What an awful week! I think I lost track of all the bad and traumatizing things happening around the world. Just as I’d get caught on the latest developments in bad story 1, bad stories 2 and 3 and 4 were spinning out of control. As many Tweeted last night, “Is this is the season finale of America?”

In the wake of the worst week in recent memory, we all need something cheerful. I suggest It Happened One Night, Frank Capra’s screwball comedy starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a runaway bride story turned opposites attract romance. It’s surprisingly racy, very sweet, and utterly satisfying.

There’s a lot more of Clark in that scene than in the whole of Gone With the Wind, made five years later. But to see if the Walls of Jericho do come down, you’ll have to watch the whole thing.

Today’s fine romance is Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair’s spectacular Robert Altman-esque take on a Delhi wedding, filled with twists and family secrets. And it ends with not one, but two weddings. Seriously, if you haven’t seen this movie, run, don’t walk. It’s romantic, touching, sweet, funny, and flat-out gorgeous.

Tell me that this happened at your rehearsal dinner, right?

Stay dry, my friends.

Yesterday was a sad day for people who like movies. The loss that’s getting the most attention is Robert Ebert, the beloved film critic. Like seemingly everyone, I adored Ebert’s writing. He was always lucent and he knew what, and why, he liked — an astonishingly rare gift, even for a critic. He wrote about popular film and art film with the same insight and wasn’t afraid to give a good review to a blockbuster or to pan something pretentious. He was also, judging by Twitter, a lovely human being. Popular film writing will never be the same.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala also died. She wrote the screenplays for most of the Merchant-Ivory films, including A Room with a View and Howard’s End, both of which garnered her Academy Awards. In her honor, A Room with a View is today’s fine romance.

Gorgeous. The cinematography, the setting, the acting, and oh the music! I have chills.

For fun, here’s Ebert’s review of A Room with a View, to which he gave four stars and of which he said, “It is an intellectual film, but intellectual about emotions: It encourages us to think about how we feel, instead of simply acting on our feelings.”

Thank you, Robert and Ruth, for showing so much passion about the movies.

One of my favorite romantic films of the 00s is In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wai’s achingly beautiful ode to restraint and repression in 1960s Hong Kong. It stars Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, who were very probably the most attractive people on earth when the film was made. I covet every dress Cheung wears in the film, though I haven’t an ounce of her grace or bearing. It’s slow moving, understated, and seductive as hell.

Also, the music is phenomenal and I may or may not be listening to it right now as I write.

This week’s fine romance romance is Notorious, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. This movie, y’all, this movie: it has spying, Nazis, intrigue, exotic settings, great clothes, and romance. And heat! My gosh the heat.

See, now you want some fried chicken and a cold shower.