Valentine’s Day is around the corner, but how elaborate do you really want to get in this economy? If you’re not in the 1% club, the costs of an expensive restaurant, roses, or even a heart-shaped box of chocolates can make celibacy sound like a bargain. For buffs of both film and love, here are some nifty movie romances of yesteryear worth streaming this Valentine’s Day. “The Lady Eve” (1941) No one in 1940s-era Hollywood made romantic comedies with as much sparkling wit and sophistication as Preston Sturges, and yet the celebrated writer-director knew when to include a perfectly timed pratfall. Nowhere is his genius more apparent than in his masterpiece, “The Lady Eve.” Barbara Stanwyck plays Jean Harrington, a con artist aboard an ocean liner with her sights set on seducing and fleecing Henry Fonda, the hopelessly naive son of a wealthy family. Stanwyck’s sexiness and shrewdness are a perfect foil for Fonda’s aw-shucksism, with terrific comic support from Charles Coburn as Jean’s crooked father. Silly, seductive and charming in equal measure. (Available for rental on YouTube) “Now, Voyager” (1942) In this beloved melodrama, actor Paul Henreid lit two cigarettes, handed one to Bette Davis, and prompted a nation of lovelorn smokers to do the same. “Now, Voyager” stars Davis as Charlotte Vale, a frumpy and depressive unmarried (an “old maid” to use the unfortunate parlance of the film) living under the thumb of a nastily dominating mother (Gladys Cooper). Claude Rains plays a nurturing psychiatrist who helps Charlotte find a new lease on life, even if the movie suggests that all she needed was a makeover. On a cruise, Charlotte falls hard for the unhappily married Jerry (Henreid), and sparks fly. Director Irving Rapper was known for gorgeous soapers, and “Now, Voyager” is among his most agreeably soapy. (Available for rental on YouTube) “An Affair to Remember” (1957) Director Leo McCarey’s remake of his own “Love Affair” (1939) is unabashedly romantic and wisely bets on the charisma of its stars. High-profile playboy Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) and high-society dame Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) meet on a transatlantic cruise ship (evidently, luxury liners were the meat markets of the World War II generation). Nickie has a fiancé and Terry is in a long-term relationship, but the pair’s chemistry is immediate and strong. They disembark in New York, agree to break up with their significant others, and vow to reunite in six months at the top of the Empire State Building. If it were only that simple. Prepare for a dramatic turn. “An Affair to Remember” can still elicit a few waterworks. (Available for rental on YouTube) “The Cranes Are Flying” (1957) One of the great works of Soviet cinema, “The Cranes Are Flying” is propaganda that also happens to be a stirring love story. The starry-eyed plans of young lovers Boris (Aleksey Batalov) and Veronika (Tatiana Samoilova) are put on hold with Russia’s entry into World War II. Boris bravely enlists in spite of his girlfriend’s entreaties. Uh-oh. Boris’s weaselly cousin (Aleksandr Shvorin), who avoids military service, has designs on the beautiful Veronika. Sacrifice and suffering follow. Director Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky were unparalleled masters of using camera movement to reveal character and heighten emotion. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, the picture is aided mightily by Samoilova. Her deeply felt performance made the actress an international phenomenon. (Available for streaming on HBO Max and Criterion Channel) “Petulia” (1968) Filmmaker Richard Lester might not have known it at the time, but when he ventured to San Francisco in 1967 for a movie shoot, he was creating one of the great cinematic time capsules of a watershed moment in American society. “Petulia” is steeped in the sights and sounds of the time: mod fashions, psychedelic rock, hippie culture, etc. And yet the film doesn’t simply delineate Sixties artifacts; it finds the counterculture of that era being swallowed by wealth, commercialism, and consumerism. At the fore is a compelling love story. George C. Scott’s Archie Bollen is a surgeon who becomes entangled with the recently married Petulia Danner. Played by the luminous Julie Christie, Petulia is Holly Golightly with a hallucinogenic twist––capricious to the point of combustible. These lonely, bored lovers are desperate to find passion in a world teeming with things but little heart. (Available for rental on YouTube) “Crazy Love” (2007) Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Boy loses girl. Girl meets someone else. Boy commits despicable act of spite and jealousy. Boy resolves to win girl back…once he serves out his prison sentence. “Crazy Love” isn’t your conventional love story. The documentary from directors Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens chronicles the strange relationship of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss. In the 1950s, Burt, a wildly successful New York lawyer, struck up a whirlwind romance with Linda, a raven-haired beauty 10 years his junior. Then Linda, learning that Burt had a wife and child, abruptly broke off the affair. In the summer of 1959, Burt had three goons toss lye in Linda’s face, an attack that left her blinded and disfigured. And yet that was far from the end of this twisted saga. On its surface, “Crazy Love” is the tabloid-friendly tale of a bizarre courtship, but at its core is a tale of obsession and the fear of being alone. (Available for streaming on Kanopy and Plex; for rental on YouTube) The post Streaming Romance appeared first on Oklahoma Gazette. ...read more read less