enjoy it anyway. I even get misty-eyed every time at the film's conclusion.

The plot is very simple and the key is in the title. It's the unabashedly romantic story of two young Ivy League students who meet in college, fall in love, get married and then face tragedy as the girl dies. That's not really a spoiler, since the movie opens with the famous line, “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach? The Beatles? And me?” Her death is baked into the plot from the very beginning.

Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw star as the young lovers, despite both of them being older than their characters. MacGraw was 31, while O'Neal was in his late 20s, although both of them are able to play younger. They are both quite good in their parts and most importantly, they make you believe that these two young people are madly in love with each other, without which the film would just fall apart.

Many aspects of the film are dated, but it's not the fashion or the hairstyles that make it seem so these days. It's the falling in love montage set to that famous theme tune and highlighted by the two of them making snow angels that comes across as the most 1970s. That and the touchy-feely, do it yourself wedding.

The movie was made on the cheap, with a fairly small budget. In fact, the production ran out of money and the scenes of O'Neal wandering the streets of New York City following Jenny's death, were shot illegally, with just O'Neal and a small crew because they couldn't afford the permits.

To help garner publicity, screenwriter Erich Segal was asked by Paramount to turn his script into a book. It quickly became a bestseller. The film itself would go on to become the highest grossing film of the year and adjusting for inflation, is still one of the most profitable of all time.

Two aspects of Love Story almost became more famous than the film itself and those are its theme tune and one line of dialogue. The tune, a simple piano melody, is instantly recognizable and was eventually given lyrics, turning into a hit for Andy Williams. The line of dialogue is, of course, “Love means never having to say you're sorry.” It's a line that will either make you groan or think of this movie fondly. The AFI voted it number 13 on their 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes list.

It's easy to watch this movie with a cynical eye or a cold heart. Its simplistic tale of doomed, first love, is easy to poke fun of, but it's one that I fall for every time.

Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw in Love Story .

I agree Scott. Emotionally this movie works because it so beautifully illustrates the experience of first love and then it pulls the rug out from under the audience with the tragic ending. I find it amusing that although it suggests that Jenny has Leukemia, it is never specified and she seems to look quite healthy and beautiful right up until her final, deathbed moment. O'Neal and MacGraw have great chemistry together and you believe every moment of their romance. Yes it's cheesy but then falling in love is cheesy.

Other than the central love story, this movie also deals with the relationships between fathers and their grownup children. Oliver is carrying around baggage from his childhood and the fact that his father seems to want to purchase for his son an easy way through life. Jenny's dad is down to earth and makes a game attempt to keep up with the changing times. The scene where the young couple describe their wedding plans to him is quite touching. Phil (as Jenny calls her father) tries to be a good sport although it is clearly breaking his heart that his only daughter won't be getting married in a Catholic church. Both Ray Milland (in his first movie appearance without his toupee) and John Marley (Oscar nominated for this role) are very good as Oliver's and Jenny's fathers, respectively.

Love Story also balances humor with drama quite nicely. It was a dramedy before the term was coined. I like the scene where Oliver takes Jenny to meet his parents (see photo) and she is stunned to see just how rich her boyfriend actually is. The scene that follows is well directed. We see Oliver and Jenny almost immediately back in their car discussing the visit on their way home, interspersed with scenes showing their interaction with Oliver's parents. Oliver spends the ride pointing out his parent's snobbishness while Jenny makes excuses for their behavior.

This movie always reminds me of my parents. They saw it together back in 1970 and were deeply affected by it. I remember my mother commenting that there wasn't a dry eye in the theater. What I find interesting is that my parents always seemed much older to me than O'Neal and MacGraw do in this movie, but in real life they are both younger. I guess that is because, as Scott pointed out, both actors were playing younger than their actual ages.

It's interesting to compare the careers of Ryan O'Neal and Tommy Lee Jones. O'Neal was a huge star during the 1970s but was pretty much washed up as a leading man by the time he was in his mid-40s. Jones, on the other hand, didn't make it big until the 1980s when he was well into his 30s. He continues to have a hugely successful career today while O'Neal long ago became a washed-up has been.

Love Story sits right at the crossroads between classic and modern film at least as far as Hollywood is concerned. In many ways -the theme song for one example- it is a throwback to the romances of an earlier era, but as far as the language is concerned it was quite modern. Many famous people, including Richard Nixon, John Wayne and Nancy Reagan, all enjoyed the movie but voiced complaints about how much Jenny swears in it, which is quite amusing when you consider what was soon to come. The Exorcist was just around the corner after all.

Today Love Story remains one of the quintessential tragic romances in motion picture history.

Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal in Love Story

One of the most common complaints the threemoviebuffs have written about for romantic movies is that most films simply state that two people are in love without ever saying why. Here we see Jenny and Oliver meet and neither holds any punches with each other. She instantly recognizes that he is a preppy and it becomes her pet name for him. He, in return, enjoys her honesty and gives as much as he takes but tells her he wants more than just verbal sparring. That conversation leads to their first moment of sexual intimacy. They are open books to each other.  Although the, “Love means…” line is the most famous, I find the best one to be when Oliver says to Jenny, “How can you see me and still love me?” and Jenny responds with a smile, “That’s what it’s about preppy.” Is there a better description of true love than loving someone inspite of, or because of, their flaws?

Oliver is attracted to Jenny’s foul mouthed honesty but her attempts to soften his approach to his father, is sometimes cause for friction. I found Oliver’s relationship to his father somewhat interesting yet manufactured. At one point, Jenny asks Oliver what he calls his father. Oliver responds, “A son-of-a-bitch.” As Patrick noted, Oliver’s father seems to want to pave an easy as possible path for his son. Oliver resents it as it comes with the price of great expectations, “I hate that he expects no less.”

After having dinner with his parents, where his father offers to help him get into law school with his connections, Oliver tells Jenny on the drive home, “Jenny I don’t need that kind of help.” I found Oliver to be somewhat of a hypocrite at this point. Everything he has, including that British MG sports car he is driving, is because of his father. Oliver likewise realizes the hypocrisy and so decides to go it without his father’s help and money, but he does keep the hot car.

Oliver and Jenny marry and begin their adult lives of jobs, responsibilities and talk of having children. All of their dreams seem to be coming true. Then, the harsh news of Jenny’s health is revealed and the movie becomes a bit macabre as we know the end is coming. We start to look at her as Oliver does, like a bomb with a broken timer, not knowing when it will happen. This is your cue to grab the box of tissues.

Although this is a movie about a couple, it truly is Oliver’s story and how his world was changed by this woman who came into his life like a gust of wind that blew away his confusion. Even on her death bed, she talks to him with brutal honesty, saying what he dares not. It was her love and blunt manners that captured his heart and made him the man that he became. It was her ailing health that forced him to ask for his father’s help. Only for Jenny, would he ever consider doing that.

I liked Oliver more than I ever thought I would. He was given all the gifts money and a famous name can provide but he remains a very sympathetic character. No wonder a sequel was made. The only flaw I found in this film was the cold actions of Oliver's father. He makes very little efforts to make amends with Oliver, even though Oiver became the very man he always wanted him to be. The only difference is that Oliver did it mostly on his own terms. Their conflict seems a bit forced for the sake of the story.

For the record, I was only bothered by Jenny’s swearing when she did it in church directly to the members of the children’s choir. Tacky!

Photos © Copyright Paramount Pictures (1970)

© 2000 - 2017 Three Movie Buffs. All Rights Reserved.

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Movie Reviews

'la chimera' is marvelous — right up to its most magical ending.

Justin Chang

Carol Duarte and Josh O'Connor in La Chimera . Neon hide caption

Carol Duarte and Josh O'Connor in La Chimera .

The wonderful 42-year-old filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher practices a kind of cinema that I've come to think of as "Italian magical neorealism." She gives us portraits of hard-scrabble lives in poor rural communities, but they're graced by a whimsical, almost fable-like sense of enchantment.

Rohrwacher's 2014 film, The Wonders , was a lyrical drama about a family of Tuscan beekeepers. She followed that in 2018 with Happy as Lazzaro , about a group of sharecroppers on a tobacco farm whose story moves from picaresque comedy to aching tragedy.

'The Wonders' Of Family And Change

Her marvelous new movie, La Chimera , follows in much the same vein, with one key difference. While Rohrwacher has generally worked with non-professional Italian actors, this time she's cast the English actor Josh O'Connor , best known for his Emmy-winning performance as a young Prince Charles on The Crown .

But O'Connor's character here doesn't give off even a whiff of royalty, even if his name is Arthur. When we first meet him, he's asleep on a train bound for his old stomping grounds in Tuscany. He's just been released from prison after serving some time for the crime of grave robbing.

Arthur has a mysterious archeological talent: Wielding a divining rod, he can detect the presence of buried artifacts, many of which date back to the Etruscan civilization more than 2,000 years ago. Arthur works with a group of tombaroli , or tomb raiders, who rely on him to figure out where to dig.

Upon his return, many of those old friends welcome him back with a parade — one of several moments in which Rohrwacher briefly channels the vibrant human chaos of a Fellini film. Arthur is a little reluctant to rejoin his old gang, since they let him take the rap after their last job. But he doesn't seem to have anything else to do, or anywhere else to go. He may be an outsider — his Italian throughout is decent but far from perfect — but it's the only place in the world that feels remotely like home. And O'Connor plays him with such a deep sense of melancholy that it feels almost special when his handsome, careworn face breaks into a warm smile.

It's not immediately clear what Arthur wants; unlike his cohorts, he doesn't seem all that interested in making money off their spoils. The answer turns out to lie in his dreams, which are haunted by a beautiful young woman named Beniamina — the love of his life, whom he's lost under unclear circumstances.

