The Most Beautiful Screen Couples.

I was thinking the other day how much beauty is demanded from current celebrities yet few are able to deliver it in a sense of wholeness (you know being actually beautiful as opposed to engineered to fit societal standards).
What we mostly get now is an army of fembots and pumped Adonises who all sorta look the same and fail to take our breath away in the manner that a look at Audrey Hepburn's waifish facial features did or in the manner with which William Holden's non-six pack made our jaw drop to the floor.
It's true that standards have certainly been altered throughout the years but when it comes to beauty I'm the kind of man who is faithful to the classics.
Therefore when people exclaim how Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the most beautiful couple in recent movies all I see is a good looking man and a voluptuously vulgar woman trying to trick us
into believing they're worthy of being paired with these people:


10. Ali McGraw & Ryan O'Neal in Love Story.

Say what you will about the movie's quality (I think it's terribly corny and just plain dull) but Ryan and Ali are a match made in heaven.
I once heard someone say that the film's tragic finale was karma for the couple's beauty. Sometimes you can't have it all, can you?


9. Gwyneth Paltrow & Ethan Hawke in Great Expectations.

Compiling this list and trying to concentrate mostly on legendary movie stars I really couldn't get these two out of my head.
Paltrow for one, has all the cruel beauty Jean Simmons had in David Lean's version, but her counterpart in that one didn't have the boyish good looks and effortless handsomeness of Hawke who in this movie can't help but surrender under Gwyn's spell.
Can you blame him?


8. Grace Kelly & Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief.

Hitch really knew how to pair them up and by putting together a decadently handsome Grant with soon to be princess Kelly, he created one of those rare couples that are as beautiful as they are electric.
Watch them together in any scene of this movie and you will see the sexual tension trespass into orgasmic realms.
It's not for nothing that legend has it that Grace had one last plebeian fling and surrendered to Cary's charms before leaving for Monaco.


7. Faye Dunaway & Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde.

Beauty isn't a crime.


6. Robert Redord & Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Poor Katharine Ross really stood no chance when she was paired with two of the most beautiful men that ever lived.
In this exciting revisionist Western, Paul and Bob play the legendary outlaws with a knack for stealing, riding bikes and jumping off cliffs.
Watch how they compliment each other in ways beyond mere sidekick-ism. The kind of chemistry they achieve is magical.


5. Ingrid Bergman & Cary Grant in Notorious.

Hitch does it again, in this sexy, dark spy thriller he pairs Bergman's warm beauty with Grant's caddish good looks. What results isn't a breathtaking match but also one of the most ingenious screen pairings of all time.
Watching these two make either love or war is surrendering to forces beyond our control.


4. Natalie Wood & James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.

Natalie and James fire up the screen with all their angst, helplessness and hormones. The coming of age classic is legendary for the way in which adolescents became lead characters up and front but it's also memorable for creating two sexual icons who proved even pretty people have problems (inventing the whole WB and CW concepts fifty years before they did).
Oh and just because the piece is about couples and not groups, we must exclude Sal Mineo from this entry.


3. Elizabeth Taylor & Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun.

Poor Shelley Winters and all but you have to confess you too wanted Monty and Liz to end up together in this one...


2. Audrey Hepbrun & William Holden in Sabrina.

We all know who Sabrina chooses but can you really blame the ingenue for wanting William Holden so badly?


1. Natalie Wood & Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass.

The first time I watched this movie I had no doubt anyone would lose their mind over being dumped by Warren Beatty but not only is this movie heartbreaking for the way in which Wood surrenders to playing poor Deanie Loomis (who knew she had that depth?) but also because it provided audiences everywhere with a first look at how cruel the 60's would become in cinematic terms.
If not even Warren and Natalie could have a happy ending what was there for the rest of the world in such a chaotic decade?


So what do you think? Any other screen couple that makes you drool and feel all fuzzy and lustful?

Beefcake on the River Kwai.

...was any other classic Hollywood actor as shirtless as often as William Holden?

Easy Steps to Democracy.

