There’s a particular scene, presumably from a Romance film, that I’ve seen a fair few parodies of this scene, but not the original. Basically, the scene involves two people (I assume a man and the woman in the original) , who bound gleefully towards each other, and usually there a particular piece of romantic music. It may be in slow motion.
Basically, I would like to know what the source of this is.
Supposedly it’s Wuthering Heights, but I haven’t read the book.
I doubt it was the first to do this, but there’s an entirely serious scene in Gone With the Wind wherein Melanie and her husband Ashley do the “running toward each other gleefully and embrace to swelling music.” He comes home unexpectedly after being missing after the Civil War ended.
So I think the parodies exist side-by-side with earnest uses of this scenario. I don’t think the parodies are parodies of one particular movie or book, but an honest and unironic scene which happens in many movies and books.
(Heck, I’ve done it entirely seriously myself! They never show the part where you misjudge arm postitions and clock each other in the chin, though.)
Don’t know where that cliche is from, but the music is Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture. (The entire piece is rather stunning, actually.) Just thought I’d toss that in there!
Aren’t they usually in a thick field of wild flowers?
I always thought it might be from From Here To Eternity, with the couple running toward each other in slow motion on a beach, which is why Airplane! parodied it, with them getting covered in yucky seaweed.
Another vote for “From Here to Eternity.”
There are no characters running toward each other in slow motion in From Here to Eternity.
Beside Wuthering Heights (1939) and Gone With the Wind (1939), I would add Gary Cooper and Ann Harding in Peter Ibbetson (1935), if my memory serves me right. Ken Russell parodied the cliché with Alan Bates and Jennie Linden running at each other in slow motion through a field of wild flowers in Women in Love (1969).
I believe that the cliche way predates movies (except for the romantic musical accompaniment), so good luck finding a source but for your collection, do check out Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
I’d always heard the Wuthering Heights explanation.
“Catherine!”
“Heathcliff!”