Top 5 Cinema Couples Who Failed To Get It On

Valentine's Day, so how about a romantic movie?

We've moved on a bit from the days of the Hay's code, when you could only show a couple in bed together if they each had a leg on the floor on opposite sides of the bed.

But whilst there is plenty of bonking on the silver screen today, romantic films are generally a bit different as all the serious action is supposed to happen after the credits have rolled.

Or does it.

Here are five romantic movies where the end credits might not have been followed by some action between the sheets. 

1. Elaine and Benjamin in The Graduate (1967)

So do they or don't they, that's the question?

Having escaped the clutches of Mrs Robinson and persuaded Katharine Ross not to marry the boring Carl, the film ends with Dustin Hoffman looking a little uncertain about what he has actually done.

I expect most romantic movies would probably end this way if the cameras kept rolling for a few extra minutes. Or it could just be that be that Benjamin is a little disappointed to be riding on a Greyhound bus after spending the rest of the film in a drop dead gorgeous Alfa Romeo convertible.

2. Walter and Hildy in His Girl Friday (1940)

A woman who can hold her own in a conversation is definitely a good thing, but maybe Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson is a bit too much.

Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell play a divorced couple in the news business. You suspect she wore the trousers, which was probably fine as Cary Grant preferred ladies' dresses. Certainly Grant's character seemed to think so and he spends the film trying to woo her back using a variety of means, including getting her new finance arrested over and over again.

The film is just an excuse for the two leads, both at the top of their game, to trade witty banter. In the end however they both end up preferring work to marriage and got their separate ways.

Just as well really as together they stole every scene they were in.

3. Osgood Fielding III and "Daphne" in Some Like It Hot (1959)

 

In a movie in which nothing is what it seems, from the funeral parlour that is a Speakeasy to the wedding cake containing a machine gunner, the romance between a bass player in drag on the run from the Mob and a multiply divorced multi-millionaire may not be what it seems either.

We know that Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis didn't work out as couple, but maybe Osgood and "Daphne" do. He certainly seems happy.

Nobody's perfect, but this film is.

4. Laura and Alec in Brief Encounter (1945) 

A very British film in which the main characters do nothing more erotic than go to the cinema and drink tea.

Supposedly this is because they are both married, but as it was adapted from a Noel Coward play the actual reason may be slightly different.

A metaphor for same sex romance in a less progressive age it may be, but is still one of the most tear jerkingly romantic films ever made which has made an obscure railway station in Lancashire a popular tourist destination.

5. Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca (1942)

Okay, so they probably got it on like rabbits whilst they were in Paris, but in this film he has to let her go off with the leader of the resistance. Well, everyone loves a radical.

We presume this was a supreme act of selflessness although people have subsequently read rather a lot into Boggy saying to Claude Rains' Police Captain "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."