Der Guardian erzählt liebevoll von Paaren auf der Leinwand, die über die sprichwörtliche Chemie verfügten – und über diejenigen, die sie nicht hatten:

The lesson is that chemistry – maybe the better word is casting – is a good deal more than a couple of faces seeming to fit like adjoining pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. There have always been such couplings: look at Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in The Shop Around The Corner, say – or listen to it, with those two hushed voices becoming increasingly rattled by each other. Fred MacMurray and Carole Lombard made a packet of films together (Swing High, Swing Low, Hands Across The Table, True Confession) in great part because they were under contract at Paramount at the same time, but also because they were relaxed, fond and flirty together. Hepburn and Tracy are famed as a crusty couple. The public responded with the same fondness to Myrna Loy and William Powell, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, or Gable and Joan Crawford being together. And, in that latter case, the two “low-life” stars in the MGM salon kept a sexy liaison going (between marriages, or during) that helped stimulate their lazy, sexual scenes on screen.

Even in an age of far greater sexual liberation than was felt in the 1930s or 1940s, we often go to the movies to bring aid or sustenance to our own relationships. So we warm to Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney for a moment in Out Of Sight (it didn’t last, on screen or off); we treasure the uninhibited sexual scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Don’t Look Now (probably unfilmable without their willing support); and we felt some profound disconnect between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut. There was a film about sex (or the thinking on it) that amounted to a severe turn-off. (…)

We are more open about chemistry now: Newman and Redford had it in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and The Sting, and there’s an attempt at a mutual admiration society among the guys in the Ocean’s Eleven films. Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis had it in Thelma & Louise. But then, dismally, Kidman and Sean Penn didn’t in The Interpreter. We knew the film was going to say they had it, but one look at their depressed faces gave the game away. On the other hand, years earlier in Three Days Of The Condor (same director, Sydney Pollack), although Redford was compelled to keep Faye Dunaway as a captive, you could see the flame growing in their eyes. We knew it before their characters did.