I still remember us going to see Love Story in a theatre (we didn’t ‘get into it’ as I recall) and when we came out there were women all over the lobby crying and sobbing about the dying woman protagonist: “Wasn’t she beautiful?!”
That was probably my first real chick flick and I didn’t find Ali McGraw particularly beautiful or Ryan O’Neal someone I could easily identify with. The latter was true also in Barry Lyndon.