Thursday, February 18, 2021

Thursday Movie Picks #345: Forbidden Love

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. We've got two more Thursdays in February, so two more romance-themed editions of the blogathon. This Thursday, the trope in question is "Forbidden Love". I actually picked three more recent movies, "recent" meaning made after I was born. I'll go in reverse chronological order:

Mrs. Soffel (1984). Diane Keaton plays Mrs. Soffel, the wife of a prison warden (Edward Herrmann) in Pennsylvania circa 1900. To make herself feel useful, she provides tutoring and Christian teaching to the prisoners, which is where she meets Ed Biddle (Mel Gibson) and his brother Jack (Matthew Modine). She falls in love with Ed and helps the brothers escape, which causes problems for everybody.

Endless Love (1981). Martin Hewitt is a high school senior in love with Brooke Shields, a couple of years his junior. He goes far enough with her and insinuates himself enough into the family that her dad (Don Murray) wants the relationship broken off. This leads to a failed attempt to win back Dad's approval that results in the house getting burned down, Hewitt getting sent to a juvenile mental faciity, and pining after Shields from there, and following the family to New York when he gets out. He also has an extremely inappropriate relationship with her mom (Shirley Knight).

Equus (1977). Psychiatrist Richard Burton tries to figure out why young Peter Firth loves horses.

7 comments:

joel65913 said...

Equus and Mrs. Soffel are good films but yikes Endless Love was stupid!

Equus has a strange story but it was nice to see latter day Richard Burton actually trying and giving the sort of performance that he was capable of at his best.

I had put off Mrs. Soffel because of my distaste for Mel Gibson but the picture really belongs to Diane Keaton anyway.

Only one of mine this week was made after I was born but I was trying to find three that looked at the forbidden idea from different angles.

Broken Blossoms (1919)-Chinese immigrant Cheng Huan’s (Richard Barthelmess) dream of spreading Buddhism to London has dissipated and he has sunken into aimless opium addiction until he finds young English waif Lucy Burrows (Lillian Gish) battered on his doorstep. Renewed by their emotional connection he cares for her as she recovers, but their forbidden love across ethnic boundaries is riven when they are discovered by Lucy’s abusive father (Donald Crisp).

Death Takes a Holiday (1934)-Unable to comprehend why people cling so tenaciously to life Death (Fredric March) assumes human form as Prince Sirki at Duke Lambert’s Italian villa. Mixing with his guests in an attempt to gain insight he meets the beautiful Grazia (Evelyn Venable). Instantly attracted to each other Sirki and she wrestle with the impossibility and the forbidden nature of their love.

Dirty Dancing (1987)-Teenager Baby (Jennifer Grey) is vacationing with her family at a Catskills resort in the 60’s when she meets dance instructor Johnny (Patrick Swayze). Through a series of events they become involved but the lovers face several obstacles including the dual facts that Johnny is forbidden to fraternize with the guests and Baby is likewise forbidden from seeing the older Johnny by her father (Jerry Orbach).

Cinematic Delights said...

Interesting choices! Equus I knew of (mostly because of the stage play) but the other two are new to me.

Brittani Burnham said...

I haven't seen any of your picks, but I'm familiar with Equus from the stage.

Sara said...

Endless Love sounds like Endless Stalking!

Birgit said...

I haven’t seen any of these, well, I have seen parts of Endless Love and that’s enough for me:). I would like to see Mrs. Soffel and have wanted to see it since it came out.

Ted S. (Just a Cineast) said...

Yeah, Endless Love is a disaster, but it's a really fun disaster. And it was even nominated for an Oscar. (Well, that was for Lionel Richie's title song.)

ThePunkTheory said...

Why have I never even heard of any of these?! 😅