And so Arthur's determination to go underground becomes a metaphor for his longing for an irretrievable past: Beniamina is the Eurydice to his Orpheus, and he wants her back desperately.

Arthur is still close to Beniamina's mother, Flora, played with a wondrous mix of warmth and imperiousness by the great Isabella Rossellini. Her presence here made me think of her filmmaker father, the neorealist titan Roberto Rossellini — a fitting association for a movie about how the past is forever seeping into the present.

One of the pleasures of Rohrwacher's filmmaking is the way she subtly blurs our sense of time. La Chimera is set in the 1980s, but it could be taking place 20 years earlier, or 20 years later. Rohrwacher and her brilliant cinematographer, Hélène Louvart, shot the movie on a mix of film stocks and sometimes tweak the image in ways that evoke the cinematic antiquities of the silent era. As sorrowful as Arthur's journey is, there's a playfulness to Rohrwacher's sensibility that keeps pulling you in, inviting you to get lost in the movie's mysteries.

One of the story's most significant characters is Italia, played by the Brazilian actor Carol Duarte, who works in Flora's household. Italia is a bit of an odd duck with a beguiling bluntness about her, and she might be just the one to pull Arthur out of his slump and get him to stop living in the past.

I won't give away what happens, except to say that La Chimera builds to not one but two thrilling scenes of underground exploration, in which Arthur must finally figure out his life's purpose — not by using a divining rod, but by following his heart. And it leads to the most magical movie ending I've seen in some time, and also the most real.

Wealth of Geeks

20 Romantic Movies That Feature Slow-Burning Love Stories

Posted: November 10, 2023 | Last updated: April 6, 2024

While romance movies aren’t everyone’s favorite genre, many film fans do enjoy watching a love story unfold onscreen. Someone in a popular online forum asked for suggestions of films “where the protagonist doesn’t intentionally seek romance.” Here are 20 great movies to check out.

1. You’ve Got Mail (1998)

Nora Ephron directs Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in this remake of The Shop Around the Corner . Hanks is Joe Fox of the chain store Fox Books, and Meg Ryan is Kathleen Kelly, from the small children’s bookstore, The Shop Around the Corner. They are rivals in business but unknowingly are email pen pals who are developing real feelings for each other. This love story definitely is not love at first sight. In fact, the film takes place over many, many months and is a true delight.

2. Palm Springs (2020)

Palm Springs is about two wedding guests who are stuck in a time loop and keep reliving the same day over and over again. Sarah is the lonely maid of honor who humiliates herself with a drunken toast, and Nyles is the offbeat guest she is charmed by because of his cynicism. A romance develops but each day is different until they get things right and can be completely honest with themselves and each other. This quirky comedy stars Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti.

3. The African Queen (1951)

This classic film is set in Africa during WWI. Rose Sayer is a missionary who seeks passage aboard a riverboat with Captain Charlie Allnut. She wishes to avenge her brother’s death at the hand of German soldiers and target a gunboat down the river. The two very different people clash immensely, but on their journey, love develops based on mutual respect and understanding.

This exciting and entertaining film stars two of the most legendary actors ever, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

4. Groundhog Day (1993)

A smug, self-centered weatherman named Phil Connors is forced to relive the same day over and over again in this 90s comedy. The day in question is Groundhog Day, and each time the day starts over again, Phil attempts different things to get him out of this time loop. It’s only when he begins to treat others better, in particular the woman whom he falls for, Rita, that things change.

This unconventional romance develops over many days as each time Phil learns an imperative lesson. Groundhog Day stars Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.

5. When Harry Met Sally (1989)

When Harry Met Sall y was the most frequent response — and for good reason. The film follows Harry Burns and Sally Albright, two people who keep meeting over the years and eventually become best friends, and then fall in love. They have differing opinions on just about everything and have no intention of becoming romantically involved, but love has other plans.

When Harry Met Sally is written by Nora Ephron, directed by Rob Reiner, and stars Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, and Bruno Kirby.

6. Emma (2020)

Jane Austen’s classic story follows the sweet, but naïve and spoiled Emma Woodhouse who insists on playing matchmaker with her friends. Little does she expect to fall in love with her oldest friend, Mr. Knightly, who disproves of her matchmaking, but holds a candle for her that burns brightly.

The 2020 version stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn and is worth checking out. But one should also check out the superior 1998 version with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam, and the equally lovely miniseries that stars Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller.

7. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

This teen comedy is based on William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and follows two sisters who are completely different. Kat is tough and independent and Bianca is naive and wants to fit in. Knowing Bianca is not allowed to date until Kat does, a plan is hatched to pay the bad boy Patrick to date Kat.

This is one of the funniest teen comedies ever with some surprisingly thoughtful moments. And the romance develops begrudgingly and over a period of time.

8. A Walk to Remember (2002)

This tender tearjerker follows bad boy Landon Carter who is forced to participate in a school play as punishment for being involved in a terrible accident with another student. There he spends time with sweet Jamie Sullivan who makes him promise not to fall in love with her. But lo and behold, he does just that. Jamie has a tragic secret that threatens their budding romance, however.

