Female Charm

♥  Silent film actresses ↓ [Chopin Nocturne Opus 9 No. 2 in E Flat Major]

 – Clara Bow,  – Louise Brooks,  – Bebe Daniels,  – Nita Naldi,  – Norma Talmadge,

 – Constance Talmadge,  – Lillian Gish,  – Dorothy Gish,  – Pola Negri,  – Natacha Rambova,

 – Vilma Banky,  – Lila Lee,  – Marion Davies,  – Claire Windsor,  – Gloria Swanson,  

– Theda Bara,    – Raquel Torres,    – Alice Terry,   – Dolores Del Rio,

– Mae Murray,  – Agnes Ayres,  – Clara Kimball Young,   – Mabel Normand,

– Anna May Wong,  – Norma Shearer,   – Carmel Myers,   – Zasu Pitts,  – Bessie Love

¤  Women In Film ↓ [80 years by Philip Scott Johnson]

Mary Pickford,    Lillian Gish,    Gloria Swanson,    Marlene Dietrich,    Norma Shearer,

Ruth Chatterton,    Jean Harlow,    Katharine Hepburn,    Carole Lombard,    Bette Davis,

Greta Garbo,    Barbara Stanwyck,    Vivien Leigh,    Greer Garson,    Hedy Lamarr,

Rita Hayworth,    Gene Tierney,    Olivia de Havilland,    Ingrid Bergman,

Joan Crawford,    Ginger Rogers,     Loretta Young,    Deborah Kerr,

Judy Garland,    Anne Baxter,    Lauren Bacall,    Susan Hayward,

Ava Gardner,    Marilyn Monroe,    Grace Kelly,    Lana Turner,

Elizabeth Taylor,    Kim Novak,    Audrey Hepburn,   Dorothy Dandridge,  

Shirley MacLaine,    Natalie Wood,    Rita Moreno,    Janet Leigh,  

Brigitte Bardot,    Sophia Loren,    Ann Margret,    Julie Andrews,

Raquel Welch,    Tuesday Weld,   Jane Fonda,    Julie Christie,

Faye Dunaway,    Catherine Deneuve,   Jacqueline Bisset,

Candice Bergen,    Isabella Rossellini,   Diane Keaton,    Goldie Hawn,   

Meryl Streep,   Susan Sarandon,    Jessica Lange,    Michelle Pfeiffer,   

Sigourney Weaver,   Kathleen Turner,    Holly Hunter,    Jodie Foster,

Angela Bassett,    Demi Moore,    Sharon Stone,    Meg Ryan,    Julia Roberts,  

Salma Hayek,   Sandra Bullock,    Julianne Moore,    Diane Lane,    Nicole Kidman,  

Catherine Zeta-Jones,   Angelina Jolie,   Charlize Theron,    Reese Witherspoon,    Halle Berry 

 – Bach‘s Prelude from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 ↑ performed by Yo-Yo Ma

•  ROXETTE: ↓  «The Look»

1-2-3-4  –  Walking like a man,  hitting like a hammer,  she’s a juvenile scam.
Never was a quitter,  tasty like a raindrop,  she’s got the look.

Heavenly bound  cause heaven’s got a number  when she’s spinning me around, 

Kissing is a colour,  her loving is a wild dog,  she’s got the look.

She’s got the look  …  She’s got the look.

 

What in the world can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue.
When everything I’ll ever do I’ll do for you

and I go: la la la la la  –  she’s got the look.

 

Fire in the ice,  naked to the T-bone  is a lover’s disguise.
Banging on the head drum,  shaking like a mad bull,  

she’s got the look.

Swaying to the band, moving like a hammer,  

she’s a miracle man.
Loving is the ocean,  Kissing is the wet sand,  She’s got the look …  

 

What in the world can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue.
When everything I’ll ever do I’ll do for you

and I go: la la la la la  –  she’s got the look.

