Film Series
Labor of Love: 100 Years of Movie Dates
Co-curated by Moira Weigel and Mal Ahern
Everyone has seen movies about dating. But they may not have considered how much dating has been shaped by the movies. Drawing on Moira Weigel's new history, Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), this series explores the long affair between singles looking for real life romance and the stories that they watched on screen, from cautionary silent dramas about the perils of unsupervised courtship to iconic rom coms to films about feminist and gay liberation. While the series charts a century that has given us new and previously unimaginable romantic freedoms, the trials and travails of these romantic leads prove what any single on the market already knows: dating is work.
Nora Ephron’s rom-com hit screens with a look at single Manhattan women in 1904.
A portrait of 1930s Berlin, plus a 1916 drama about an American shopgirl.
Jean-Luc Godard’s examination of youth and sex screens with a short by Agnès Varda.
This seminal documentary captures the diversity of queer life in dozens of candid interviews.
Diane Keaton stars as a sexual adventuress in this drama.
Spike Lee’s first feature is a watershed independent film of the 1980s.
Al Pacino stars as an undercover cop in this tour through New York City’s gay S&M bars.
Max Ophüls’ sumptuously shot, Oscar-nominated portrait of fin-de-siècle Vienna.
Glenn Ford and a young Ron Howard star in Vincente Minnelli’s Metrocolor rom-com.
Daniel Day-Lewis stars in this Oscar-nominated comedy set in Thatcher-era South London.
Clara Bow plays a rambunctious student in Paramount Pictures’ first talkie.
Stephanie Rothman’s 1970s exploitation film about four roommates in the age of free love.
Nia Long stars in this dramatic love story set in Chicago’s sexy poetry and jazz scene.
Warren Beatty makes his film debut in Elia Kazan’s ode to the pleasure and pain of young love.
Alicia Silverstone stars in Amy Heckerling’s beloved Jane Austen adaptation.
Christian Bale stars in this adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ satire of yuppie sociopathy.
Richard Gere and Julia Roberts star in this Beverly Hills fairy tale.
Vincente Minnelli’s Oscar-winning musical explores romance in turn-of-the-century Paris.
Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell star as best friends in this saucy comedy.
Clara Bow stars as a lowly shopgirl determined to marry her boss in this box-office smash.