The cinetrix's favorite lexicographer, David Thomson, pops up in the Guardian with a looooong examination of chemistry--that certain something--in movie pairings. [If you think of the checklist in the lyrics to "They Can't Take That Away from Me," especially delivered in Fred Astaire's reedy warble, you'll be well on your way.]
As one might expect from the man behind The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, he makes with the definitions up front:
We call this kind of thing chemistry when it shows in the way movie stars look at each other, and give every intimation of wanting to have sex the moment someone says, "Cut!" But maybe the thing happening is going on inside our heads more than theirs.
Sometimes, however, the dream of chemical combination turns into giddy passion.
It's a great sprawling piece, replete with the sort of discursive bits one expects from Thomson, but the cinetrix especially liked this:
Even after 150 years or so of still photography, many of us are wary of being photographed. We tense up. We hold ourselves against the scrutiny or the invasion. We become grim or shrill in our look. We give nothing away. And, in life, we are probably more trained in concealing our feelings than in revealing them.
But there is a type of person, not necessarily an actor, who enjoys being photographed because he or she reckons that revelation is their strength. They regard the camera as a friend, or a lover even; and it is not absurd to say that some screen gods and goddesses have had affairs with the camera. Nicole Kidman takes a positive pleasure - something not far from a passion - in being photographed. Marilyn Monroe had a similar rapport with the still camera. She was not always as happy with movie cameras, but the ethos of the still seemed to move her; it was her hope to be a radiant self for just a split second.
Far-fetched? Try photographing different people and soon enough you will notice this difference. And then, with luck, you will find someone whose whole being starts to expand when a camera is studying them.
Read the whole thing here.
