Moon In The Gutter: Nastassja Kinski

Showing posts with label Nastassja Kinski. Show all posts

Friday, May 8, 2015

STAY AS YOU ARE Comes Out on Blu-Ray Tuesday!

Order it at Amazon.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

STAY AS YOU ARE (Così come sei) is Coming to Blu-ray and DVD from Cult Epics!!!

One of the most sought after films in Nastassja Kinski's filmography is finally getting an uncut Blu-ray and DVD release here in the states courtesy of the great folks over at Cult Epics. Stay as You Are (Cosi Come Sei) will be released on May 12th in a sparkling new HD transfer with both its original Italian language track, as well as the English language dub. The film will be available to order at Cult Epics official site, as well as Amazon and other fine retailers. I will be featuring a couple of in depth looks at this new release of one of Kinski's most important films in the upcoming months and, in the meantime, please feel free to visit my older posts on it as well.

Friday, March 27, 2015

STAY AS YOU ARE (Così come sei) is Coming to Blu-ray and DVD from Cult Epics!!!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (3) Nastassja Kinski in PARIS, TEXAS (WITH A GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM STACEY MARK)

"I used to make long speeches to you after you left. I used to talk to you all the time, even though I was alone. I walked around for months talking to you. Now I don't know what to say. It was easier when I just imagined you. I even imagined you talking back to me. We'd have long conversations, the two of us. It was almost like you were there. I could hear you, I could see you, smell you. I could hear your voice. Sometimes your voice would wake me up. It would wake me up in the middle of the night, just like you were in the room with me. Then... it slowly faded. I couldn't picture you anymore. I tried to talk out loud to you like I used to, but there was nothing there. I couldn't hear you. Then... I just gave it up. Everything stopped. You just... disappeared. And now I'm working here. I hear your voice all the time. Every man has your voice..."

I have written so much on the career and life of Nastassja Kinski in the past six years that I am not sure what more I can say with this little tribute. Simply put, Kinski's work in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas is my favorite performance of all-time.

The only reason's Kinski's work as Jane isn't number one on this list is due to the fact that, unlike most on this roles on this countdown, her work has garnered a considerable cult-following. Kinski's work in this film has influenced a countless number of artists since...in film, music, fashion and photography.

When thinking on Kinski in Paris, Texas the moment that always comes to my mind first is the astonishing close-up that Wenders' captures of her during Harry Dean Stanton's moving monologue towards the film's shattering conclusion. This close-up, which lasts for several minutes without a cut is my favorite cinematic moment ever...it represents cinema at its purest and Kinski shows herself as an artist of staggering composure, grace and skill. It's the kind of monumental moment most 'great' actors strive for throughout their entire career but few ever reach.

Kinski's presence looms so large over all of Paris, Texas that it is hard to believe how relatively small her part in the film actually is. Wenders understood that Jane had to be played by someone so electrifying that just a photograph of her would make us understand Stanton's obsessive and epic journey.

It is fitting that Nastassja Kinski had her greatest screen moment for Wim Wenders. It was after all Wenders who had discovered her in the mid-seventies and given Kinski her first role, in the brilliant Wrong Move. The two would reunite again in the nineties for the undervalued Faraway So Close. Listening to Wender's commentary on the Paris, Texas DVD one can hear how important the collaborations were to both artists.

While the celebrated close-up of Kinski is her most iconic scene in Paris, Texas there are many other smaller moments which are just as resonate and special including this one:

and especially this one:

Nastassja Kinski's work in Paris, Texas has influenced and haunted many notable artists including Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith (both called Paris, Texas their favorite film before their tragic passings). The film and Kinski also inspired one of my favorite photographers, the fabulous Stacey Mark, who, along with model Hailey Gates, paid special tribute to the film in the July/August 2011 edition of Jalouse magazine.

Stacey Mark has been one of my favorite photographers for several years now and we struck up an online friendship, which I greatly value, a couple of years back. Stacey's work is absolutely mesmerizing and has graced the pages of Nylon (she worked as their photo director for a time), Purple, Jacques, Lula and many many other publications. She has photographed everyone from Emily Blunt to Kate Bosworth and her stunning shots of Asia Argento have already become the stuff of legend. Outside of being one of America's most gifted young artists, Stacey is a really special person and I am so honored that she agreed to stop by here and share her memories of her Paris, Texas inspired Jalouse photo shoot. After reading, please pay a visit to Stacey's official site, follow her at Tumblr and like her page on Facebook.

All right, enough of my rambling...let's here from the awesome Stacey Mark, one of the most inspiring people I know (and a fellow Roxy Music devotee to boot!).

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-

When Jalouse Magazine proposed I shoot a "Paris, Texas" inspired fashion story, I immediately said "no." The image of Nastassja Kinski in that fuzzy pink sweater behind the reflective glass of her peep show room is often imitated but never duplicated. Many photographers have tried and most have failed. Not only was I turned off to the idea of being the one of many artists to attempt this intimidating feat, the fact that the magazine wanted me to create 12 pages based on one iconic image seemed impossible.

The overall theme of the issue was to cast theater student and international girl of mystery Hailey Gates as the lead in all of her favorite films. When I researched Hailey, I learned that not only is her father the television director Tucker Gates, her grandmother is Joan Tewkesbury. Tewkesbury wrote two of Robert Altmans most respected films, Nashville and Thieves Like Us. With heritage like that, who am I to stand in the way of her cinematic dreams? Hailey as Kinski in a 12 page Kinski in 'Paris, Texas' it is.

