After ten years and a recent re-watching of Eyes Wide Shut, I'm beginning to agree with Kubrick freaks - Tom Cruise was chosen for the role BECAUSE he is dopey, synthetic and mentally a half-step behind the action, and Nicole Kidman was chosen BECAUSE of her icy, neurotic energy - these are dream characters living in a psychological house of cards.
Cruise's sexuality question mark was utilized by Kubrick during the 'frat boy attack' scene, as was Kidman's impenetrability during her alternately vulnerable and untrustworthy monologues.
Their deceitful, vain personas were put to brilliant use by Kubrick. They seemed totally clueless about it, however.

Usually screen couples save all their energy for keeping their relationship going offscreen. By the time the camera hits them, there's nothing left there!

Agreed re Liz & Dick in Virginia Woolf. Nothing could top them!

They also sizzled in Taming of the Shrew.

But they bombed together in Boom, VIPs, The Sandpiper, etc. etc.

Are you implying that Paul Bettany is into bestiality?!

Yeah, from the poster it looks like the main love story is between Paul and the chimp.

Sonny & Cher in "Good Times" and on their TV show. Real or faked? Still great chemistry.

I thought this related to Paul Bettany and the chimp.

I'm pretty convinced Kidman and Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut destroyed their relationship.

I just saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith. My Goodness with Brangelina. But that was before they were an item.

Does Hepburn and Tracy count?

Robert Walker and Jennifer Jones had beautiful screen chemistry in Since You Went Away. But then of course David O. Selznick butted in and stole Jennifer so they somehow made a real-life relationship falling apart work on screen as a special kind of tragic romance.

Gable and Lombard

Garbo and Gilbert

Streisand and O'Neal (in 'What's Up, Doc?')

sure sign of that overreaching Bronx Jew Kubrick's view of himself as the genius of his age -- ie of his total insanity towards the end -- was spending all that time playing mind games with two destructive nitwits like Cruise (did you see the news stories about him being assigned to beat up fellow Scientologists who misbehaved? What would Tom do to Musto who's been calling him a queen for years) -- and ice cold no-talent Nicole, who is such a popsicle she makes her no-talent druggy drunk cunt I mean country husband look talented by comparison.

I think there's a difference between couples who get together while making a movie & those who are already a couple when they agree to co-star. Most of the time there's tons of heat on screen if they were falling for each other in real life at the same time they were shooting the film.

The exception is Kidman/Cruise. Days of Thunder, Far & Away and Eyes Wide Shut were all horrid.

Bogart and Bacall falling in love during her
screen debut in To Have and Have Not.
Nothing is hotter.
It helps to have Hoagy Carmichael playing piano.

To Have and Have Not, where Bogart and Bacall's characters start to fall for each other, and the real-life performers went through the exact same thing. Every time someone creams over that piece of corn Casablanca, I just think to myself: THHN also had Bogart, in that self-idealizing heroic American expat fiction, plus all those sizzing scenes that Ingrid Bergman could never ignite (not because she's Swedish, no jokes please, but because... well, Garbo she warnt). And lines from Hemingway by way of Faulkner, and better songs with Hoagy Carmichael himself, and a much smarter director than Casablanca's, plus more pointed queerness to boot. Too brilliant for its own good - if they'd added a lot more mediocrity, it woulda had a greater chance of middle-brow acceptance like that piece of shit Casablanca.

Nostradavid, how uncanny you thought of the same movie while I was taking my sweet time drafting my piece. Hot's the right word: To Have and Have Not must have been the closest Classical Hollywood ever came to onscreen pornography.

yeah, porno, especially since Hoagy C. got his nickname because his penis was the size of a submarine sandwich -- like Jelly Roll Morton or Vladimir "Big Schlong" Horowitz --

thanks, Vagino - your details show great insight.
The headline suggested no other movie to me
than To Have and Have Not.

Sometimes I just put my lips together and blow, Slim.

paul bartel + mary woronov