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Smoke Gets In Your Eyes Lyrics
They asked me how I knew,
My true love was true,
Oh, I of course replied,
Something here inside,
Cannot be denied.
They said someday you'll find,
All who love are blind,
Oh, when your heart's on fire,
You must realize,
Smoke gets in your eyes.
So I chaffed them, and I gaily laughed,
To think they could doubt our love,
Yet today, my love has flown away,
I am without my love.
Now laughing friends deride,
Tears I cannot hide,
So I smile and say,
When a lovely flame dies,
Smoke gets in your eyes.
My true love was true,
Oh, I of course replied,
Something here inside,
Cannot be denied.
All who love are blind,
Oh, when your heart's on fire,
You must realize,
Smoke gets in your eyes.
To think they could doubt our love,
Yet today, my love has flown away,
I am without my love.
Tears I cannot hide,
So I smile and say,
When a lovely flame dies,
Smoke gets in your eyes.
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both of you are right.
the first half is about how you're madly in love, and how the smoke prevents you from seeing clearly.
then the 2nd half, your heart is broken, and now the smoke that was blocking your vision goes into your eyes and makes you start crying.
It's not about that when you're in love, smoke gets in your eyes, it's about the fact that you can only tell that you're truly in love, when 'smoke gets in your eyes'. The person who sings the song knows that he really was truly in love, afterwards. The second part, I believe, is indeed about crying when your love's flown away.
My thoughts on this song are as follows. Well, at the start of the song, they talk about how they knew love could be true. This is when I believe they lit the fire of love. "When a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes" for me basically means that when love fades, the fire goes out, you cry. The smoke is caused as the flame goes out, as in most cases, it does. The next part of the song is an explanation of why the singer has been crying, explaining that, when a lovely flame dies, smoke will get in your eyes. (Metaphoric explanation of crying)
No, Endofsorrow92 was spot on. First it blinds you, then it makes you cry
Yes, this song is beautifully song by The Platters. Thus, I really hate to spoil everyone's believable meaning or interpretation for this song but, I have my own version of it which is totally off from others. Partially because I know mostly family members in my childhood and many friends that do smoke, and so therefore I am an anti-smoker/user. This is my opinion of what this song means to me or seems to imply given in their words whenever I hear it.
I believe this song is meant for the smokers only and how they deeply feel about their smoking products itself, their smoking habits, and their devoted love for their smoking practices or zealous selfish reasons. The smokers and their love for the products are somewhat considered an inseparable pair. One person can not go without the other half indubitably or live without it almost indefinitely.
Yes smoke does gets in your eyes by hurting it which makes you somewhat teary eyes, visions unclear, and hard to focus. Smokers have a very strong profound affection for its many altered uses and how it delivers the affects to them inside medically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. So whenever they are at the end of each smoke, it briefly expires to be later extinguished. So their love duration is temporarily being put out of commission for the time being. Until theoretically, they are at the mercy for that next undeniable and selfish uncontrollable urge. This monotonous irresistible smoke craving is so believed to be utterly ridiculous and completely ludicrous to oneself and among others.
I just saw the movie 45 Years and at the end they played this song . I interpreted it to mean that smoke got in their eyes because of his obsession and ruined their relationship. Was wondering if anyone else saw the movie. Playing that song at the end was quite meaningful.
@Harriet132 Great to see someone is thinking about this incredible scene too, and the meaning of the song in relation to the action. For me, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" - as it is used in the ending - reflects the shifts in Geoff and Kate's relationship. Through this one, deceptively simple dance sequence, we come to understand that their love has profoundly changed, moving away from "images" toward a recognition of the impossibility of two people (despite shared histories) truly living up to an imposed idea/ideal of love, further complicated in Kate's realisation of her continuing (and very painful)...
@Harriet132 Great to see someone is thinking about this incredible scene too, and the meaning of the song in relation to the action. For me, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" - as it is used in the ending - reflects the shifts in Geoff and Kate's relationship. Through this one, deceptively simple dance sequence, we come to understand that their love has profoundly changed, moving away from "images" toward a recognition of the impossibility of two people (despite shared histories) truly living up to an imposed idea/ideal of love, further complicated in Kate's realisation of her continuing (and very painful) love for Geoff. The co-ordination of the camera with Charlotte Rampling's completely non-verbal acting here is astonishing - the way Rampling communicates her body coming alive again with desire and "body-couple" memory, the flickers of alternating recognition and doubt on her face, the sudden, ambiguous gesture where she violently pulls down her hand (disgusted, overwhelmed, or a bit of both?), the subtle push-in of the camera, the circling motion, the lighting change... It's both very complex and very coherent. There's a couple of other things going on here too, I think. The sense of the anniversary as one that is highly-staged managed (given the preparations and discussions around the event that is used to create the film's temporal structure) down to the very timing of Geoff's "on cue" crying suggests that, on one level, this is a marriage and a declaration of love-commitment that exists on the level of surfaces, at least for the assembled audience/camera. I think the ambiguity that results - Is it all for show? Is it real love or merely the gesture" of love? - very cleverly parallels the ambiguity that Kate herself feels around these very same questions. I think that, by ultimately aligning us with Kate's perspective (the choices on the level of framing and scene construction subtly privileging Kate over Geoff), director Andrew Haigh ultimately withholds judgement on their marriage. Both Kate and the viewer are frozen in a moment of radical indeterminacy, with possibilities stretching out on either side of this divide. Just as one can listen to the Platters song and intuit/project different responses dependent on experience, mood and bias, Haigh does similarly (and generously) with the ending of his film. Which is why "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" is such a perfect choice: it's simultaneously devastating, unsettling and deeply romantic.
