It's Valentines, let's talk MOVIES!

So I was just over at my friend Faye's blog, and she mentioned movies, so that got me thinking?! Dangerous, I know, but sometimes I can't help it. I like movies. I'm very much a comedy, kids and action kinda gal, I pretend to be intellectual sometimes and push to a drama, but that is a rare thing, and usually only by accident.

Anyway I was thinking about romantic films I love and that inspire me, especially in my writing.

"The Quiet Man" features John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and they are fantastic. She is everything I want MODERN heroines to be, okay maybe she's slightly more stubborn than I'd like, but she's fiesty and knows what she wants. As for Duke, he's a man's man, fighting for the love of his woman, but without throwing a punch (well that's his aim, it doesn't work out too well for him.) Bonus points for kissing in the rain, and dragging a woman across the beautiful Irish countryside for five miles!

"It Happened One Night" One of the originally road movies, a spoiled heiress goes on the lam from who father, who is opposed to her marriage to a wealthy showboater (he gets it annulled). Whilst trying to return to him she meets a journalist who sees the scoop of a lifetime in her story. What neither of them expects is to fall in love along the way. A originator of things that are now considered cliches, like Ellie teaching Peter how to hitch, by hitching her skirt and showing some leg, and Peter putting up the Walls of Jericho (see picture) to protect both of the virtues. Bonus points for Clark Gable taking the bottom out of the underwear industry, by not wearing an undershirt!

"Brief Encounter" You just can't help feeling for the couple in this doomed love affair. It all starts off so innocently, a bit of grit in the eye provoking their meeting. But this happily married (to other people) couple, fall in love anyway, though doing their darnedest to fight the attraction, and remain 'decent' people.  It's all so incredibly understated and real, and a love story, not a romance. Thank you so much Fi, for introducing me to this story. Bonus points for it's dignity and class... and trains. Trains are sexy!

So after getting this far I've realised this will be an installment thing! So we've done old school this time, maybe next time musicals, or more modern films, we'll see. But in the mean time, what are your favourite romantic films?! I'd love to know. X M