Anita Ekberg: In a Timeless Trinity

 

It doesn’t last long. Maybe a minute. She only has a few lines. Among the most iconic scenes in all of film. Anita Ekberg in Rome’s Trevi Fountain, her eyes closed, long blonde mane already ordained by the baptismal font, pales arms raised out wide, wondrous face held to the heavens. At first alone, then joined by a man, soon humbled by the divine.

Anita Ekberg, more statuesque than statue, black velvet gown trails across the dark waters. It is 1960. Behind her is the war, the hunger and hatred, and ahead the Woodstocks and the drugs and paisley draped boudoirs of free love. But there she sways, untethered from time, held to nothing but the moment and the arms of an unseen lover soon to leave for the rest of her life.

For she never will again embrace the mystic, that brave prayer answered when Art abandons the pen and paper of its own creation, and forever floats down hallowed halls, in a timeless trinity with the starry dome above and the dark waters beneath.

 

#Anitaekberg #marcellomastronioni #fellini #ladolcevita #trevi #fountain #film #1960 #italy

George Hamilton: The Bearable Lightness of Being

 

Where most actors search for substantial roles that could bring prestige and success. George Hamilton walks a different path. It’s as if—early on—he somehow recognized his talents and longevity were empowered by mediocrity.

His filmography is aggressively lightweight, yet he has worked steadily for over fifty years. At one point, Hamilton was best known for his roasted barbeque tan. He also gained exposure as a kind of professional escort for aging actors.

Throughout it all, he perfected a Las Vegas notion of charm, all dazzling veneers and inconsequential quotes.

What saved him from early extinction was seemingly effortless self-deprecation, as if to say, ‘I too cannot fathom my success. It truly is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’

The career of George Hamilton—if not the persona—comes as compelling evidence that some are gifted to walk the beach, leaving no prints, embracing the burlesque appeal of superficiality, and making the lightness of it all bearable for the rest of us.

 

#georgehamilton #1960s #pop #popular #culture #ianclarke #film #review #letsplaysomethingelse.com

Catherine Deneuve: The Art of Being Somewhere Else

 

They called her ‘ice queen’, unaware that to portray detachment requires dark passion. From the start, she displayed the tension between vulnerability and control. Catherine Deneuve made a career of letting her beauty distract while she performed from the side.

It is this high-wire act, balancing impatience with serenity, condemnation with acceptance, that led her through the 60s, having little in common with her cohort Brigitte Bardot, a braising blonde having fun in the sun.

Her sensuality was somehow divorced from the corporeal. Never, ever was there to be sweat.

Ghost white and frail, she projected the strength that comes from an ironic intimacy, protecting her from the madding crowd. She rarely laughed aloud, just a slight smile here, a tilt of the head there, just enough to keep her in the scene.

Slim shoulders, pearls, Yves Saint Laurent held her in his clothes, feminine, understated, confident without aggression (how rare), the last to show up at the party and the first to leave, not condescending but distracted.

Never mind the year, the lighting, or the script, when needed, she could make her face an unblemished, beguiling mask, which suggested that it so wished to be somewhere else.

 

#catherinedeneuve #french #actress #brigittebardot #francoisdorleac #1960s #pop #popular #culture #ianclarke #letsplaysomethingelse

Natalie Wood: Butterfly with Damaged Wings

 

There was often something tentative about her. Not fearful, but uncertain. Playful becomes despondent but then, in a flash, charming. You can feel it in her eyes—those dark eyes that roll emotions so effortlessly, two upturned screens of pain and pleasure.

She ignored her beauty in a way that made her more beautiful, just stroking her hair in place, seemingly confident and caring, yet hesitant, those dark eyes sweeping the room, looking for a way to laugh, to escape. Sometimes a feminine tomboy, then bored of herself, now twirling a dress, a rebel with a cause. But there she is, a million images of her captured at 24 frames a second with James Dean and Steve McQueen and Bob, Ted and Alice.

Consider her mother, Maria Zakharenko: During a film, when 8-year-old Natalie couldn't cry on cue, her mother ripped off a butterfly’s wings to provoke tears. (As an adult, Natalie often wore a butterfly necklace). A 16-year-old Wood was raped by a Hollywood star while her mother waited in a car outside, subsequently telling her to "suck it up". Her mother, O her mother…

There is psychoanalysis, seven days a week, for more than eight years, even stipulating in her film contracts time to attend sessions. The aesthetics of damage.

Terrified of open water, she succumbs. Santa Catalina Island, hugging the California coastline with the endless Pacific rolling behind. In darkness, she drifts beneath and above, not alone for the Garibaldi fish keep close, wrapping her warm in a long, gold winding sheet.

"At night,” she once said, “when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space."

As you leave the movie theatre, a thought occurs, out of nowhere: they say that a butterfly can still float beautifully with damaged wings. How is that possible?

Peter Fonda: You Can Ride but You Can’t Hide

 

It’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. Captain America of 1969. Easy Rider— (the original title? - ‘The Loners’. Not the same vibe. Not at all.)

And there’s Peter Fonda, tall, slim, taciturn, burdened, already laboring under the weight of precognition: he sees his fate, as he does that of his buddy, Billy (Dennis Hopper). And he gleans, throughout their motorcycle voyage, the fate of his generation. You can ride but you can’t hide.

It is this pervading doom—in a biker movie of all places—that becalms Fonda’s performance, raising it to perfection. He need not have made another film, so discreetly did he meld his own being to a narrative. The planes of his face, the wind-swept hair, the billowing, floral-print pullover, it all made sense. This is a complete person. Here, inside this film, forever, is where he belongs.

Easy Rider, even with its twangy rock/folk soundtrack and intimations of freedom, cannot dispel an irony of optimistic malaise.

So there he goes, riding for a lost generation of drugs and war and music, all swirling up in acid-drenched sunshine dreams, or riding a moonlit undiscovered highway, you know the one that takes you far, far beyond the vanishing point.

 

#peterfonda #easyrider #dennishopper #jacknicholson #ianmclarke #1969 #1960a #pop #culture #film