@Harriet132 Great movie....I think the love wasn't ruined....it's worse than that...the love was never there...the smoke got in HER eyes, as it was blind love, and at the end the smoke brought the tears. 2c.
@Harriet132 Great movie....I think the love wasn't ruined....it's worse than that...the love was never there...the smoke got in HER eyes, as it was blind love, and at the end the smoke brought the tears. 2c.
@Harriet132 I just saw the movie today 12\13\18, and thought it was one of the most heart breaking movies I ever witnessed; and I felt of all the interpretation of the song (especially in light of the movie "45 years") was the most clarified explanation of all the ones I read this far. Very insightful.
@Harriet132 I just saw the movie today 12\13\18, and thought it was one of the most heart breaking movies I ever witnessed; and I felt of all the interpretation of the song (especially in light of the movie "45 years") was the most clarified explanation of all the ones I read this far. Very insightful.
@Harriet132 It’s certainly by no accident this song about lost love was used in the film. The lyrics throughout apply so well to Kate and Geoff’s relationship, but the last two stanzas are particularly on point for BOTH characters:
@Harriet132 It’s certainly by no accident this song about lost love was used in the film. The lyrics throughout apply so well to Kate and Geoff’s relationship, but the last two stanzas are particularly on point for BOTH characters:
“Yet today my love has flown away, I am without my love” (for Geoff, this is Katya, and [SPOILER ALERT—SCROLL DOWN] . . . . . . . . . . . [SPOILER] the child that Katya was pregnant with.
“Yet today my love has flown away, I am without my love” (for Geoff, this is Katya, and [SPOILER ALERT—SCROLL DOWN] . . . . . . . . . . . [SPOILER] the child that Katya was pregnant with.
For Kate, its the loss of not only the man that she thought was her true love for 45 years to a memory, but also to a life that...
For Kate, its the loss of not only the man that she thought was her true love for 45 years to a memory, but also to a life that could have been. For example, it was Geoff who never wanted children, and now she realizes it was because Geoff had conceived a child, encased in ice and preserved, with his true love.
“Now laughing friends deride Tears I cannot hide”
The party at the end, including tears held back but finally released by both Geoff and Kate, sums this up well, along with their encounters with friends throughout the film.
“So I smile and say”
The happy face they both try to put on throughout the week that the film takes place, with each other, and especially at the party. So many dark, tightly suppressed feelings hidden with smiles.
“When a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes”
So many things to unpack—the “lovely flame” being Katya and his lost child for Geoff, and the smoke being “settling” for Kate (or at least the false belief he had put the past behind him and moved on. For Kate, the lovely flame is Geoff, but more subtly, her youth and missed opportunities (a child; someone who truly loved her completely and wanted to capture that love).
As a more minor side note, the fact that Kate and Geoff both take up smoking again to deal with the stress, and the fact that Kate first met Geoff with “a cigarette dangling out of your mouth” was no coincidence either.
I’m usually not a fan of such contrivances in films, but it works so subtly here it’s almost unrecognizable until you revisit it.
Hey man, you're head over heels, but "love" clouds your judgement. A heart a-flame in love causes smoke to get in your eyes and therefore not see things rationally.
Ha, don't worry I know what I'm doing.
Oops she left me.
And now you're all saying "I told you so" and mocking me for crying.
And my response is: I'm crying because it was such an intense love and now it's gone. I had the fire of love, which is now put out, and causing smoke to get in my eyes which is the cause of my tears.
So, as the famous poem by Tennyson says: 'tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Well, this song's meaning is self explanatory I guess. But it took me years to understand what does the line "smoke gets in your eyes" mean. One day I was smoking. I was a novice smoker then, so accidentally the smoke got into my eyes. and then my tears came out. then only i understood. when a lovely flame dies, you'll cry. :p
...That's not the meaning. It's about how when you fall in love, you may think it's true love, but there's a good chance that it's not because love blinds you (smoke getting in your eyes).
Favorite song of all time. I'm almost in tears every time I read The Catcher in the Rye, and this song plays at the end.
No, Endofsorrow92 was spot on. First it blinds you, then it makes you cry