23 March 2009
Stefania Casini: A NSFW Tribute to the Physical Model for My Lulu (Updated)
Note: My version of LULU (Book 1 of it) now available! More on that here with links to buy it.
If you've seen Blood For Dracula, 1900, Suspiria, or Belly of an Architect (all magnificent films I am very fond of), you've seen this frighteningly beautiful actress before. She's one of those people that keeps 70s films worth watching.
She's also one of my main models for Lulu. (Update: and to my great delight, is pretty happy about that) And would have been a great one had they done a film of it that decade: she had this odd quality of projecting perversion and innocence equally well depending on the film. Sometimes simultaneously, as in Bertolucci's 1900. (see below)
And looking at her always makes me sigh. I'm surprised she's not better-known.
(click any image to enlarge)
Above: From the very funny Blood for Dracula, in which she plays one of two sisters that make Dracula(here played hilariously by Udo Kier, who seems to have invented both Kraftwerk and Peter Murphy's looks in this film) horribly ill. He had come to Italy looking for "wirgin" blood. They lie about their purity. Hijinks ensue. (essentially, the whole film is built around a dirty joke) Not to mention lots of bloody retching. Which, of course, Udo makes somehow classy.
Above: from Bertolucci's 1900
, with DeNiro & Depardieu, in which she plays a young, impoverished prostitute who has an epileptic attack(because DeNiro gives her wine, against her wishes) at a most inconvenient time. And yes, she does have those in her hands above, onscreen. One of the rare movies in which it's not just the women who have to strip all the way.
Peter Greenaway's Belly of an Architect, in which she plays the sister in an Italian family plotting to steal an exhibition, and his wife, from Brian Dennehy. Here she has the chance to help blackmail him, but does not. The interesting thing too is that Stefania was in fact herself an architect in New York in the 1970s, while she was acting.
...And still beautiful to this day.
And sometimes a filmmaker: she recently made the documentary Made in Albania.
Note: My version of LULU (Book 1 of it) now available! More on that here with links to buy it.
She's also one of my main models for Lulu. (Update: and to my great delight, is pretty happy about that) And would have been a great one had they done a film of it that decade: she had this odd quality of projecting perversion and innocence equally well depending on the film. Sometimes simultaneously, as in Bertolucci's 1900. (see below)
And looking at her always makes me sigh. I'm surprised she's not better-known.
(click any image to enlarge)
Above: From the very funny Blood for Dracula, in which she plays one of two sisters that make Dracula(here played hilariously by Udo Kier, who seems to have invented both Kraftwerk and Peter Murphy's looks in this film) horribly ill. He had come to Italy looking for "wirgin" blood. They lie about their purity. Hijinks ensue. (essentially, the whole film is built around a dirty joke) Not to mention lots of bloody retching. Which, of course, Udo makes somehow classy.
Above: from Bertolucci's 1900
, with DeNiro & Depardieu, in which she plays a young, impoverished prostitute who has an epileptic attack(because DeNiro gives her wine, against her wishes) at a most inconvenient time. And yes, she does have those in her hands above, onscreen. One of the rare movies in which it's not just the women who have to strip all the way.
Peter Greenaway's Belly of an Architect
, in which she plays the sister in an Italian family plotting to steal an exhibition, and his wife, from Brian Dennehy. Here she has the chance to help blackmail him, but does not. The interesting thing too is that Stefania was in fact herself an architect in New York in the 1970s, while she was acting....And still beautiful to this day.
And sometimes a filmmaker: she recently made the documentary Made in Albania.
Labels: film, frank wedekind, greenaway, italy, lulu, my comics, my influences, nsfw, sex symbol, stefania casini
¶ Monday, March 23, 2009
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