The Heart of the Film

Chapter 9

Nakedness

Sometimes it is literally nakedness that provides the vulnerability through which one person can fall in love with another.

In Something’s Gotta Give (2003, written and directed by Nancy Meyers), Jack Nicholson’s Harry Sanborn happens to see Diane Keaton’s Erica naked, getting out of the shower in her home where he is a guest, and it almost gives him a second heart attack. He tells his doctor that he’s never seen a woman in her fifties naked before. But even Harry, a playboy and experienced seducer of 23 year olds, finds himself falling for this mature, adult, naked woman. He can’t help himself. He fell into the crack.

In Witness, displaced Philadelphia police detective John Book (Harrison Ford), hiding out in Amish country, ...