Classic Movies for February

February is about Valentine’s Day, but it is also about President’s Day, Black History Month and being utterly sick of Winter (you were so excited when the leaves fell. What happened?)

It’s okay: ye olde Tinseltown is there for you.

Love in Black & White

Casablanca

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This is the story of a bar-owner in Casablanca, Morocco who becomes re-acquainted with the love of his life:a woman who has married someone else. Her husband is wanted by the Nazis and the only one who can get them to safety is her former lover.

This movie is ‘the’ romance. Humphrey Bogart does not play the ridiculously-handsome-yet-seemingly-unavailable Mr. Right and Ingrid Bergman is no love-struck slap-stick comedienne. This movie is serious and captivating. The dialogue alone is as near to perfection as a film gets: from “Play it again, Sam” to “We’ll always have Paris” Casablanca has been quoted more than the Declaration of Independence. Men like it. Women like it. It’s the “anti-romance” romance.

The Shop Around the Corner

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This is Jimmy Stewart’s other Christmas movie but it centers around a funny hate-first-love-later plot. It is set in Budapest, Hungary.

Dances with Wolves

This is another movie that both men and women like. It is another ’serious’ romance. The story of Civil War hero John Dunbar and the white woman turned Sioux Stands-with-a-Fist, Dances With Wolves deals with the brutality of a very dark periods in our nation’s history and the displacement of the Native American people. It stars Kevin Costner as John Dunbar and it’s high-time it made more classic movie lists- even though it’s not in black & white.

When Harry Met Sally

Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. What more can be said? This movie also spawned a quote: “I’ll have what she’s having.” The woman who says that line at the end of the famous fake-orgasm scene is the director’s mother.

Black History for Everyone

The Color Purple

This is one of those classic movies that gets quoted all the time for no particular reason (You tol’ Harpo to beat me…).

Or maybe there is a reason: this movie is funny, heart wrenching and provoking. When you watch The Color Purple you get angry, you cry and you laugh.

Like the Pulitzer winning book it’s based on, this movie has cultural significance as well. It tells the story of a black woman who finds herself. A story of sexism, rape, imperialism and discrimination, the ultimate message of the Color Purple is “Yeah, things get pretty bad. But look how beautiful life is.”

 Roots

Okay, I know this is a television miniseries but before you chop off my foot, hear me out. This is some of the best acting and film-making in the genre. The dramatization of Alex Haley’s family saga, Roots is the story of Kunta Kinte, a young African boy who becomes a slave in America. This movie showed people a startling picture of how the slavery system worked.

 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

This movie features the great partnership between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as the parents of a young woman who brings home her black fiancee. It dealt with race relations in a time when dealing with race relations was dangerous- and yet the movie is light-hearted and quite funny.

 In the Heat of the Night

Another fantastic Sidney Poitier film, In the Heat of the Night is about a police detective from up north who comes to Mississippi to visit his mother, and ends up solving a murder. Only one problem: he’s a black man. This movie is an awesome detective story,but packs a thematic punch in the way it deals with Southern racism. It also spawned a great quote: “They call me Mr. Tibbs!”

For more fantastic info about great films, check out the American Film Institute