This film stars Mandy Moore and Shane West and features one of the best depictions of young love that develops slowly.

9. The Wedding Singer (1998)

The first film that co-stars Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore is this wacky comedy set in the 1980s. Robbie Hart is a wedding singer who is left at the altar. Julia is a waitress who becomes his friend as he helps her plan her wedding to a first-rate jerk.

The two grow close over time and soon realize that love should be with someone you respect, can have fun with, and especially want to grow old with. This comedy is filled with laughs and 80s nostalgia. Romance-wise, it more than fits the criteria.

10. The Remains of the Day (1993)

If there ever was a slow-burn romance, it would be this one between butler James Stevens and head housekeeper Miss Kenton in this rich period drama. Many years are depicted between these two co-workers, but most especially those leading up to WWII, where their employer’s possible ties to the Nazi party make Steven, especially, question all his years of loyalty and servitude. This is a slow-building and understated romantic story.

11. The Sound of Music (1965)

The classic musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer is known for its breathtaking visuals and fantastic songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein. It is also known as a family dramatic musical about a governess who is sent to take care of the seven children of a stern naval captain.

The romance between Maria and Captain Von Trapp becomes steamy. Maria captures the hearts of the children early on, but it takes longer for the Captain’s heart to open. Meanwhile, Maria, who thinks she is meant to be a nun, fights her feelings for him. This is a classic in every way.

12. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

The Bridges of Madison County is the shortest film on this list. But it still is an appropriate response. In the movie, a lonely housewife gives directions to a photographer passing by, but quickly agrees to show him around all of the bridges from the town.

Over the course of four days, the two open up to each other and find a sense of understanding and connection. It is a bittersweet love story that stars two acting legends, Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood.

13. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

This movie is a loose, modern adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice . Bridget Jones is a perpetually single woman in her 30s who starts a diary to keep track of her daily life and help her achieve her goal of a life where she is healthier and no longer single. She navigates complicated relationships with her playboy boss, Daniel Cleaver, and the stuffy but goodhearted barrister, Mark Darcy.

Over time, the feelings for both men evolve with extremely funny results. This film stars Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, and Hugh Grant.

14. Pride and Prejudice (2005)

While on the theme of Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice is one of the most timeless and beloved love stories of all time. The 2005 version, which stars Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, is just as loved.

The story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, two people from different classes in life who meet, argue, and exhibit moments of both pride and prejudice, is a classic tale that has been told many times.

But this version is one of the most beautiful and is a perfect representation of a love that builds slowly and gradually between two people who had no intentions of falling for each other.

15. Someone Like You (2001)

This movie follows a woman who is dumped by her boyfriend with no warning and then pretends to be an older relationship expert on the dating habits of men. The trouble arises when she begins to use her roommate Eddie as a case subject for her research and the two develop feelings for each other. Like most romantic comedies, there are many misunderstandings and deceptions that complicate things.

But Someone Like You definitely qualifies as a slow love story that is not sought after, nor at first sight. The movie stars Ashley Judd, Hugh Jackman, Greg Kinnear, and Marisa Tomei.

16. Always Be My Maybe (2019)

This movie represents the friends-to-love trope seen in many romances. Best friends Sasha and Marcus had been inseparable since they were children but lost touch after high school. When they reconnect as adults, old and unresolved feelings rise to the surface. Not only is this a relationship that spans many years, but it depicts two people who only sought friendship with each other. Neither expected to fall in love.

The movie stars Randall Park, Ali Wong, and Keanu Reeves as a very funny, exaggerated version of himself.

17. While You Were Sleeping (1995)

This romantic comedy is about a kind but lonely woman named Lucy who saves the life of a man named Peter she pines for after he is pushed onto a railroad track. After a misunderstanding at the hospital, his family thinks she is his fiancée, and she cannot bring herself to tell them the truth. With Peter in a coma, she then starts to spend time with Peter’s brother Jack, as well as the rest of the family.

Taking place the weeks during the Christmas holiday, this is a sweet-natured and very funny film that stars Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, and Peter Gallagher.

18. Phantom Thread (2017)

This film is set in post-war London in the 1950s and follows an acclaimed dressmaker. He dresses anyone from royalty to socialites, but no woman has ever completely caught his eye. He is a consummate bachelor. But when this very particular and in-control fashion designer meets an independent and strong woman, he finds his life complicated and uncontrolled, as she becomes his muse and lover.

This is a slowly developed love story between two very stubborn individuals. This stylish movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, and Lesley Manville.

19. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

From Studio Ghibli and director Hayo Miyazaki, Howl’s Moving Castle is a thoughtful and whimsical film based on a children’s book of the same name. The fantasy story follows a young woman named Sophie who is cursed by a witch and given the body of an old woman. She seeks help with the spoiled and self-indulgent wizard who lives in a strange castle with mechanical legs in this one-of-a-kind love story.

