A summertime question for Dennis Cozzalio.

The first person I think of is Cary Grant, the leading man of all leading men, one to whose standard I'd bet even Paul Giamatti aspires deep in some dark, secret recess of his character actor's heart. But "chemistry" implies two or more elements mixed together to create a unique or unexpected force - Grant may be the leading man, but without a leading lady to play off of, to become intermingled with, and with whom to create a memorable and distinct aura, he might as well just be plain old Archie Leach.

Grant's effortless charm, physical grace (and knack for slapstick) and cool sophistication (which often, in romantic films, masked a much warmer, often smoldering intensity) allowed him to match up well with an awe-inspiring variety of Hollywood ingénues and veteran leading ladies, and they were often never quite as beguiling, or at least were beguiling in a completely different sense, apart from what happened when they shared the screen with Grant. Can any other leading man in Hollywood boast of sharing so much time and space with so many unique and talented actresses to such memorable effect? (Of course, the notable exception in Grant's chemistry set was Mae West, who hired him twice - for She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel. The actors were not well-matched, either in temperament, acting style or presence - on screen, West steamrolled Grant, who had yet to make a major impression in Hollywood, as if he were just another stock player, and the actors' disregard for each other once the cameras stopped rolling was no secret.)

But of all the women who exchanged loving glances, warm kisses, hearty laughter and profound pain with Cary Grant on the silver screen, of all the women who could be said to have had unusual chemistry with him, none merged with his palette of responses as an actor, or into our collective memories as viewers, with more sensuousness, grace and radiant sexuality (as well as an accompanying insecurity about the ends to which that sexuality might play) than Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious. This is probably the Hitchcock film I hold in the highest regard, without so much as a moment's reservation concerning its greatness, largely because it seems to me it is the Hitchcock film that is as dependent on the depth and sensitivity and subtlety of the actor's responses - not only to the melodrama of the material, but to each other scene by scene - as it is to the director's undeniable personality and technical mastery.

I can think of no sexier sequence in Hitchcock's filmography - indeed, it's one of the most erotic in all of cinema - than that celebrated kiss, which lasts several minutes, between Grant and Bergman as their mutual attraction is finally given full rein. But that rein is to be pulled back soon enough as Bergman begins employment by the agency for whom Grant works as a mole in order to insinuate herself into the life of suspected Nazi agent Claude Rains - she must rekindle an old relationship and eventually marry him. As soon as the assignment commences, Bergman finds herself navigating an intense struggle to keep her connection with Grant - and her sense of her self - while attempting to preserve the elaborate and dangerous charade under which she lives. All the while, through suspicious, and then outright hateful, glances and outbursts whenever they clandestinely meet, Grant comes to think she's enjoying the ruse and that she's little more than the whore he once suspected her of being, and perhaps even a Nazi sympathizer herself. (Her father was once intimately connected with Rains in just such a capacity.)

The path from mutual suspicion and disdain to tentative regard to erotic attraction to subjugated romantic impulses to muffled, and soon enflamed, hatred that these two take through the course of the film, culminating in Bergman's ever-weakening physical state and the horror that dawns on Grant of her true situation and the degree to which her life truly is in danger, is an astonishing one to follow. It plays out in an electrifying feature-length procession of stolen glances, malicious stares and desperate moments of failed emotional expression that fire between these two like a very personal thunder and lightning storm. And it's a testament to the palpable connection these two actors, through two brilliantly drawn characters, make with each other that even in the time spent apart on screen, time which takes up a major portion of the middle of the film, we're still haunted by the passion that remains unresolved between them. It is the silent drama that plays out whenever we gaze into either Grant's or Bergman's eyes when they are separated and slip into a reverie of what it was that the one saw in the other, and make that connection between the two of them for ourselves, even as we wonder with increasing desperation if they'll ever actually gaze into each other's eyes again. It's a haunting, haunted emotional empathy that Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman engender in Notorious, and it is the gold standard of what I think of when I think of chemistry in the movies.

Posted by dwhudson at August 13, 2006 2:07 AM