Where have all the weepies gone, asks Donald Clarke

The Notebook, a sentimental though undeniably touching film by Nick Cassavetes, has become one of the cult hits of the decade. Released to unenthusiastic reviews in 2004, the picture, which finds an elderly gentleman talking his frail wife through the opening years of their romance, survived a financially unimpressive run in cinemas to sell by the bushel on DVD. If you hear sniffling and wailing coming from your teenage sister's bedroom, there's a pretty good chance she is watching James Garner and Gena Rowlands contemplating their coming eternal rest.

The success of The Notebook demonstrates that, despite Hollywood's apparent hostility towards a once mighty genre, there remains an audience hungry for dramas about love affairs.

Of the 40 films that topped the weekend box-office in the US last year, not a single one could be considered a straight romance. None of the chart-topping romcoms (Failure to Launch, The Break-Up) dared to entirely shun humour and action for joyful liaisons and tragic partings.

This intelligence becomes all the more puzzling when you consider that the most financially successful film of all time is a romantic drama. Titanic did, it is true, also feature big vulgar special effects and Billy Zane running around with a gun, but the film's most fervent fans would identify the romance between posh Kate and grubby Leo as the story's emotional core.

Hollywood's immediate response was to commission further pictures in which a love affair happened against the backdrop of some historical catastrophe. An attempt to launch a film based on the immolation of The Hindenburg failed. Sadly, the wretched Pearl Harbor did make it to our screens and, by being as ghastly as it was, quickly sent the executives back to their sequels and remakes. The romantic picture now flourishes only on DVD and on the Hallmark TV channel.

Executives seem to have decided that the weepie - that is what we're talking about, I think - was an inherently trivial genre. There is, perhaps, an element of sexism at work here. These pictures are often seen to be of interest only to women and, thus, not comparable to such gravely important enterprises as Rush Hour 3 and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. The recent popularity of reactionary, anti-feminist romantic comedies such as Bridget Jones's Diary will have done nothing to reverse that prejudice.

Yet many of the most glorious films of Hollywood's golden years could, without any sense of condescension, be described as "women's pictures".

Bette Davis suffered beautifully without losing an ounce of her formidable self-assurance in such debilitatingly moving films as Dark Victory, The Letter and Now Voyager. Broads as tough as Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford retained their dignity while sacrificing everything else.

If Bette, Barbara or Joan encountered Bridget Jones weeping in her pyjamas, they would, I suspect, slice her to death with a broken Chardonnay bottle. Quite right too. The time has come to reclaim the weepie for intelligent moviegoers of both genders.