This animated film is a thought-provoking story about love overcoming curses both magical and mortal.

The real curse is often selfishness. The American-dubbed version of this film features the voice talents of Christian Bale, Emily Mortimer, Lauren Bacall, Billy Crystal, and Jean Simmons.

20. Six Days, Seven Nights (1998)

This is an adventure movie that blends action, comedy, and romance. The story follows a crass pilot and uptight magazine editor whose helicopter crashes onto an island in the South Seas. The two spend the beginning of their relationship doing nothing but fighting and bickering.

But over time, feelings change and they must learn to survive against the elements and other threats, such as pirates. The fighting-to-romance trope is in full force in this movie that stars Harrison Ford and Anne Heche.

More From Wealth of Geeks - 25 Movies You May Only Watch Once Because They’ll Destroy You

Some movies can leave such a profound impact on us that we can't bear watching them again. Ever. These films stay with us long after the credits roll, haunting our thoughts and leaving us emotionally shattered. Here, we've compiled a list of 25 movies deemed one-time experiences by viewers on an online forum who have been through the emotional wringer.

More From Wealth of Geeks

While some films from the 80s have become iconic, etching themselves into our collective memories, a treasure trove of lesser-known films has gradually faded into obscurity. Not to worry, we've compiled a list of 25 gems, based on IMDb, that graced our screens with their offbeat charm, eccentric characters, and captivating narratives that defy convention.

More From Wealth of Geeks - 12 Exhilarating Films That Will Terrify You to The Core

Looking for movies that redefine the word horror? Sometimes, it's not just about the spooky movies you've heard of, sometimes it's the ones that delve deep into horror that have a greater impact. Sit back, try to relax, and dive into these 12 films that are absolutely bone-chilling.

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‘Back to Black’ Review: Marisa Abela Nails Amy Winehouse in Every Look, Mood and Note in a Biopic at Once Forthright and Forbidding

Sam Taylor-Johnson's jazz-meets-rock-star drama exerts an authentic fascination, even as its dysfunctional-addict love story keeps us at a distance.

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“ Back to Black ,” the 2006 album that the new Amy Winehouse biopic takes its title from, is a record built on an exquisite contradiction. The music has a crispy delicious retro-bop bounce, a quality that extends to Winehouse’s voice, which takes the growling-cat stylings of jazz legends like Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday and kicks them up into something playfully ferocious. Yet when you tune into the lyrics, they’re as dark as midnight. “Rehab,” the album’s showpiece track, must surely be the jauntiest song ever recorded about an addict who turns the refusal to help herself into a stance of rock ‘n’ roll defiance.

We meet Amy in her relatively polite and decorous youth, when she’s got a pierced upper lip but before she’s found her trademark look (winged mascara, over-the-top beehive). A Jewish teenager from the Camden district of London, she’s devoted to her Nan Cynthia (Lesley Manville), a former ’50s nightclub singer from whom she’ll ultimately lift that poufy period hairdo. Yet Amy is no more a “nice Jewish girl” than Lenny Bruce was the male version of same. From the start, she has an insolent, jutting-toothed, sensually hungry, the-girl-can’t-help-it grin that expresses her raw appetite for life, as well as a tough working-class accent (“together” comes out as “togevuh”) that signals she’s not taking any prisoners.

But the edge is there too. In an episode that provokes a chuckle, but also suggests the lack of boundaries that fuels her art, Amy attracts the interest of Nick Shymansky (Sam Buchanan), a potential manager, when she performs “Stronger Than Me,” a song that basically disses her boyfriend as an emasculated wimp (in the initial meeting with Nick, the boyfriend learns that he’s the dupe of the song and stalks out). Amy, at one point, says that she’s not a feminist because she likes boys too much. But the truth is she’s the incarnation of a new brand of womanly assertion, like Courtney Love reborn as a proudly dissolute jazz diva who has come through the looking glass of hip-hop. The measure of her feminism is that she does whatever she wants; she’s drawn to extremes of hedonistic self-expression, whether it’s how much she drinks, the tattoos she gets on a whim (far more of a novelty and a statement 20 years ago), or the fearless emulation of her jazz heroines. “I’m no fuckin’ Spice Girl,” she tells Nick. That would seem obvious, though it’s a lesson she’s going to keep proving even if it kills her.

Amy records her first album, “Frank” (2003), as a knowingly out-of-time jazz record. She keeps saying that she doesn’t care about making money. The album is named after her idol, Frank Sinatra (though the film never clues us into that), which means that she wants to do it her way. But that’s easier said than done once you’ve climbed onto the record-industry ladder. She meets with the executives, who have a few ideas based on the fact that the album wasn’t very commercial. They’d rather not release it in the U.S. (they want to wait for her follow-up album). They think she should stop playing the guitar onstage. Amy’s reaction to all this is to tell them to fuck themselves, and to say: I need to live to write songs, so I’m going to take a major break before I make my next album.

