DOUBLE FEATURE

BY: Daniel Fisher

For this week’s Double Feature, PROVOKR recommends pairing films with the same leading actors and actresses in different roles: Revolutionary Road and Titanic, featuring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio and American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

Throughout the history of cinema, there have been marquee name pairings that fit together so well they become a genre unto themselves, not to mention money-making brands for the studios. In the first half of the twentieth century, comedy duos like Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy plus Bob Hope and Bing Crosby swept the box office time and time again. On the romantic front, there were the iconic pairings of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and, the most evocative (and fun to say), Bogey and Bacall. There is no science behind online chemistry — they either have it or they don’t — but if they have it, you’ve got lightning in a bottle.

While the leading duo might seem like a thing of the past, they do still exist, albeit in smaller numbers: Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, Christian Bale and Amy Adams.

Oh, wait, have I forgotten one? It is a romantic pairing so epic that one might even describe it as-wait for it-titanic? Oof. Couldn’t resist. Apologies.

TITANIC/REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

Who knew that the star-crossed pairing of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio would result in one of the most successful films of all time? Apparently, James Cameron did. Despite the two-hundred million dollars spent to recreate the sinking of the Titanic, the chemistry captured between Winslet and DiCaprio helped make the film first and foremost a love story. It is simply impossible to imagine different actors filling the roles of Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt Bukater.

From the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, Sam Mendes’s 2008 film, Revolutionary Road, reunites Winslet and DiCaprio in 1950s suburbia. They are again a couple, but a relatively unhappily married pair, struggling with the pressure to conform to a quiet, predictable life in the ‘burbs. It is smart casting, as the story and characters are so radically different, rendering the film incomparable to Titanic. But that’s not to say it wouldn’t be exciting or fun to watch them in close succession and determine whether the magic between the actors exists regardless of genre and setting.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK/AMERICAN HUSTLE

Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle share not only Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, but also the same director, David O. Russell. Like many auteurs, Russell, who broke through with 1994’s taboo-shattering Spanking the Monkey, often uses the same actors in his projects. He is very much an actor’s director and attracts some of the most exceptional talent working today, including Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Robert De Niro, Mark Wahlberg and Lily Tomlin. They all appear in two or more of his films. Russell has a gift for drawing out the finest performances from his actors. They often garner nominations and awards from their work with him, like Lawrence and Cooper, who earned Oscar and Golden Globe nods two years in a row with 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook (Lawrence took home both awards) and 2013’s American Hustle. Russell’s signature dark comedy undertones aside, these are two very different films. Playbook is a romance and the undeniable chemistry between Cooper and Lawrence is its core, while Hustle is an ensemble film in which every actor shines. Russell would go on to cast both Lawrence and Cooper again in 2015’s Joy, so considering we’ve got a three-day weekend on our hands, perhaps find a triple feature if you can’t get enough of Brad and Jen (not that Brad and Jen).