"I think it's the best thing I ever read. I didn't understand a word of it."
- Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday) to Paul Verrall (William Holden) after reading a piece he wrote about politics.

Watching "Born Yesterday" is a meta experience in more than one way.
For those fascinated with the Oscars and film history it's the film featuring the actress who beat both Bette Davis in "All About Eve" and Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Blvd." for the Best Actress award in 1950 (She also beat Anne Baxter from "All About Eve", but what she was doing there for starters, instead of being in the Supporting race- is a mystery of its own).
Judy Holliday plays Billie Dawn, a former showgirl who comes to Washington D.C. with her lover, corrupt tycoon, Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford).
Brock, conscious that he, and consequently Billie, will be mingling with senators and important people decides his mistress needs an education.
He hires journalist Paul Varrell (William Holden) to help him out and before long Billie turns into an American revolution of her own.
Holliday, turns in the ultimate ditsy blonde performance. The, sexy/cute, high pitched voice and lovable dumbness, one that inspired Jayne Mansfield, Jean Hagen, Reese Witherspoon, Dyan Cannon, Lisa Kudrow and even Madonna since. It is rumored that Marilyn Monroe- the queen of the blondes- auditioned for the role and was brilliant, but Columbia boss Harry Cohn didn't even see her reel.
Holliday makes her entire performance something of an enigma. Thos on the Swanson/Davis team will argue that she stole the award without trying too hard, but perhaps playing dumb isn't as easy as one might think.
Holliday herself said "You have to be smart to play a dumb blonde over and over and keep the audience's attention without extraordinary physical equipment."
The actress had a very high IQ and watching her Billie onscreen is delightful because she shows absolutely no sign of this. The vagueness in her eyes is remarkable and in her one big dramatic scene she breaks your heart.
Holliday gives a performance of a woman giving a performance (which goes in the vein of what Davis and Swanson did in their respective movies playing actresses). With Billie we come to wonder if her dumbness isn't part of a role to help her achieve survival.
It may not be as grandiose and legendary a performance, but by all means it's a great part. I don't agree with her win, but there's not much we can do now.
Besides Oscars are given out through votes right? So in a way it's a democracy and we can't change history so moving on...
Then there's the whole issue of democratic history embedded in the structure of the film. By Hollywood standards Frank Capra is the master of political films, especially because his movies don't scream "politics!" even if they deal with social issues.
It's odd that he didn't get asked to direct this movie which contains some of the elements he was legendary for.
George Cukor however, whose specialty were stylized comedies and female roles, does marvellous work with the material and "Born Yesterday" feels a bit like "Miss Dawn Goes to Washington".
Cukor, like Capra, abstains from delivering an educational movie (who the hell goes to the movies to learn...on purpose?).
In the end however the film might as well comprise a crash course od modern politics and democracy. More than that the plot structure is almost a metaphor for the rise of American democracy.
Let's look at the facts.
Harry Brock would be equivalent to England during the colonies. Billie starts as the colonies; where people would soemtimes be shipped off as ways of punishment.
Harry has his way with Billie whenever he wants and she's subject to something she at first enjoys but then begins to question.
Paul Varrell in this case would be the founding fathers or some abstract spirit of education that enlightens them.
Billie eventually seeks her independence and establishes democracy as her way of living, even if she doesn't really understand it "If there's a fire and I call the engine, who am I double crossing? The fire?!?" she asks.
One of the movie's greatest scenes features the following dialogue:
Harry: "Who are you the government?"
Paul: "Yeah"
Harry:"Since when?"
Billie:"Since 1779! Right?"
From the film's light tone and interest in the law it's possible to guess that people back in 1950 were just as uninterested in politics as they are in 2009.
Therefore "Born Yesterday" is both a history and a lesson of democracy. It's fascinating to realize that even if democracy is a part of our every day language, it's not a concept we all grasp so easily.
Paul teaches Billie easy ways to understand different political views, "selfishness=fascism" in his view, even when some of his concepts are a bit too American and idealized for worldwide audiences Cukor's effort with the film is nothing but admirable.
Teach them something withou them knowing because as Paul says in the film "a world full of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in."