What living turns out to be is falling for the man who’ll be the love of her life, because he’s as charged an addict as she is. The extended sequence in which Amy meets the sexy, indomitable Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell) at a pub is a bravura piece of mutual seduction in which the film’s director, Sam Taylor-Johnson , shows off her chops. Blake is not an emasculated wimp; his confidence is complete, his suavity bordering on the toxic. Jack O’Connell plays him as a kind of throwback — he’s like a late-’60s British matinee idol (think James Fox or the Michael Caine of “Alfie”) playing a jock with a lightning brain. He knows Amy’s record by heart; he also introduces her, on the jukebox, to the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack,” lip-syncing to it with gender-blending glee.

She spins the album “Back to Black” out of how shattered he left her. And it’s a sign of where the film’s priorities lie that we see her recording the irresistibly heartbreak-hooked title track, yet there’s little to no sense of how Winehouse’s masterful second and last album was created (the producer Mark Ronson gets a name-drop, the producer Salaam Remi gets an image drop, and that’s all). The album is a huge hit, making Amy a celebrity stalked by the paparazzi. And Blake takes the album’s message of melancholy as a signal that she’ll take him back. So he calls her, and they get married (basically a Vegas wedding in Miami Beach), and then they’re breaking up all over again.

“Sid and Nancy,” I’m afraid, this is not. We don’t swoon over the dysfunctional passion, the spectacle of two lovelorn addicts who are destined to bring out the worst in each other. Yet without that burning romantic core, “Back to Black” plays out what feels like an authentic but rather clinical version of amour fou.

What about the songs we love from “Back to Black”? Abela’s in-concert renditions of several Winehouse classics have a dilapidated splendor, and her performance of “Rehab” at the 2008 Grammy Awards is perfection, as is her version of “Tears Dry on Their Own” during the closing credits. Abela did all her own singing; she gets every soaring and scat-souled nuance. But while the songs keep popping up, they’re not in there in a way that feels, at each moment, like they’re expressing something so emotionally necessary that it becomes cathartic. Amy, contrary to her mythology, does end up in rehab. Near the end of her life, she gets clean, as Janis Joplin did. But that isn’t enough to keep her from becoming a member of the cautionary club of pop stars who died at 27 (Janis, Jimi, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain). Her self-destruction is on full display in “Back to Black.” Yet the film presents it, even revels in it, without giving you the sense that it fully understands it.

Reviewed at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Lower Manhattan, New York, April 8, 2024. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 122 MIN.

• Production: A Focus Features release of a Monumental Pictures production, in association with StudioCanal, with the participation of Canal + Cine + M6 and W9. Producers: Alison Owen, Debra Hayward, Nicky Kentish Barnes. Executive producers: Anna Marsh, Ron Halpern, Joe Naftalin, Sam Taylor-Johnson.
• Crew: Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson. Screenplay: Matt Greenhalgh. Camera: Polly Morgan. Editors: Martin Walsh, Laurence Johnson. Music: Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Amy Winehouse.
• With: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Cowan, Sam Buchanan, Lesley Manville.

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Movies | Review: Colin Farrell in Apple TV+ ‘Sugar,’ an…

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Movies | review: colin farrell in apple tv+ ‘sugar,’ an la story with a love-it-or-hate-it twist.

For a pop-cultural century, in words and images, Los Angeles has been depicted as a seductively alien locale not like any other place in the galaxy. Its natural disaster quotient, its sterling variety of photogenic backdrops for moral rot and a wide world of sleaze, the sun, the secrets — all of it spells camera-ready trouble in paradise.

Its strangeness was made for, and by, film noir. Here’s one example: the Apple TV+ offering “Sugar,” starring Colin Farrell as a mysteriously well-off private eye specializing in missing-person cases. Creator and lead writer Mark Protosevich’s slippery fish of an eight-part series, with its first two episodes premiering April 5, owes debts all over town — to the legendary movies beloved by the title character, and to LA’s infinite capacity for new wrinkles along familiar fault lines.

There’s a whopper of a reveal at the story’s three-quarter juncture, so we’ll avoid that for a few paragraphs (no spoilers, though). We meet Farrell’s character, John Sugar, in a black-and-white Tokyo prologue, as he successfully if violently resolves the kidnapping and ransom case of a yakuza’s young son. Locating the missing, he murmurs in archetypal noir voiceover, makes for “a tough business. But steady.”

The rest of “Sugar” unfolds mostly in color, and in greater as well as much, much lesser Los Angeles. Sugar’s new case involves the apparent disappearance of 25-year-old Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), tarnished Hollywood royalty. She’s the daughter of movie director Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris, a casual, wry sort of skeeze). Olivia’s actress mother, as we’re told, died in a car accident in 1998. The family scion and true legend, producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell), hires Sugar for the search-and-rescue job, staying classically tight-lipped about his motives, though he’s frank about his pampered offspring, notably grandson and one-time child actor David (Nate Corddry).

