Young Bruehl, Elizabeth. "Where Do We Fall When We Fall In Love." Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 8.2 (2003): 279-288.

This article looks at a scientific approach to love and how Freud’s ideas about love distance themselves from the strictly Darwinian approach to the act of falling and being in love. The article explores the various reasons why people fall in love and are attracted to the idea of falling and being in love. These ideas include chemical reactions that force the brain into thinking that it is in love, a deep-rooted narcissism that subconsciously forces people to seek approval through love in others, and an idealization of the other in order to idealize ourselves (the last two idea are closely linked). The article ultimately argues that the desire to be loved or the act of being in love is not caused by one’s desire to love another or genuine admiration for another person. Instead, Young-Bruehl says that the amphetamine rush accompanied by the idealization of a partner tricks the brain and the person into believing not that he or she is in love but that he or she can be loved.

This article is particularly interesting when looked at within the context of the character of Dr. Constance Peterson. The character herself notes that love is not an emotional response but a series of chemical reactions. She states that love is a powerful illusion until she herself feels the pull of love when she falls for the mysterious John Ballantine. Just as Dr. Peterson follows to a tee the evolutionary response to an attractive man with feelings of love, she also exhibits the signs of mania that Freud and his followers argue follows the period of mourning over a romantic loss. In the case of Dr. Peterson, this loss manifests itself through her quest to free John Ballantine and to prove his innocence. Ultimately the two end up together, happy. But according to the article if the film peaked in on the two lovebirds down the line we would not find a happy couple. Instead we would find two people who had come off their amphetamine highs only to realize that their ideal mates were in reality surrogate receptors for the love that they wish they could give themselves.

The "girl-next-door" was most notable for what she wasn't: Marilyn Monroe. Seductress Monroe represented one end of the spectrum of 1950s female roles, and she was decidedly at the opposite end of the girl next door. In a time of national crisis (first World War II, and later the Cold War), the girl next door offered a wholesome and patriotic image. Harvey argues that the Marilyn-type was on the decline, starting in the 1940s, in favor of the girl next door. The 1950s ideal was "nicer, simpler, younger...more girlish than womanly." Harvey argues that already famous stars of the period, like Lucille Ball, adapted themselves to fit into this model.

Hepburn, who was just becoming famous, didn't have to adapt, but she certainly did fit the part. In Sabrina, she was innocent to the point of being child-like, also reflected by her demure wardrobe and polite way. Her thin body is the opposite of Marilyn Monroe's ample curves, embodying the "girlish" part of the girl, not woman, next door. Harvey argues that this image is emblematic of most female stars, aside from Marilyn Monroe, in the 1950s, an opinion also echoed by Potter (see "I Love You, But..."). Harvey doesn't really get into the implications of this stereotype, or why Monroe was allowed to remain outside of it, but he offers many examples that give a picture of a casting and acting trend of the 1950s.

Potter sees the cold war as the most important feature affecting 1950s films. The post-World War II rapture had faded, leaving an all-encompassing but largely invisible fear. For this reason, Potter argues, people focused on making themselves happy in areas of their lives that, unlike foreign affairs, they did have control over: home and family life. This sense of escapism clearly manifests itself in Sabrina's fantasy quality.

People became concerned with living in the suburbs and owning the latest commodities, while civil rights issues, like women's role in the workforce or race and class issues, seemed to evaporate from the national conscience. We see this in the emphasis on the suburban Larrabee family's opulent wealth in Sabrina, and the absence of ambition for Sabrina to do anything but fall in love with one of the powerful Larrabee brothers, rather than using her new education and sophistication to further her individual lifestyle. Women in the 1950s were expected to remain domestic, or at least quit their jobs upon marriage. Any woman who did not adhere to this was said to have a "masculinity complex." These ideas were also shaped by Dr. Spock's baby boom child-rearing advice.

In movies, Potter saw women's roles converging to fit into one of the two studio-promulgated stereotypes of the era: virgin or whore. Hepburn's Sabrina would be classified as a textbook virgin, and was thus only allowed to "exude a vague air of flirtatious sexual promise." Men had more power than women, but also had to fit into molds of upstanding masculinity, like John Wayne, the honest and fatherly cowboy, or laid-back sexual suaveness, like Rock Hudson. Humphrey Bogart's Linus can clearly be read as in line with what Wayne represented.

Using Potter's historical information, we can understand and read films in their proper context.

Wartenberg argues that the filmmaker and audience often see past the initial estimation of unlikeliness because they understand that the two love each other or share a bond, despite apparent obstacles and violations of what is socially acceptable. In this way, the pairing of an unlikely couple, for Wartenberg, can function as a vehicle for social critique. In their plotlines, the films find a way to negotiate whatever social barrier might be separating them, and during these 90 or so minutes, the audience develops a sympathy for both the individual couple and their situation. Even a small detail can elicit this effect. At the end of Some Like It Hot, for instance, when Lemmon's character reveals he is actually a man, Brown's character shrugs it off and says, "Nobody's perfect." Though this is a meant to get laughs from the audience, Wartenberg also argues that it will cause them to think about why they're laughing, thus subverting societal norms.

Wartenberg acknowledges that these films don't present themselves as "vehicles for serious social analysis," but he rejects the common conviction that films are superficial and reinforce dominant social beliefs. He concedes that sometimes in fighting certain stereotypes, films falter by including other stereotypes.