 

Walking like a man,  hitting like a hammer,  she’s a juvenile scam.
Never was a quitter,  tasty like a raindrop,  she’s got the look.

. . .  And she goes:   na na na na na na na na.

∇   The Knack   ⇓  

Hoo, my little pretty one, my pretty one
When you gonna give me some time, Sharona?
Hoo, you make my motor run, my motor run
Gun it comin’ off of the line, Sharona

Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind
I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind
My, my, my, aye-aye, woo!

∇  Female Beauty in Art  ⇓

⇓   500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art⇐

Bach‘s Sarabande from ↑ Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major BWV 1007

performed by Yo-Yo Ma

 

¤  Helmut Newton ⇐

⇒  «My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.« ⇐

[1920-2004] →

¤   The Book of Repulsive Women :

[poems & illustrations by Djuna Barnes]⇒

• The Flowering Corpse  [1923]

 

So still she lies in this closed place apart,

Her feet grown fragile for the ghostly tryst;

Her pulse no longer striking in her wrist,

Nor does its echo wander through her heart.

 

Over the body and the quiet head

Like stately ferns above an austere tomb,

Soft hairs blow; and beneath her armpits bloom

The drowsy passion flowers of the dead.

¤  Maya Deren  [1917-1961]

 . . . recognizable as the woman with the enigmatic expression at the window, silently observing from within. Although her eyes indicate distrust, she is not desperate to escape her domestic space, but she is not entirely comfortable immured behind the glass. This image symbolizes some of Deren’s most significant initiatives in experimental cinema. In this still shot she establishes a silent connection with the eyes, suggesting the possibility for reverie or even hallucination. It foreshadows her experiments with superimposition and the juxtaposition of disparate spaces. It is an image that suggests the most compelling themes of her film work: dreaming, reflection, rhythm, vision, ritual and identity   –  [sensesofcinema.com]

◊→  At Land  ↓  (1944)

A 15-minute silent experimental film written, directed by, and starring Maya Deren. It has a dream-like narrative in which a woman, played by Deren, is washed up on a beach and goes on a strange journey encountering other people and other versions of herself. Deren once said that the film is about the struggle to maintain one’s personal identity. Music recently added by Nikos Kokolakis.

•  Synopsis

At the beginning of the film, a woman is lying on a beach as if she has been washed up by the ocean. She climbs a tree with some difficulty, but when she finally reaches the top, she finds herself at the end of a long dining room table during a bourgeois dinner party. All the guests ignore her as she drags herself on top of the table and pulls herself across it, trying to reach a man at the opposite end who looks deeply concentrated on a chess game. When she finally gets to the man, he stands up and leaves the table; she looks disappointed and hopeless.

The chess pieces begin to move by themselves, and one of the pawns falls on the floor. It floats down a waterfall and down a river. The woman chases it, climbing down the hill she had already passed. She then finds herself walking down a forest path; she begins talking and walking with a man, who in total is replaced four times by four different men (the first one is the American surrealist poet, Philip Lamantia at age 17; the second man is Gregory Bateson; the third is sound artist and composer John Cage; and the last one Deren’s real-life husband, Alexander Hammid).

She follows the man into a house where all the furniture is covered with white blankets. She opens many doors, and in one room finds a bed on which a man is lying covered in a white blanket as if laid out in death. They stare at each other for some moments; then a cat leaps from her arms, and she turns her back and leaves. After walking through several doors, she finds herself on a hilltop, and climbs down to a dune field.

Walking down the beach, she picks up stones, finding it hard to carry all of them at once. Then she finds two of the women who were at the dinner party in the beginning of the film playing chess on the beach. They are gossiping, having a good time while playing. The woman gets closer and watches them. She caresses their heads gently, making them lose their attention on the game. Then she takes a pawn from the game and runs across the dunes with her arms raised. While she runs, we see other versions of herself, at earlier stages in her journey; her other selves all glance at her. The film’s final image is of the woman running down the beach, leaving her footprints behind her.