Clearly Sugar’s hourly rate exceeds the average gumshoe’s. When in LA, he lives his monastic private life in a swank hotel, meeting with his apparent agency boss Ruby (played by the actress Kirby, who’s terrific) while tooling around town in a sleek blue Corvette. Ruby’s concerned about his health, and how this particular case might mess with this distinctly proper and contained man’s guarded psyche. In teasing half-fragments, the series tells us Sugar’s sister too went missing, once upon a time, and he’s coping uneasily with the trauma.

The labyrinth takes the detective into dark corners and other brutal disappearances all over the county. Amy Ryan, who excels in the role of a Joni Mitchell-type rock legend and Bernie Siegel’s ex-wife, becomes Sugar’s confidante and sounding board. Creator Protosevich treats this character’s struggles with addiction and recovery seriously and effectively; likewise, a #MeToo scandal enveloping the Siegel family develops into more than mere topical referencing. It’s at once plausible in the context of the story, and nicely threaded in the middle episodes. Fernando Meirelles (“City of God,” “The Constant Gardener”) directs five of the episodes with a fine eye for the destablizing composition; veteran TV director Adam Arkin handles the other three.

And now, obliquely, let’s deal with the whopper at the end of Episode 6. While “Sugar” strategically drip-drip-drips its hints regarding the detective’s past, and the nature of his organization’s larger mission, the reveal itself is nutty enough to toss a fair percentage of viewers overboard. It’s a testament to the series’ strengths — strong, steady performances; a nice glare and gloss to the imagery — that it very nearly recovers from the whopper.

After watching all eight segments, I felt differently about it, more accepting, I suppose. Other things bugged me more: the narrative’s wearying reliance on girls-in-torture-dungeons depravity, for one, and the well-motivated but nonetheless indulgent reliance on snippets from dozens of famous and less-familiar Old Hollywood titles, from “Sunset Boulevard” to “Vertigo” to “Kiss Me, Deadly.” These serve as attractive but clunky complements to Sugar’s own observations about the movies he adores, and the city he barely comprehends.

So it’s a bag you might call mixed. But I found a lot of it absorbing, and nearly every performance first-rate. Did I buy it? Uh, most of it? None of it? Enough of it? Something like that, yes. If enough viewers go for the twist, well, the open-ended ending of “Sugar” sets up a second season with ease.

“Sugar” — 3 stars (out of 4)

Rated: TV-MA (for violence, language, some nudity)

Running time: Eight episodes, about four-and-a-half hours total

How to watch: Apple TV+

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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Back to Black review – woozy Amy Winehouse biopic buoyed by extraordinary lead performance

Sam Taylor-Johnson’s best film to date is more interested in romance and creativity than demons or blame

• ‘Her demons were probably worse’: does Back to Black reveal the real Amy Winehouse?

T he last time Sam Taylor-Johnson directed a movie about drugs it was A Million Little Pieces in 2019, based on James Frey’s notoriously inauthentic memoir of addiction – and the last time she made a film about a music legend it was Nowhere Boy in 2009, about John Lennon.

Now she brings the two together in what’s easily her best work so far: an urgent, warm, heartfelt dramatisation, scripted by Matt Greenhalgh, of the life of Amy Winehouse , the brilliant London soul singer who died of alcohol poisoning at 27 in 2011. It’s a movie with the simplicity, even the naivety, of a fan-tribute. But there’s a thoroughly engaging and sweet-natured performance from Marisa Abela as Amy – though arguably taking the rougher edges off. The only time Abela is less than persuasive is when she has to get into a fight on the north London streets of Camden.

And Jack O’Connell is a coolly charismatic and muscular presence as her no-good husband and addiction-enabler Blake Fielder-Civil. O’Connell can’t help being a smart, capable screen presence and makes Blake a lot more sympathetic and less rodenty than he appeared in real life – and yet part of the (reasonable) point of the film is that he was a human being, afraid that Amy would leave him for another celebrity, and that media images are misleading.

There’s a lovely, if faintly sucrose scene in which the already boozed-up Blake first meets Amy in The Good Mixer pub in Camden Town (already famous for its association with 90s cool Britannia and Blur) – buzzing with his horse-racing winnings and airily unfazed when the already entranced Amy challenges him to a game of pool while he cheekily lets her (and us) assume he doesn’t know who she is. But of course he does and even one-ups her in musical knowledge in compelling her to admit that she has never heard, or heard of the Shangri-Las’ Leader of the Pack, which he puts on the jukebox and extravagantly mimes to. There is a growing sadness in the realisation that this ecstatic first meeting is the first and last time they will ever be truly happy together.

Perhaps any movie about Winehouse is going to suffer in comparison with Asif Kapadia’s compelling archive-mosaic documentary Amy from 2015, which delivered the woman herself and also gave a clearer idea of her demanding musicianship and professionalism, far from the tabloid caricature of nonstop drugginesss. But this film tries to intuit the part that romance played in Amy Winehouse’s life and the narrative of unhappiness that it created in her work: a poisonous wellspring of inspiration.

