love story
Indeed, I had the same uneasy feeling at Bang the Drum Slowly as I did at Love Story when people began weeping on cue over the death of Ali McGraw's supercilious bitch. Could they really have cared for her? I doubted it. Why the crying, then? I suppose because we flatter
ourselves with tears; no one wants to appear emotionally dead, least of all to himself. But let's make this basic distinction: an honest tearjerker like Captains Courageous or How Green Was My Valley moves us by glorifying a good man who dies or a tragic way of life; our emotions, however sloppy, as least flow outwards towards some worthy object; dishonest tearjerkers induce us to cry for ourselves, they induce self-admiration and self-pity.