From the brain Archives: on Movies

I was thinking today about what movies I like (it's an offshoot of some hoomework I've been making myself do) My first thought (and that was what I was going for) was Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady. Looking at them I realized... I like Audrey Hepburn...with thre biographies and sevral other things related to her, this is not a revalation.

So oviously I had to look a little deeper. Neither main character really has a love intrest, or refuses the ones that come (I always skip the end of Tiffany's, I think it's tacked on and the book ends so much better, with her remaining a mystery). Holly is a woman transformed, from a plain and very common girl into something of an icon for the age. Pure lessons and education transform her (btw it's also the theme in Sabrina and Funny face, Audrey really plays the hidden beauty well).

Neither woman is a woman in need of romance (money, education and maybe a good therapist, yes, but clearly not a lover. I expected something diffrent, I must admit. As much as I love playing the damsel in distress, love being pursued and caught, and really have wrapped my life around the affections of men, I would have expected my escapes (what else is hours of watching the same movie if not escape) to reflect that, but instead I get women who, while they have a man, or men in thier lives are able to do so because they are able to stand on thier own, and be friendly with them.

This isn't to say that I don't love Sleeping Beauty, and every Meg Ryan movie out there where the end is love, forget about all other obsticales, together is all we want, or need. It's sweet, and I do want a fairy tale ending, and I do think that womens greatest gift to this world is beauty (and the love of it, that men will never understand) and that women understand relationship better than any man ever could, but they also understand duty and love that isn't romantic. Anna in Roman Holiday doesn't go with the man she wants because there is something higher than her fleeting relationship, sure she's in love, but she is also Love and Beauty for an entire country she had her 'moment in the woods' and returns a woman, complete in herself, knowing that she is worthy of love (maybe it's that she never questioned it...how wonderful would that be?) but that her life will not end without it.

How did the girl who cheerily sang 'I'll know' and 'Happy to keep his dinner warm' start to love characters who only have relationships at a distance?

So what are your favorite movies?