Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge

Aditya Chopra’s debut as a director. An assistant director since 18, he made this at 23, with his father Yash Chopra producing. Shah Rukh Khan refused at first, not wanting a romantic part after his villain roles; Saif Ali Khan also passed. Chopra won him over in four meetings across several weeks. The real structural move is in the second half. Raj openly refuses to elope, so the back half becomes an infiltration comedy inside the bride’s own house, under her father’s eye: the obstacle is not removed, it is worn down from within. The title is not even the film’s line; it comes from a song in 1974’s Chor Machaye Shor. The mustard fields you take for Punjab were shot just outside Gurgaon near Delhi, the European passages largely in Switzerland. It won 10 Filmfare Awards, a record at the time. At Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir it has played since October 1995 in one daily 11.30 am matinee, now past 1,500 weeks; in 2015 the cinema considered dropping it and restored it after the audience objected. A good fit if it interests you that a love story resolves through consent won inside a house, not escape. Not for anyone waiting for the lovers to run: Raj rules it out, and the film ends only when Baldev gives way.