The Look of Love...

Say what you like about chemistry - you can't bottle it.

We're all looking for Mr or Ms Right (if only for a night). And the movies is traditionally a good place to start: quality time in the dark, just you and your date, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. We like to imagine that great on-screen chemistry will rub off on us, somehow. And sometimes maybe it does.

But what makes a great on-screen couple? Two or three years ago the Royal Society of Chemistry conducted a study. According to the organization's spokesman, Dr John Emsley, 'Like anything to do with chemistry, it is all about mixing up a cocktail of ingredients to get the right result.'

And you thought science was hard! The RSC came up with a top ten list topped by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, naturally, but spoiled it all by putting Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the number two spot, which makes you wonder what these eggheads were thinking.

Taylor and Burton may have been great together off-screen (their tempestuous Romance included two divorces) but on screen the only time they showed serious rapport was when they battled it out in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Taylor had more going on with (gay) Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun, James Dean in Giant, or indeed with Lassie.

Despite the pre-eminent example of Bogie and Bacall - who visibly fell in love during the filming of To Have and Have Not - it's not unusual for real-life couples to look wrong together on screen: think of Sean Penn and Madonna, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith. Nobody watching Bull Durham would pair off Susan Sarandon with Tim Robbins, and Tom Hanks always worked better with Meg Ryan than his real-life wife, actress Rita Wilson.

Conversely, some of the most famous on-screen couples didn't get on too well: Fred Astaire famously ruffled Ginger Rogers' feathers; Debra Winger had a rotten time making An Officer And A Gentleman, but she still sizzled with Richard Gere; and the reported antagonism between Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney on the set of Out of Sight generated plenty of heat - in fact that may be the last time la Lopez showed chemistry with anyone.

J-Lo is at her best when she's allowed to be strong, pitted against a strong co-star. Opposites don't always attract, but they do have the built-in tension to sustain a story. Making nice with Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes or Richard Gere is no fun for Lopez or us. Certainly Ben Affleck didn't do it for her.

The fact that female roles today are rarely developed enough to hold up their end may account for how few couples in modern cinema compete with memories of, say, Myrna Loy and William Powell in The Thin Man, or Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, or even John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man.

Of course it also doesn't help that most movie stars seem to have given up even the pretence of monogamy. Back in the day, Hepburn and Tracy made nine films together. Rogers and Astaire went one better, with ten. Myrna Loy and William Powell teamed 14 times. These days the closest we get would be Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller (8 times).

Still, do not despair. Romance isn't quite dead yet, as these modern lovers prove:

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com