While Valentine’s Day is a day for romance, some couples (and even singles) will want to cozy up on the couch and watch a movie all about love.
Variety has compiled its list of the top 50 most romantic movies. They were chosen for “grand passion, for chemistry and heat and all that good stuff” or what the entertainment publication called the “Swoon Factor” that occurs “between the audience and the screen.”
Some movies were made decades ago — including No. 49, “Trouble in Paradise,” released in 1932, or “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” from 1927.
Others are classics such as 2004′s “The Notebook,” which came in at No. 46, or “The Princess Bride,” which is No. 35.
So what is the most romantic movie according to Variety?
That honor goes to the 1942 Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman classic “Casablanca.”
Variety said of “Casablanca,” “In all of cinema, there is no love connection more pure, more impassioned, more haunted by the past, more alive in the present, more complicated by circumstance than the one between Rick (Humphrey Bogart), the expatriate owner of a shady Moroccan nightclub and gambling den, and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), the woman he fell in love with in Paris in 1940, only to be abandoned by her for mysterious reasons.”
No. 2 is 1997′s “Titanic,” which Variety called “the swooniest romantic movie of its time.”
You may not think about Alfred Hitchcock and romance in the same passing, but No. 3 is Cary Grant’s and Grace Kelly’s “To Catch a Thief,’ released in 1955.
No. 4 on the list is the Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman musical “Moulin Rouge!”
Rounding out the top five is Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s 2018 version of “A Star is Born.”
Here is the rest of the list:
6. “Brief Encounter” (1945)
7. “Ghost” (1990)
8. “Brokeback Mountain” (2005)
9. “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964)
10. “Gone with the Wind” (1939)
11. “Roman Holiday” (1953)
12. “Jerry Maguire” (1996)
13. “Annie Hall” (1977)
14. The ‘Before’ Trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013)
15. “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967)
16. “City Lights” (1931)
17. “Moonstruck” (1987)
18. “In the Mood for Love” (2000)
19. “An Officer and a Gentleman” (1982)
20. “The Apartment” (1960)
21. “Moonlight” (2016)
22. “Sid and Nancy “(1986)
23. “The Remains of the Day” (1993)
24. “A Star Is Born” (1954)
25. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (1988)
26. “Out of Sight” (1998)
27. “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994)
28. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)
29. “La La Land” (2016)
30. “Vertigo” (1958)
31. “Call Me by Your Name” (2017)
32. “Love & Basketball” (2000)
33. “Beauty and the Beast“ (1946)
34. “Past Lives” (2023)
35. “The Princess Bride” (1987)
36. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” (1927)
37. “The Bodyguard” (1992)
38. “Carol” (2015)
39. “The Way We Were” (1973)
40. “Say Anything” (1989)
41. “Mississippi Masala” (1991)
42. “Pretty Woman” (1990)
43. “Once” (2007)
44. “The Sound of Music” (1965)
45. “All That Heaven Allows” (1955)
46. “The Notebook” (2004)
47. “The Bridges of Madison County” (1995)
48. “Splash” (1984)
49. “Trouble in Paradise” (1932)
50. “Dirty Dancing” (1987)