“Love is in the air.”
What would be of the film industry without incredible locations where love stories and romance happen? The streets, parks, restaurants or skyscrapers where characters interact not only do they play a major role in romance but the city where love unfolds becomes a character as well with its own identity, thoughts, conflicts, feelings and emotions. For decades, New York and Paris have been the favorite cities for cinematographers to shoot a love story. Here are 7 movies where NYC and Paris have starred in.
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Written and directed by Woody Allen, this romantic comedy-fantasy film won both the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Awards for Best Screenplay. is set in Paris.
While on a trip to Paris vacationing with his fiancée’s wealthy, conservative parents, a successful but creatively unfulfilled Hollywood screenwriter (Owen Wilson) finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s every day at midnight.
They go to a party for Jean Cocteau where the astonished Gil realizes that he has been transported back to the 1920s, an era he idolizes. He encounters Cole Porter, Alice B. Toklas, Josephine Baker and Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, who take him to meet Ernest Hemingway.
Amélie (2001)
Amélie is a shy waitress in a Montmartre café in Paris. After returning a long-lost childhood treasure to a former occupant of her apartment, and seeing the effect it has on him, she decides to set out on a mission to make others happy and in the meantime pursues a quirky guy who collects discarded photo booth pictures.
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Is there anything more special than finding true love atop the Empire State Building on Valentines Day? If you are into romantic movies, you’ll love this one, inspired and filmed in NYC.
Annie’s (Meg Ryan) relationship with her straight-laced fiancé Walter (Bill Pullman) is unlike her dream love life in the movie An Affair to Remember (1957).
Jonah (Ross Malinger), Sam’s son, is also looking for a new mother, so when Jonah puts his father on national radio, hundreds of women write to him.
Annie writes to Sam (Tom Hanks) proposing they meet atop the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. Finally, Annie meets Sam and Jonah atop the Empire State Building on Valentines Day. When Sam meets Annie he realizes it’s the same unknown woman he had spotted a few times in Seattle.
When Harry met Sally (1989)
Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) meet when she gives him a ride to NYC after they both graduate from the University of Chicago.
The film jumps through their lives as they both search for love, but fail, bumping into each other throughout life. Finally a close friendship blooms between them and both are confronted with a question: “Can a man and a woman be friends, without sex getting in the way?”
Manhattan (1979)
This American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen opens with a montage of images of Manhattan and other parts of NYC, with Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) narrating drafts of an introduction to a book about a man who loves the city.
Isaac Davis is a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl (Mariel Hemingway) but falls in love with his best friend’s mistress (Diane Keaton).
Casablanca (1942)
Casablanca is a 1942 film about an American expatriate owner of an upscale club and gambling den in the Moroccan city of Casablanca who meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications. Starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It’s one of the most romantic movies of all times.
“What about us?” Ilsa asks, not wanting to board the plane without him.
“We’ll always have Paris” he says, meaning they’ll always be together in their memories.
