Romy & The Classics
*i wrote this on: Tuesday, 28 November 2006…
as ANNABELLA in ‘TIS A PITY SHE’S A WHORE (1961)
(or as I like to say in today’s terms: DAMN SHAME SHE A HO ;)
Alain Delon played Giovanni
I mean…as if she couldn’t be any greater! I knew that she played in ‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE and from the on-going research I have been doing on her, I recently found out that she toured Europe in … wait for it … THE SEAGULL. Oh, my stars! For real! For. Real. THE SEAGULL. AND she performed it in…French! How amazing is she?! I love this woman. They also performed it in Morocco.
Let me offer a brief summary: You first find out that Giovanni is in love with his sister. He has come home from a long time of studying in Bologna. He confides in the Friar his love for Annabella. Annabella comes out onto the balcony. Her father is trying to marry her off to one of many suitors. She is not interested in any of them. On the balcony, she sees a man to whom she is strongly attracted. She does not recognize that it is her brother, Giovanni. Perhaps because he has been away so long at his studies. Mm… Giovanni tells his sister of his passion for her, his INCESTUOUS (that is such a juicy, delicious word!) feelings for her and she confesses to him that she reciprocates those INCESTUOUS feelings. Of course, those feelings stir-up lots of trouble and OF COURSE, there is another man that is in love with Annabella… Jealousy arises. A woman’s nose gets cut off. Annabella’s heart is staked onto Giovanni’s rapier, &c.
Let’s give a shout-out to Luchino Visconti for coaxing Romy to the Paris stage (even though the play flopped). He also cast her in his section of, “Boccaccio ‘70,” and she appeared semi-nude. This movie launched her into international success. So, “Here-here,” to Signor Visconti. Woot-woot!
Sadly, America did not know how to use her (reminds me of Isabelle Huppert).
as NINA in THE SEAGULL (1962)
So serious. That’s right. When an actress puts on her stage make-up…it’s serious business! Watch out!
So familiar to me…
“You’ve got so tetchy lately, the things you say are less and less intelligible, perhaps they’re meant to be symbolic. And I imagine this seagull is meant as some sort of symbol, but, I’m sorry, not one I understand…I’m too simple to be able to understand you.”
Romy as Nina! Wow. I mean, really. That role is one of the ultimate female roles. Could she be any cooler? I just love that it seemed important for her to do stagework. To do the classics. To grow as an actor, as a person. And even if it wasn’t her first initial decision and she was forced into it (I’m not saying that she was, that’s just another scenario), she still went ahead and did it. She played the role triumphantly. Yeah, I want to be Nina in THE SEAGULL, as well. Who doesn’t?
From an article by C Robert Jennings:
“For two difficult years she refused to work. ‘It was horrible for me. But I knew I must have the courage to wait, to think, to take time out for renewal, to get myself together…It’s like reloading.’” And lo and behold, she had her encounter with Luchino Visconti who was a friend of Alain’s.
“Parties, parties—everybody is bored and noisy, and they think it so necessary, so amusing. I’m afraid of too much public. In Europe I go out only when I like to go out. You can’t say to me, ‘Go because stars do it.’ I have a bad reputation because I don’t do little things which are supposed to make me a star.”
“A tough no-nonsense performer, Romy approaches her work with the intensity of a general going into battle. She knows her lines. She knows her cameras. ‘She is almost frighteningly professional,’ says director Carl Foreman,…”
“The Method, agh, what the hell is the Method? I don’t know what it is. Acting is acting. You know what to do. You only learn in the hardest schools—like Broadway or the Paris stage, or with tough directors like Otto Preminger and Orson Welles. To have personality, force, you can’t get it from schools or buy it in books. My mother always quoted a director who said, ‘Damn it, don’t think, act!’”
“She can be as pure as she wants to be, but she also can be as bitchy as she chooses to be.” ~Georges Clouzot
“At first Carl Foreman found her cool and withdrawn. ‘But like a flower that reacts to sunshine, she reacts in the same way if she feels genuinely liked or loved. Her whole personality changes, and she becomes very warm and loving in return, much like a little girl, very appealing, sometimes even hoydenish.’”
“I expect everything from myself. Everything.”
“After all, I grow up. To change as often as possible the work, the kind of parts on stage and screen. I must be strong. I wanted to be modern, hard and sophisticated—a grown woman.”
“I am old-fashioned. I like men who kiss the hand,…”
“Anyway, there are things in life much more important than what people think or write about me. I am what I am. They can go to hell.”
“I have something better to do than jump from villa to villa and yacht to yacht. I can stay for hours on my terrace and just look at the people, normal people, and the sea. I very often go to sleep at nine o’clock with my book, my records, my dogs, and I am happy.”
“This is the most important thing, to live each moment. And to feel free.”
Why do I feel like this woman is my twin??? OB-viously, we’re FRATERNAL twins!!!
That is……………………
…….except for this:
I call this the, “I’m disgusted”-face. I am oh-so-familiar, too-too-familiar with the muscles used to make that face! Ha! Please, sistah. Please.
If I sound like a gushing schoolgirl………………..I am. I can’t help it. If you get me started on someone or something that I’m passionate about I could go on forever.
I’m such a dork.
(And proud of it.)
I seriously have too much time on my hands these days…
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