I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies

by Jeanine Basinger

From one of our leading film historians and interpreters: a brilliantly researched, irresistibly witty, delightfully illustrated examination of "the marriage movie"; what it is (or isn't) and what it has to tell us about the movies-and ourselves.

As long as there have been feature movies there have been marriage movies, and yet Hollywood has always been cautious about how to label them-perhaps because, unlike any other genre of film, the marriage movie resonates directly with the experience of almost every adult coming to see it. Here is "happily ever after"-except when things aren't happy, and when "ever after" is abruptly terminated by divorce, tragedy . . . or even murder. With her large-hearted understanding of how movies-and audiences-work, Jeanine Basinger traces the many ways Hollywood has tussled with this tricky subject, explicating the relationships of countless marriages from Blondie and Dagwood to the heartrending couple in the Iranian A Separation, from Tracy and Hepburn to Laurel and Hardy (a marriage if ever there was one) to Coach and his wife in Friday Night Lights. A treasure trove of insight and sympathy, illustrated with scores of wonderfully telling movie stills,