A film lover’s guide to New Year’s Eve

The film in which Shirley MacLaine dazzled the world, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is a whip smart comedy in which Jack Lemmon plays a hapless bachelor who lets his office executives use his New York apartment for their secret affairs which end on New Year’s Eve. When Baxter finally confesses love over a game of cards, Fran’s response—‘shut up and deal’—is classic Wilder, and one of cinema’s most charming ways of saying ‘I love you too’.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights tells of a wide-eyed teenager turned rising star of the LA porn industry, Dirk Diggler. On the New Year’s Eve that would usher in the 80s, things take a turn, beginning with an unsettlingly stylised murder-suicide sequence. What began as the height of late 70s disco—all legs, roller-skates, and a glittering soundtrack to go along with it—proves to be a dark fairy tale, as Dirk enters a spiral of drugs, violence, and self-destruction.

As the world mourns Rob Reiner, we look back at one of his most beloved films, and one of the great New Year’s Eve sequences. Written by Nora Ephron, When Harry met Sally answers the age-old question, ‘can a man and a woman ever be just friends?’ In the film’s finale, Harry (Billy Crystal) finally confesses his love for Sally (Meg Ryan). Wrapped up in their first lover’s quarrel, they miss the countdown to midnight, only to fall into each other’s arms to the sound of Auld Lang Syne. 

There is something appealing about a New Year’s Eve spent à deux, but in Billy Wilder’s classic noir, Sunset Boulevard, it is just plain awkward. In an iconic scene, screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) attends a lavish and lonely New Year’s Eve party hosted by faded film-star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), soon discovering that he is the only guest. Realising that he has become caught up in the hollow delusions of Hollywood itself, Joe slips away, leaving Norma alone with her narcissistic fantasy.

Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan follows a sparkling set of Manhattanites in New York’s debutante scene. Much of the film is set in the early hours, where the precocious coterie entertains with Stillman’s witty, literate dialogue. ‘In a little more than an hour, the season will be over,’ one remarks, referring to the parties that have brought them together, but also the past they are trying to preserve. Though New Year’s Eve marks the beginning of the end for the rat-pack, Metropolitan still remains a fresh tale of coming-of-age.

New Year’s Eve is a time of beginnings and endings. In César Award-winning director Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The New Years (Los años nuevos), it represents the decision to choose someone, year after year. The series is an honest examination of modern commitment, following Ana (Iria Del Río) and Óscar (Francesco Carril) from the night they meet through ten subsequent New Year’s Eves, as their unexpected romance unfolds. The series launched on MUBI in December, with each weekly episode capturing a single night.

When Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) meets Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) aboard a ship en route to New York, they share a heart-quickening kiss on New Year’s Eve, despite being romantically involved with other people. They agree to meet at the top of the Empire State Building in six months’ time if their feelings have not changed, but fate gets in the way. An Affair to Remember is a remake of director Leo McCarey’s own 1939 Love Affair, and the blueprint for all the weepies that follow.

Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle features a moving New Year’s Eve sequence in which widower Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is visited by his deceased wife in a dream. The film ends when Sam, finally able to move forward, meets love interest Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) for the first time, at the top of the Empire State Building, giving us the happily ever after that solidified Ryan and Hanks as the ultimate rom-com couple up—the Bogart and Bacall of the 90s.