The Hollywood Construction of the Film Couple essays

The Hollywood Construction of the Film Couple essays 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 1930s 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 Hollywood films then and still is today. The story in Top Hat is the typical case of mistaken identity, where the characters fall in love almost instantly and then their love gets complicated by misinformation. Recent movies that follow this same conve ntion are The Wedding Planner (2001) and Youve Got Mail (1998). These two popular movies revolve around the notion of mistaken identity, with the inevitable ending of the two characters finally getting together. Fred Astaires character, Jerry Travers, becomes instantly infatuated with Ginger Rogers character, Dale Tremont. At the time of their first encounter, a disgruntled Dale confronts Jerry about his loud tap danc...