The Hollywood Construction of the Film Couple

Throughout the years of movie making, directors, producers, writers, and studios have developed certain cinematic formulas that are continually successful. One theme that has proved itself to be classic and timeless is the romantic love story. In this essay, I will explore the idea of the couple in Top Hat, Casablanca, and It Happened One Night, how genre and studio style may have influenced the construction of each couple, the love story, and modern day examples of similar romantic movies.

In the 1930’s one of the main genres of popular films was the musical, which allowed for spectacular singing and dancing numbers and elaborate sets. In 1935 RKO released Top Hat featuring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, who were considered to be the ultimate romantic couple. Renowned for their graceful dance moves, catchy show tunes, and on screen chemistry, Fred and Ginger captured the hearts of many Americans over and over again in each one of their films. In her reading, “Romantic Love, Changing Marriage Norms, and Stars as Behavioral Models”, Virginia Wright Wexman discusses the Hollywood “creation of the couple” as a formula: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. This was an important convention in the success of many Ho

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Contemporary films that mirror this romantic ideal successfully are Moulin Rouge (2001) and The Titanic (1997).

Fred Astaire’s character, Jerry Travers, becomes instantly infatuated with Ginger Rogers character, Dale Tremont. The romance typically must suffer at some point in order to make it stronger in the end, which is evident in the three films discussed. Ilsa who is trapped in a marriage, but is also in love with Rick is beside herself with grief and in a woeful moment confesses to Rick that she is still in love with him and that she can not leave him again. Wexman discusses how Hollywood typically ends films with the representation or the the promise of weddings as “the culmination of its romantic-love fantasies; thus, romantic love after marriage need not be portrayed” (p. This plot follows the same Hollywood convention as the others: boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl. They endure hardships and sorrow and still find it within themselves to love one another. The construct of this couple is built upon their undying love for each other.

In Casablanca, the formula for the couple is slightly different and is more like boy-meets- girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl-again. Ellie realizes her true feelings for Peter at her wedding ceremony with King Westley and runs off in the middle of it to find Peter. Teary eyed she asks him why; Rick’s response to Ilsa is that she’ll “regret it.

It Happened One Night, is a story of a wealthy and rebellious young woman, Ellie, who against her father’s wishes marries secretly to a man, King Westley, he does not approve of. The cinematic coupling of Bogart and Bergman became one of the main symbols of that era of filmmaking.

Approximate Word count = 1802
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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