MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Best Classic Movies With No Love Interes...

Best Classic Movies With No Love Interest?


Either no love interest, or a very limited one..

It seems almost every film has it. I guess after seeing thousands of love stories, I want something different.. getting bored, running out of movie ideas. Sometimes it's a good thing, but usually it's an easy way to get the audience. Whether it teases the audience, excites them sexually, or if people live vicariously through them or their own personal fantasies, carnal or platonic, or using a character or a scene as a metaphor for your own life.

I remember Ebert criticizing "There Will Be Blood" for not having a love interest. It did - between H.G. and Mary, but it's not milked. I think that's the best one without it being the center of everything. It's more subtle and pure, rather than devious and exhausting.

If you have a film you'd recommend, here ya go, I'm constantly trying new kinds of films, different director. I can only imagine a great film with no love interest being pretty great if it can stand on it's own without using sex or love or both to fall back o to kill time. It's like a lot of the bands I love - they are still my favorites, but I find myself not wanting to listen to them, and sticking with songs that are either brand new, or songs I haven't heard in a really long time.

reply

I certainly agree with you that romance seems to work itself into nearly every movie, and it does start to get a bit tedious. Unfortunately, I don't have any non-romance recommendations off the top of my head...

reply

Lawrence of Arabia.....Enough said!

reply

If you have 3.5 hours to spare and ignore his love interest (Arabia lol).

reply

"The tragic love story between a man and his emotionally unavailable sand dune." :D

reply

Would have looked great on the poster...

reply

The Shawshank Redemption is the first that comes to mind.

Deliverance is the second.

reply

I was going to say Shawshank but then you have to remember how come he was in jail in the first place. Not his love interest sure, but there was one still with his wife and her lover.

reply

OP said that rules are not that strict. I understood it as "movies where romance is not a motivator"

EDIT: seems that there are plenty of such movies, more than I thought

reply

Ahh - that'll teach me not to read the first post fully then lol. :)

I recommend The Fall then which has a very slight love interest but is a beautiful and amazing film.

reply

The Fall... one of my favorite movies. đź‘Ť

reply

Have you seen Emerald City yet?

reply

The series? Not yet.

reply

As you liked The Fall you will like what he did with his version of the Wizard Of Oz.

reply

Wow, then I definitely have to check that out. So many good series to watch, so little time... ⏰

reply

Ain't that the truth.

reply

Trailer for it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRCKdYORpiE

reply

Not at all what I expected... has a Game of Thrones feel.

reply

It is good in that they are not showing a lot of the beautiful scenes in the trailer unlike the trailer for The Fall which showed too much.

I hope they make more of the series as I really enjoyed it.

reply

Some of it is kinda like Game of Thrones, but it has enough original elements to be its own thing.

reply

At first I was shocked that Dorothy is an adult, but then I thought "why not" that's an interesting take. But everything else I saw in the trailer looks like they are trying to copy Game of Thrones.

Maybe it's best not to judge in advance. I'll probably watch an episode or two to see if it's original enough to continue watching.

reply

It's is only similar to GOT in that there are several people wanting to rule OZ, but it is based on the stories about the land of Oz, which were written over 100 years ago so I guess you could really say that GOT is kind of like the OZ stories lol.

reply

Oh boy, the more I read explanations in here, the more it seems to me that the authors wanted something similar to GOT, but they also wanted recognizable names to attract more viewers (the way remakes usually do), so they decided to use Wizard of OZ template and bastardize it while milking it for what's worth.

reply

But the Oz stories came first by 100 years in terms of separate factions fighting over a land with fantasy bits thrown in.

There have been many remakes of TWOO over the years, so GOT was never the first to do this anyway and this show is based on more than one Oz story. Its a re-telling of them rather than a GOT ripoff.

You should watch the series and see for yourself.

Summary of the Oz stories -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oz_books

reply

Okay. But if I start watching and notice that the Lion looks like a Dothraki, I'm done with it... hehe

reply

Plus I hardly think it ever entered Tarsem's head that he was trying to emulate a GOT type show.

reply

Mine too. Beautiful and amazing, just as Keybored said.

reply

It depends on what you mean by no love interest. If you mean not a hint of sexuality or romance, that's tough. Some movies do come to mind. but I must admit, I might be completely off on these:

12 angry men
Treasure of Sierra Madre
Bridge on the River Kwai
In the heat of the night
Patton
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Platoon (maybe)
Silence of the lambs (I think so, but I also might have forgotten some angle here)

Among the more recent ones Million Dollar Baby (if you consider it to be a classic).

reply

War Horse.

Cried my eyes out multiple times during the movie. But I cry at cartoons, too, so I'm not reliable :)

edit: now that I think about it, many of Spielberg movies have no love interest: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schinder's List, War of the Worlds...

Btw, guys, has anybody seen Empire of the Sun? Couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw that Christian Bale as a kid is in it.

reply

I keep wanting to see that but still haven't had a chance to. >.<

reply

It's beautiful and really emotional.
Can't believe how great that horse was trained to act the right way. Amazing!
Please see it if you have a chance. You won't regret it! Can't you look it up on the net and see it online? Is this illegal where you live?

reply

I will definitely try to see it, and probably post on the boards once I do. c;

About seeing it online, it depends. Streaming from Netflix or another trusted service is fine, but watching a pirated version on YouTube or whatever is questionable. I'm in USA, btw.

On on the Steven Spielberg movies, I thought Jurassic Park did have some minor romance? Maybe not all of them, but I don't remember. I thought Hook might have had some small hints of romance, too. Only saw those movies once...

reply

"has anybody seen Empire of the Sun?" Loved it enough to watch it several times, Scarletter.

reply

[deleted]

2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange...
Paths of Glory
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler's List
12 Angry Men
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Good the Bad and the Ugly
Harakiri
Logan
Usual Suspects
Silence of the Lambs
Alien
Apocalypse Now
Reservoir Dogs

There are many

reply

Psycho, Marion Cranes romance with Sam sadly cut short thanks to Norman bates.

reply

Well, the love interest drove the motivation for the initial crime so I don't think you can count Psycho

reply

Brokeback Mountain.

reply


LOL!!

reply