In time for Valentine's Day and throughout February, AFI Silver offers a selection of great movie romances, from 1930s screwball comedy to the quirky postmodernism of today.

AFI Member passes will be accepted at all films in the Screen Valentines: Great Movie Romances series.

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
#3 on AFI's Top 10 Romantic Comedies!

The first film to sweep the Oscars: Best Picture, Writing, Director, Actress and Actor. One of the most popular comedies of the thirties, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT holds up surprisingly well. Frank Capra's sense of screwball humor and Depression Americana are skillfully intertwined in the film's love story, which places runaway heiress Claudette Colbert and ace reporter Clark Gable on the same transcontinental bus, and later in the same bedroom in the well-known scene that raised a few eyebrows in the censorious Hays Office. "Screwball comedy...is essentially a product of the Production Code...not so much defying the Code as attacking (and kidding) the respectability that it insisted on." -film historian William K. Everson. (Note courtesy Pacific Film Archive.)

DIR/PROD Frank Capra; SCR Robert Riskin. US, 1934, b&w, 105 min. NOT RATED

Friday, January 30, 7:00; Saturday, January 31, 3:00; Thursday, February 5, 8:45

CASABLANCA
#1 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions!

Why is he in Casablanca? "I was misinformed," explains nightclub owner/war refugee Humphrey Bogart, who won't "stick his neck out for nobody"--until Ingrid Bergman walks in. CASABLANCA evolved from an unproduced play to just another Warner Bros. "B" melodrama (Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan were early choices for the leads) to a Bogart/Bergman star vehicle to a multiple Oscar winner--and finally, to the cultural icon it remains today. But the dialogue, which aficionados can now reel off by the yard, was often handed to the cast minutes before shooting, with the question of whether Bergman ended up with Bogart or Paul Henreid left for the final shooting day. "As Time Goes By" almost didn't make it in. Just another movie--until the Allied invasion of North Africa right before the premiere made CASABLANCA a prequel to history. An American classic that gains new fans with every passing decade.

DIR Michael Curtiz; SCR Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch based on the play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison; PROD Hal B. Wallis. US, 1942, b&w, 102 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, January 31, 7:00; Sunday, February 1, 7:00; Monday, February 2, 4:30; Tuesday, February 3, 4:30; Wednesday, February 4, 6:30*; Thursday, February 5, 4:30; Friday, February 6, 4:30; Sunday, February 8, 1:00; Monday, February 9, 4:30; Tuesday, February 10, 4:30; Thursday, February 12, 4:30, 8:45

MOULIN ROUGE!

With its eight Oscar nominations, Director Baz Luhrmann's phantasmagorical musical has been hailed as one of the most visually inventive and wildly kinetic films in recent memory for its mixture of turn-of-the-century Parisian nightlife, late 20th-century pop music (beautifully performed in the film by star-crossed lovers Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor) and astonishingly ornate Oscar-winning production and costume design, courtesy of Catherine Martin. (Note courtesy American Cinematheque.)

DIR/PROD/SCR Baz Luhrmann; SCR Craig Pearce; PROD Fred Baron and Martin Brown. Australia/US, 2001, color and b&w, 127 min. RATED PG-13

Friday, February 6, 7:00; Saturday, February 7, 7:30; Sunday, February 8, 8:15

SAY ANYTHING

The iconic '80s romantic comedy that ensured John Cusack's place as the ultimate geek crush. Cusack is a recent high school graduate with little plan for the future ("I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career") besides getting pretty class valedictorian Ione Skye to be his girl. To the surprise of everyone, including Skye's overprotective father John Mahoney, the two begin an intense relationship that threatens to crumble when Mahoney gets involved.

DIR/SCR Cameron Crowe; PROD Polly Platt. US, 1989, color, 100 min. RATED PG-13

Friday, February 13, 7:15; Sunday, February 15, 6:35; Monday, February 16, 1:00; Thursday February 19, 7:00

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

In this melancholy love story for the digital age, director Michel Gondry crafts a universe where bad memories can be erased with the click of a button--but where the search for human warmth remains relentless. Charlie Kaufman won an Oscar for his whimsical story about a pair of bewildered lovers who, in their rush to forget what went wrong, can't stop remembering what felt right. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet strike the perfect chord as a poetic couple struggling to connect.

DIR Michel Gondry; SCR Charlie Kaufman; PROD Anthony Bregman and Steve Golin. US, 2004, color, 108 min. RATED R

Saturday, February 14, 7:00; Monday, February 16, 3:05; Tuesday, February 17, 9:00; Thursday, February 19, 9:10

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
#5 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions!

It would be a tragedy if the world remembered AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER as nothing more than the movie Meg Ryan cries over in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE. Director McCarey's sumptuous remake of his classic LOVE AFFAIR, working from a virtually identical script, is one of the great Hollywood romances, as elegant as it is bursting with emotion, and as deft as one can imagine in its mixture of laughter and tears. This time, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are the couple, and they bring the story to a completely different pitch: graceful restraint followed by emotional outpouring. With Cathleen Nesbitt as grandmother Janou. (Note courtesy Film Society of Lincoln Center.)

DIR/SCR Leo McCarey; SCR Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart; PROD Jerry Wald. US, 1957, color, 119 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, February 21, 7:15; Sunday, February 22, 1:00; Tuesday, February 24, 6:45

ANNIE HALL
#2 on AFI's Top 10 Romantic Comedies!

The definitive "Woody Allen Film," ANNIE HALL dissects the anatomy of the relationship between Allen's alter ego--neurotic New York City stand-up comic Alvy Singer--and Diane Keaton's la-de-da Chippewa Falls shiksa. The fusion of the comic with the personal, set against the backdrop of New York City (and Los Angeles), earned Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director, and Best Actress for Keaton. Hilarious cameos featuring Shelley Duvall, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Christopher Walken and Marshall McLuhan, as well as Jeff Goldblum and Sigourney Weaver.

DIR/SCR Woody Allen; SCR Marshall Brickman; PROD Charles H. Joffe and Jack Rollins. US, 1977, color, 93 min. RATED PG

Friday, February 27, 9:00; Monday, March 2, 9:05; Wednesday, March 4, 6:30*

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

Five Oscar nominations, including a Best Actress nod for Audrey Hepburn, at her best and most iconic as Holly Golightly, a madcap gal-about-town living on dreams as she serial-dates the wealthiest men in New York City. Neighbor George Peppard, a kept man of the married Patricia Neal, is an aspiring writer who struggles with writer's block and longs for Holly. Two Oscars for composer Henry Mancini, including one for his hit "Moon River," a collaboration with Johnny Mercer.

DIR Blake Edwards; SCR George Axelrod, based on the novella by Truman Capote; PROD Martin Jurow and Richard Shepherd. US, 1961, color, 115 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, February 28, 7:15; Sunday, March 1, 1:00; Tuesday, March 3, 9:05; Thursday, March 5, 9:15