How do you select the most romantic film of all time? All great cinema is romantic: it's intimate assignations with beautiful people in darkened rooms; half-truths, lust and intrigue; the play of light on flesh. So how do you go about selecting the most romantic film of all time - or even the ten most romantic? And how can you begin to define romance in the first place? For Laura Jesson, Celia Johnson's suburban housewife in David Lean's Brief Encounter, it's ephemeral and dangerous; a force of nature to be tangled with at your peril. "I've been so foolish," she imaginarily-confesses to her husband Fred. I've fallen in love. I'm an ordinary woman. I didn't think such violent things could happen to ordinary people. For Barry Egan, Adam Sandler's novelty toilet plunger manufacturer in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, it's also savage and destructive; but it bubbles up from inside us, not without. "I'm looking at your face and I just want to smash it," he coos at Emily Watson's Lena. I just want to f-----g smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it, you're so pretty. Then there's Rick Blaine, from Michael Curtiz's Casablanca, for whom romance is a power from the past that compels him to be a better person - and Chow and Su from Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love, whom romance seduces towards a brighter, more passionate future. Some of my own personal selections were popular across the board: In The Mood For Love placed at number three, Billy Wilder's The Apartment at number seven, Powell and Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going! at number 13 and Woody Allen's Manhattan at 19. But others didn't make the cut: Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, which might be the sexiest film ever made as well as the most romantic; Kenji Mizoguchi's The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, which shows us love as a moral imperative and that romance makes us better people; Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady, where romance is a will-o"-the-wisp that tempts us into the jungle; and Kevin Lima's Enchanted, which reminds us that it's not just in the movies that love can make us break out into song. Here, then, is the Time Out top ten, alongside Tim's and my own personal picks. Do these films quicken your heartbeat and moisten your palms, or do your affections lie elsewhere? Let us know on Twitter, or in the comments below. Brief Encounter (1945) 2. Casablanca (1942) 3. In the Mood for Love (2000) 4. Annie Hall (1977) 5. Harold and Maude (1971) 6. Brokeback Mountain (2005) 7. The Apartment (1960) 8. A Matter of Life and Death (1946) 9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) 10. Trouble in Paradise (1932) 2. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939) 3. The Apartment (1960) 4. Sunrise (1927) 5. Tropical Malady (2004) 6. In the Mood for Love (2000) 7. Enchanted (2007) 8. Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) 9. I Know Where I'm Going! Manhattan (1979) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) 2. Holiday (1938) 3. Weekend (2011) 4. The English Patient (1996) 5. Before Sunset (2004) 6. Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) 7. Tabu (2012) 8.Madame De... Ghost (1990)