Taking a little trip to the powder room in a random fancy New York restaurant, and expecting the gentleman accompanying her to slip her a fifty, Truman Capote's heroine is given life by the amazing Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside my current semi-obsession with Holly Golightly, the film still remains a fresh and gorgeous portrait of the very fab American lifestyle of the beginning of the 60's - or at least, the way it was being portrayed in movies. In itself, it's a little voyage to prettier, sunnier and grander times.
Honouring my late obsession with Audrey Hepburn, my second choice for the decade is her sleek, fun, stylish, suspenseful and downright marvellous Charade, co-starring Cary Grant. A breath of fresh air, it's a film that combines many elements that have worked in the past, particularly in Hitchcock films (no wonder it was Grant who got cast - the ultimate Hitch hero) . Yet another of Audrey's numerous film affairs with men twice her age, the chemistry between the two of them is still outstanding - to the point that Grant, though he had firstly turned down the offer thanks to being too old for her, was quoted as saying: "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn" Too bad it never happened.
It wouldn't have been me at all if I didn't talk about Cleopatra. Yes, the film was a major box office failure; yes, it got butchered all over; yes, its very production is as sensationalist as later was the Burtons' marriage - it's still, however, in spite of all its flaws, at the very least a film worth mentioning. Entering a world of over-budgeted grandness, Elizabeth and Richard Burton shine as the classic doomed lovers in their depictions of the icy, beautiful and moody queen Cleopatra and her faithful, passionate and desperately in love general, Mark Antony. As chemistry sparkled all the way through the film, one of Hollywood's most iconic off-screen couples was born. And you could just feel it as Burton's Antony got rid of Caesar's ghost to take his own place in Cleopatra's life.
Entirely impossible not to mention, David Lean's epic affair in the Russian revolution is nothing short of magic. Powerful as his best, heartfelt as them all, Doctor Zhivago is, in many ways, the ultimate Hollywood film. Slightly operatic and heavily social-directed, not only is it a drama for the ages, but an absolutely stunning love story revolving the complicated swift of a nation. And it's just so damn pretty...
Fun, smart, witty and absolutely fabulous - Vittorio De Sica's Ieri, Oggi, Domani is simply wonderful. With Italy's most famous duo, the eternal Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, this segmented story of love and sex, besides being very ingenious, is at times downright adorable. Not to mention it's always a joy to watch those two expand on their [excellent] comedic timing. Decidedly less loved than what it deserves to be, the 1961 adaptation of the Broadway show is still one of the most powerful love stories ever filmed.
A retelling of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story not only revamped it to a new generation of spectators, but introduced to the rest of the world a story that was well worth telling... and, Marni Nixon aside, it remains still Natalie Wood's best-known role and her final iconization - and it couldn't have been more deserved.
Maybe more known for little details other than for its own merits (Warren Beatty's jump to stardom, Natalie Wood as the first of the many Hollywood beauties he'd bed) Splendor in the Grass is, while somewhat dispairingly tragic, still a wonderful story and at core a very romantic one. Full of the misconceptions and wondering of adolescence, it marks a love story of familiar tones that slowly turns into a psychological nightmare. And Natalie Wood, besides never looking lovelier, shines all the way through it.
Who can help but loving a novice that fights the system? In the role that, a year after Mary Poppins, cemented Julie Andrews as a Hollywood star, The Sound of Music is, among various other things, a beautiful and deliciously cheeky love story (gotta love a nun that escapes the convent to marry a military man) It's one of the most polarizing musicals out there (a polarizing genre in itself), to the point that Rex Harrison declared, after seeing it, that it had been the only time he "had ever rooted for the Nazis"... but if for anything else, that scene in the rain makes it unforgettable, silly singing hills and all.
The most eternal of all stories, that of the two star-crossed lovers in fair Verona, comes to life in this 1968 adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Strictly based on the play (unlike the more modern West Side Story mentioned above), Franco Zeffirelli's film is not only a marvellous adaptation, but it's a story that could stand on its own: its innocence, its beauty, its own magic make it what it is. And how not to drown in its impossible romanticism?
And, finally, the film I'm convinced I will remain the last defender of this film until the end of time... the cinematic adaptation of the English musical that defined a time and place, Camelot is, if not as famous as its stage father, a joy to watch and a beautiful retelling of the legendary city. A tale of crossed passions, old values and lost ideals, the original Camelot represented to many the "what could've been"s of the JFK administration, a fact that formed in itself a bigger legend than that it was representing. And historical facts aside, it remains a gorgeous piece of work.