And Taylor-Johnson’s film is also much more sympathetic to Winehouse’s father Mitch, the cab driver estranged from Amy’s mother who came back into her life to help manage her career and famously counselled against her going to rehab.

Mitch comes across better here because he’s played with bullish charm and schmaltz by Eddie Marsan – very funny in the scene where he infuriates Amy by coming to an important meeting and siding with the record business execs against her. I actually wonder if an equally good film called Mitch could be made simply about that lonely, complex figure.

Back to Black is essentially a gentle, forgiving film and there are other, tougher, bleaker ways to put Winehouse’s life on screen – but Abela conveys her tenderness, and perhaps most poignantly of all her youth, so tellingly at odds with that tough image and eerily mature voice.

Back to Black is out in UK cinemas on 12 April and in the US on 17 May

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The Tearsmith : The Biggest Differences Between The New Dark Romance Movie and Bestselling Book

The new film, now streaming on Netflix, is based off of Erin Doom's Italian bestseller of the same name

Rebecca Aizin is an Editorial Assistant at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. Her work has previously appeared on Elle, HGTV and Backstage. 

Ready for the next Twilight ?

Erin Doom's Italian bestseller The Tearsmith has arrived stateside to give the popular franchise a run for its money. The spine-tingling romance story follows Nica and Rigel, both orphans at The Grave who are adopted by the same family. While Nica is as naive and innocent as a harmless butterfly, Rigel is often compared to the volatility of a wolf.

Unbeknownst to Nica, Rigel has been harboring an undying love for her since the day she stepped into the orphanage at 5 years old. Though she's terrified of his aggressive nature, Nica can't help but be intrigued by Rigel's hidden vulnerability and a bond begins to form between the two — hindered only by the fact that they're about to be siblings.

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Now adapted into a movie streaming on Netflix, The Tearsmith , which was filmed in Italian with English subtitles, is spreading to new audiences looking for their next romantic fix.

Here's everything to know about the differences between the book and the movie adaptation. Some light spoilers ahead, for those who haven't yet discovered the magic of either version.

The abusive matron is still at the orphanage

In the book, Nica and Rigel often talk about their complicated history with the matron from their childhood, Margaret Stoker. While Nica was brutally abused by the matron, Rigel was her favorite and the only child spared from her abuse — which only exacerbated his feelings of isolation and shame.

In the movie, the same relationship with the matron exists, but unlike the book where she was replaced by Mrs. Fridge when Nica was 12, Margaret was still the matron when Nica and Rigel were adopted.

Nica and Rigel's relationship developed more quickly in the movie

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The novel is a whopping 550 pages and it isn't until around halfway through that a physical relationship starts between Nica and Rigel, after much tension and build-up. However, given the runtime of the movie is an hour and 45 minutes, the relationship is sped along much faster onscreen.

Rigel is prone to headaches and severe fevers and, early in the book, he experiences a fever that causes him to pass out, leaving Nica to take care of him while their adoptive parents are out of town. While the same scene happens in the movie, it is also the first time Nica and Rigel get together physically — whereas in the book, Rigel is asleep and Nica merely sees his vulnerability for the first time.

Chaos ensues at a school dance rather than at a party

There is a raving animosity between Lionel, who has a romantic interest in the clueless Nica, and Rigel, who doesn't trust his rival (and let's face it, he's jealous). In the book, the rivalry culminates in the final scene where Rigel and Lionel get into a massive fight.

However, in the movie, it all comes to a head during the climax of the film at the school dance — which does not happen in the book. Instead, a similar chaotic scene happens when Nica attends Lionel's party, where a drunk Lionel is aggressive toward her.

At the dance, Lionel is the sober one while Rigel fends off an inebriated Nica. A near-fatal incident that occurs at the end of the book happens directly after this scene — after Nica and Rigel have sex for the first time (which is also not when it happens in the book!).

Though Asia is a minor character in the book, she is important to the story as Nica stands up to her and proves that she's not there to replace her adoptive parents' deceased son, Alan, but rather to bring them new joy. Asia, who was in love with Alan before his death, has a hard time accepting her and is brusque and rude to her.

In the film adaptation, Asia's character is the same but she is not developed and is only in two scenes: the initial scene where she reacts poorly to Nica's presence and the final scene where she accepts Nica. Her friendship with Adeline is ignored and her story as a law student (and Adaline's love story) is also not portrayed in the film.

The story has a somewhat different ending

The plot still ends with Nica testifying against Margaret (but no spoilers on the outcome of that testimony!), but it's in a slightly different, more condensed order than the book.

In the book, Nica sits by a comatose Rigel's side for months, telling him stories and attempting to rouse him.

How this dark fairytale come to end? You'll just have to read—and watch—to find out.

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