Iconic Romance: A Cinematic Valentine’s Day Movie Guide

If you can believe it, there are even fewer good movies genuinely set on Valentine’s Day than there are on not-exactly-movie-genic holidays and. Maybe it’s because of the ways courtship (and therefore both romantic movies, and the holiday itself) changed over the course of the 20th Century, or maybe because—unlike setting a romantic movie over Christmas—placing your romantic comedy or drama specifically on Valentine’s Day feels too much like a hat on a hat.

In contemporary times, maybe the vicious one-two punch of I Hate Valentine’s Day (2009, Nia Vardalos) and Valentine’s Day (2010, Garry Marshall) scared filmmakers off the date for good. Of course, there are plenty of romance movies that will do the trick as Valentine’s Day movies—so many, in fact, that sifting through all of them can become overwhelming even before you take into account the flood of options available at the click of a button across so many streaming channels.

The upside is that within that flood, you may be able to find a romantic movie for whatever sub-mood you’re in – and that movie could even be a great one, if you follow this handy guide. Because the aim here is not just to find you a good-enough rom-com to inspire a halfhearted press of “play” once you and your date/partner/hookup are too tired to keep searching.

The following thirteen romances attempt to avoid the blatantly lopsided, the overtly problematic, and the movies where you have to just go with it to get to the kissing. Not because it’s wrong to enjoy a lopsided, problematic, age-gapped, power-imbalanced, potentially unhealthy just-get-to-the-kissing romance, of course—some of the best romantic movies ever made fit that description.

But you also deserve a romantic night at the movies—whether wholly delightful or bittersweet—without an asterisk like “it’s great if you half-ignore Andie MacDowell.” Plus, I’m assuming you’ve seen, or at least understand that you should see, bona fide all-time classics like It Happened One Night or The Philadelphia Story. As such, nothing from the AFI Top 100 will be included here. (Some of them are on the more specialized AFI 100 Passions list, because otherwise that’s a lot of passions to dismiss.)

Some of these are wholly comic, some of them are deeply sad, and some of them (well, one of them) involves potential murder via giant cat—which is to say, there’s something for almost any film fan. A few of them even take place on or around Valentine’s Day.

In the mood for screwball love: My Man Godfrey (1936)The influence of screwball comedies on modern rom-coms is so pervasive that it’s also become watered-down over the years, so a straight shot of the real thing can be bracing. My Man Godfrey has a romance between a down-on-his-luck “forgotten man” (William Powell) and the well-meaning younger daughter (Carole Lombard) of a rich family, but it’s less of a romance than the likes of His Girl Friday or The Philadelphia Story (and, not to be unkind, a bit more sophisticated than the animal antics of Bringing Up Baby), while still serving up a delightful romantic give-and-take en route to a happy ending. My Man Godfrey has everything you want out of a Depression-era screwball rom-com: Hoovervilles, flighty rich people, short-suffering butlers, dizzy infatuation, and escape from economic despair. In a perfectly screwy touch, Powell and Lombard were married—but split up years before making the movie together.

In the mood for larcenous love: The Lady Eve (1941)Aren’t a lot of relationships built on some sort of con or another? The Lady Eve, a gem from Preston Sturges, simply makes that explicit, as con woman Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) targets Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), only to fall in love with him—and then, when he gets wise to her initial scheme, attempts revenge via an even more outlandish plot. Stanwyck often played tougher and/or sultrier roles than more frequent rom-com performers, which makes her commitment to her character’s criminal lifestyle in The Lady Eve both more believable and even funnier. For that matter, the star of The Ox-Bow Incident and Young Mr. Lincoln doesn’t exactly scream “zany,” either, yet Fonda pairs perfectly with Stanwyck in this fast-paced and ultimately pretty sexy material. This, too, makes sense: Acting can also be a beautiful con. (Sturges was on a roll here; his screwball rom-com from the following year, The Palm Beach Story, is also terrific.)