From the moment we meet Audrey Hepburn’s crown princess burned out by a world tour, we know she’s ripe for adventure. High on sleeping tablets she climbs out of the embassy window in Rome and encounters Gregory Peck’s struggling American reporter. William Wyler’s magical comedy is an exercise in female wish fulfilment - get a short haircut and look marvellous; try alcohol for the first time; have two men fight over you … In the best tradition, our lovers must finally choose duty over consummation, but it’s one of the great 24-hour screen dates - and clearly inspired Angelina Jolie’s so-bad-it’s-good romcom The Tourist (2010) Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar
A young American student (Ethan Hawke) and a French girl (Julie Delpy) “meet cute” on a train to Europe and wind up spending a romantic evening walking and talking around Vienna. Proof that all you need for great cinema is two people and a conversation. They vow to meet in the same place the following year although we, the cynical viewer, know they never will. In fact director Richard Linklater proved us wrong with sequels Before Sunset (2004) and the masterly Before Midnight (2013). But the trilogy has extra poignancy now Linklater has revealed he based it on a real woman who died before he could find her again Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
A tale of fraud, murder and thwarted desire, Patricia Highsmith’s psychological thriller is a brilliantly twisted holiday romance. Poor nobody Tom Ripley is so dazzled by rich playboy Dickie Greenleaf that he needs to possess him. Woe betide anyone who gets in his way… Shot against the backdrop of sun-drenched Italy, the film by Anthony Minghella (with Matt Damon and Jude Law) is an underrated masterpiece, alternately creepy and heartbreaking. But don’t miss Plein Soleil, the 1960 French version with Alain Delon as Ripley, re-released in cinemas next month Photograph: PR
David Lean’s stately liner of a film is a love affair between ageing spinster (Katharine Hepburn) and married Italian antiques dealer (Rossano Brazzi), who meet while she is holidaying in 1950s Venice. Hepburn’s secretary has spent her life saving for the trip but finds herself alone in a city of lovers, arousing Brazzi’s tender solicitude. “You make many jokes but inside you cry.” A note of caution: the plotline of a woman on a vacation from her life “saved” by a dark stranger can be glorious or more sinister (see Rebecca, Miss Garnet’s Angel or The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone) Photograph: Everett Collection /Rex Features
French arthouse director Eric Rohmer is the king of the summer holiday movie. In Le Rayon vert secretary Delphine (Marie Rivière) remains in Paris as all her friends depart for the beach. Affronted by the company of smug marrieds and unable to play the games expected of a single woman, she teeters towards despair. But then a moment of magic. She overhears a conversation about Jules Verne’s novel Le Rayon vert, which claims if you see the rare green flash at sunset, your thoughts and hopes are revealed to strangers. True to form, at Biarritz train station she meets a young man and together they observe le rayon vert. Photograph: United Archives /Alamy
James Ivory’s film of EM Forster’s novel is so 1980s it hurts - all boys with floppy fringes and girls in crinolines, set against the ravishing architecture of Florence. A hokum period piece in many ways and yet it repays repeated watching. The animal passion between Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) and George Emmerson (Julian Sands) is palpable. But Daniel Day-Lewis steals the show as ascetic Cecil Vyse, who can’t embrace a real flesh-and-blood woman. As Forster remarks sadly: “Nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it” Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features
Donna Deitch’s movie version of Jane Rule’s Desert of the Heart is set in 1950s Nevada, where English professor Vivian (Helen Shaver) takes a holiday to obtain a quickie divorce. At the ranch she meets artist Cay (Patrice Charbonneau). The courtship between uptight Vivian and bohemian Cay is delicately nuanced, hot as hell. The film is hugely generous (to men as well as women) and full of filmic references. The scene where Vivian is at the train station trying to convince Cay to travel to the next stop is a subversive take on Hollywood endings. For a spikier modern variant, see Pawel Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love (2004). Photograph: Samuel Goldwyn Company/RGA
Good-natured critique of the different stories men and women tell about love. “He got friendly holding my hand.” “She got friendly down in the sand.” Improbably, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John play teen lovers who meet at the beach and end up at same 1950s high school. The film has its tongue firmly in its cheek. Feminists are still divided about whether Sandy’s transformation into a leather-clad, smoking siren represents progress or capitulation. But Stockard Channing is the beating, dirty heart of the movie. The beach scene is a staple of the genre, along with the holiday camp, cf Dirty Dancing and Moonrise Kingdom Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features
A middle-aged romcom where the lead character is in recovery from breast cancer is pretty daring. But former Dogme director Susanne Bier wanted to make a film where the central character isn’t just defined by her illness. Danish hairdresser Ida (Trine Dyrholm) flies out to Italy for her daughter’s wedding, desperate to avoid her estranged husband and his younger mistress. Cue a holiday romance with tetchy widower Pierce Brosnan (reprising his Mama Mia! role). Yes it’s feelgood and often sentimental, but the scene where Brosnan encounters Dyrholm, naked on the beach without her wig, is a radical moment for Hollywood Photograph: PR
