Dear Dahrlings,
I am stepping out of my usual approach these days. Call it the new moon and the new moon after that. I am shuffling my step instead of writing on routine.
This week, The Philadelphia Film Society showed an old Italian film, Le Notti Bianche (1957, Dir. Luchino Visconti), and I saw it. It is quite beautiful, even though it is hard for me to stay awake and focus in a dark theater once night comes. The women in my family have a genetic predisposition toward falling asleep during movies. When you poke us to wake up, we pretend we weren’t sleeping. (I was only resting my eyes for a few moments here and there.)
After getting my ticket, I looked at the title and announced in my own unique brogue—which I create all the time when I am making grocery lists—that perhaps this movie shall really be translated as Le Naughty Bitch.
(Or that’s just a movie title for me.)
And while watching it, I was just so taken with this young blonde woman character/actress whose eyes are so wide, so unassuming and child-like. This is the actress Maria Schell.I immediately wanted to find a brilliant blonde to cast in a remake of the film.
She is a darling! And it made me wonder about femininity, and the foundations of filmmaking, and how women were represented in these early films. And I feel bad for the male filmmakers of ye old age, because they used to just put women in their worlds and tell them to do things, and women complied. But now women have all these opinions!
(I am so sorry, bros. It’s a little bit of shell shock. You’ll recover, I promise. Just drink some coffee and get biscotti and try writing a novel instead. You can control all the characters and people in a novel and sell it at a street festival.)
What struck me was how child-like Natalia was, how much in wonder, and how this childlike wonder made the men in her world want to take care of her and put up with her no matter what. I don’t think she had a job. She was an orphan, kind of. But she never let go of this inner little girl who would break into dance and smiles at any moment, and cry in the next.
Now, what happened when feminism came along after the 1950s was—Feminism was like, “Hey. Yo. Movies ain’t real life and we gotta raise the babies and make the meals and balance the checkbooks and also, we’re going crazy, and also, guys just think they can touch our asses whenever they want. Not cool. And this ain’t working for us, fellas! We have to invent Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and start marching again and wearing slacks when we want to.”
How can we find a balance? Maybe by tapping into this wonderful inner-child Maria Schell harnesses.
But gosh, to be in Visconti’s romantic world for just a little while. Where men are kind of upstanding and do what they say they are going to do, and they do good things. Where leading men forgive easily and take you and your grandmom to the opera. Where they don’t say much. They barely talk. Or, they talk, but it’s only to pour out their hearts while wearing nice long wool coats in cafes.
And then you get to be in a boat and it snows!
It is just a magical movie, and beautiful, and I don’t care about any politics when I’m watching it. Really, I don’t! I am just feeling for the love triangle I see. I am feeling for the losses that love brings, and how there is never an easy ending when people have a lot of feelings, even if there is a simple resolution. Because love is love—not a formula or a baseball game. And it is why we’re here on this planet even when we don’t understand why we feel so holy and achey at the same time.
Anyway, you should watch this film and we should find an Italian coffee shop and talk about how to make it new. Instead of Italy, we can film a modern version in south Philadelphia or something. There are some Italians I know who like to act in that part of the city. (Gene, you reading this??)
And there needs to be a scene with Italian cookies set gently on a plate that no one touches. I just think pristine Italian cookies on a plate and a dance floor—let’s just make the whole world magical again.
Sincerely,
Jana Rose
*Reporting from Ms. Wonderful Film Land
Thursday Vinyl Brewhaha