Sabrina is not mentioned in Wartenberg's analysis, but fits in neatly as a romance spanning the upper and lower class. The lower class Sabrina surprises high society when she gets involved with the upper class Larrabee brothers, and this plotline works the subvert and undo the stronghold of class barriers in 1950s society.  Though seemingly rigid structures might keep a couple apart, Hollywood implicitly approved of and endorsed this unlikely pairing.

Because this article takes a methodological approach, it is not very accessible for the average film scholar. It also talks about trends as a whole, leaving out the detailed scene analyses that those interested in films often enjoy. But the article does a good job of trying to examine what the medium of film might have to say about our culture, and its strength lies in its ability to offer empirical evidence of trends, such as an explosion of romantic comedies in the 1990s, as opposed to individual examples. In this way, we can look at the trends of particular decades. When Sabrina was released, in the 1950s, for example, romantic drama was more popular than romantic comedy, a reversal of what is currently true. Other subsets that are popular now, such as teen romances or romances that feature supernatural elements (like 1990's Ghost), were nearly nonexistent in the 1950s.

The study also found that cultural conditions have effectively killed many formerly popular plotlines of romance movies. Couples in different classes, for example, no longer offer a "convincing dramatic impediment." Movies that feature these aging romantic conventions," then, can only remain popular today as "relics of an earlier era." This statement serves to justify Sabrina's ongoing popularity despite its perhaps hard-to-swallow plotline. All in all, romantic films, even the current ones, do continue to reinforce some of the more conservative romantic tendencies in our culture, namely the importance of marriage and fidelity, and this has not changed since the days when Sabrina was released.

            In this critical piece, Philip Kerr argues that in American cinema there is an underlying sense of embarrassment or discomfort with the idea of love, which leads to the inclusion of humor in films that deal directly with love.  Kerr asserts that it is for this reason that the majority of romance films in American cinema in recent years have been romantic comedies.  Kerr cites Annie Hall (1977), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), While You Were Sleeping (1995), As Good as it Gets (1997), and What Women Want (2000) among examples of these romantic comedies.  He argues that European cinema is not faced with such restrictions and inhibitions and therefore explores love in much more serious tones and treats it with greater respect.  Kerr takes this argument one step further to assert, rather radically, that “outside New York and Los Angeles, Americans don’t feel comfortable with the English language… which is the polite way of saying that outside the big cities, most Americans are plain inarticulate.”  Kerr does not make it clear how he arrives at such a conclusion based on his earlier allegation that Americans are uncomfortable addressing love and romance directly.  He does not provide the reader with definitions of what he means by inarticulate, so it is hard to determine exactly what Kerr is arguing.  There is a definite negative undertone to his critique of American cinema in contrast with European cinema, but he does not provide any reason as to why Americans and Europeans might address love differently, nor does he introduce any ways to remedy the situation.  The problem with Kerr’s argument is that, while he shows an association between the proliferation of romantic comedies and the sense of discomfort with love in American society, he does not provide enough evidence to prove a causal relationship between the two concepts.  This article has minimal relevance to Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, though it does put it in the context of the modern romantic comedy and set it in a group of potential comparable and notable films.  It is important to look at articles such as this one that examine Annie Hall in a much larger context so as not to get caught up only in articles that look specifically at the minute details and underpinnings of the specific film itself.  It is easy to find oneself looking only at character analyses and symbolism within the cinematography of a particular film, which can sometimes cause one to lose sight of the film in the larger context of its role in American cinema and the connotations that its place in film history bring to the film. 

            This article addresses the popularity and subsequent significance of both the romantic and the screwball comedy.  The main difference between the screwball comedy and the romantic comedy is that the former tends to emphasize humor and absurdity, while the latter focuses on love and romance.  Both variations of the genre are comedic in nature, but distinct types of character behavior differentiate the two separate subgenres.  Screwball comedies originated in the 1930s with It Happened One Night (1934) with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable and My Man Godfrey (1936) with Carole Lombard, but have still have almost exact parallels to modern films such as Runaway Bride (1999) with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and Housesitter (1992) with Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin.  The main distinction between the behavior of characters in screwball comedies versus those in romantic comedies occurs in the tendency for characters to engage in eccentric and wacky feats throughout the film in screwball comedies as compared to the much more somber actions of characters in romantic comedies.  This is most evident in the role of the heroine.  Wes Gehring uses the example of Katherine Hepburn’s outrageous antics in the classic screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby (1938), in comparison with the more serious actions of Irene Dunne in Love Affair (1939), a classic romantic comedy.  The behavior and personality of the heroine affects the behavior and personalities of the supporting characters.  As a result, the other main characters in screwball comedies tend to exhibit similar eccentricity, while the other main characters in romantic comedies are appropriately composed and conventional.  This, however, is not always true for the heroine’s male counterpart.  In order to make up for the relative solemnity of the heroine in romantic comedies, the male counterpart is often somewhat significantly less reserved.  This has given rise to the trend for the male lead in romantic comedies to be a stand-up comedian or at least possess similar qualities and demeanor.  Though this article never directly references Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977), the content of the article is directly applicable to the film.  Annie Hall is a classic example of a romantic comedy, which borders on the realm of a screwball comedy due to the characters’ eccentricity, but nonetheless retains a somber enough feeling to remain a romantic comedy.  Woody Allen’s role as Alvy Singer is a perfect example of the use of a more free-spirited male lead to counteract the relative seriousness of the heroine, in this case Diane Keaton as Annie Hall.  Woody Allen is a stand-up comic who adds humor and eccentricity to the narrative and uses this humor to play off of Diane Keaton, which balances the seriousness of the love story with the comedic nature of their relationship.