I enlisted some of the best artists I know to recreate Kinski's butter blond bob to hide Hailey's waist length brown hair, her subtle yet seductive makeup and a wardrobe stylist to hunt down that fuzzy sweater. I decided to have the entire shoot take place in the imaginary room behind the glass. Budget concerns forced me to turn my Brooklyn apartment into a makeshift Texan peep show.

Fast forward to the recreation of that scene. That scene was haunting me the entire shoot and I had decided to do it at the very end of the day as the very last shot. The wardrobe stylist found a replica of that sweater, the hair stylist had recreated that hair and it was up to me to recreate that scene. We created a background of curtains based on the colors of her the scene, and set the lights around Hailey to both light her from the front with a warm spotlight as well as a light behind her to create a backlit glow. Having the bright lights almost blind her had the same effect as the one way mirror: I could see her but she could barely see me. The apartment was dark except for the light as an iphone quitely repeated the familiar creepy sound of the film's score. It was the first time all day that everyone was silent...hushed. There are few moments where you "experience" a photo, and this was one of those moments. Hailey looked at the lens with longing, the heat and brightness of the lights forced tears down her cheeks. This was, for me and the rest of the crew, our iconic moment.

-Stacey Mark, 2013-

Thanks again to Stacey for submitting this fascinating piece! After visiting her sites please also check out the official page of the much anticipated film The Turning, which Stacey appears in (and graces the poster of, as seen here):

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

No Way of Knowing: Maria's Lovers (1984)

Despite the fact that by the mid-eighties Nastassja Kinski was one of the most iconic and recognizable stars on the planet she could still come unglued in the presence of one of favorite actors. Such was the case when Kinski met legendary Robert Mitchum in the days before the two would begin sharing the screen together in the eloquent and haunting Maria's Lovers. Kinski later recalled that the ultra-cool Mitchum was, "Ah! Awesome! You know? He's one of those people who you think you will never meet-certain stars, certain actors. You just don't think they're real!" She would go on to admit that Mitchum had, "always haunted" her and that she had dreamed of working with him since she was a child watching his films. Working with Mitchum proved to be one of the great experiences of Nastassja Kinski's career and she admitted that, "everything just dissolved until there was nothing but those eyes!" during their scenes together.

It wasn't just the pairing of two great stars like Kinski and Mitchum that made Maria's Lovers one of the most memorable films of the eighties. As shot by Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky, Maria's Lovers remains a startling and moving work that is as ripe for rediscovery as any American language work from the period. With its intelligent and poetic script from the pen of frequent Polanski collaborator Gerard Brach and the stunning photography of Spanish born cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia guiding it, Maria's Lovers is an extraordinary work that still hasn't found the audience it has so long deserved.

Born in the late summer of 1937, Russian film director Andrei Konchalovsky began his career in cinema in his early twenties. A massively important Russian director who was, among other things, a friend and collaborator with the legendary Andrei Tarkovsky, Konchalovsky had been fascinated with the arts since he was a child and it would be that interest that would lead him to a life in film. Maria's Lovers is notable not only in that it marks Konchalovsky’s English language film debut but it also marks one of the first English language films ever to be shot by a Russian director.

Focusing on a small American town, just after World War Two, that has been spiritually and emotionally ripped apart, Maria's Lovers centers on Ivan, a damaged soldier returning home from the war to his drunken father and his lost love Maria. Ivan, played with a beautifully scarred intensity by John Savage, is struggling with a loss of not just a couple of years of his life but also his soul. The memory of Kinski’s Maria is the one thing that got him through the horrors of war he witnessed, but when he returns he finds that she has taken up with another soldier named Al, played well by Vincent Spano. It seems that everyone is obsessed by the luminous Maria, including Ivan’s father, characterized wonderfully by the iconic Robert Mitchum, and a travelling guitar playing stranger but Maria really only loves Ivan, who unfortunately becomes impotent around her even after they are finally married.

Maria's Lovers is marked by the remarkably sensitive direction of Konchalovsky, the searing performance of Kinski and the picture perfect photography of DP Juan Ruiz Anchia. It is a tender and moving portrait of personal alienation and stands as one of the best films that Nastassja Kinski ever had the chance to appear in. The film works best in its scenes between Kinski and Savage, as their relationship slips further and further down a hole of doubt, frustration and sexual tension. Savage is remarkable in the film and the internal strife he is experiencing is palatable. The film also soars in the moments Kinski shares with Mitchum, who stare at her with a kind of desire and longing that is extremely rare in modern English language cinema.

It is questionable whether or not the travelling musician, played by Keith Carradine, was really necessary, as it does take away from the main storyline, but his inclusion does give Kinski’s Maria an outlet for the blossoming sexuality that is overtaking her.

It is this repressed sexuality that gives the film its most remarkable scene, involving a tour de force moment with Kinski alone in her bedroom. It is one of the most heartbreakingly erotic and beautifully performed scenes in film history and Konchalovsky’s direction of it is splendidly tasteful without feeling compromised. It is one of Kinski’s great moments where she is confronted just by the camera and her own internal solitude, a solitude that she was able to portray as well as an actor that has ever been filmed.

The film also does a remarkable job at presenting America at one of its most pivotal moments. The fact that it took a Russian director, a French Screenwriter, a Spanish photographer and a German actress to do it makes it all the more incredible. Maria's Lovers is one of the eighties great lost films, and the relatively muted reception that greeted it frankly astounds me to this day. Shot on a relatively low budget in less than two months on location in Pennsylvania and produced by Cannon, Maria's Lovers is one of those films that has never been granted the attention it has so deserved but hopefully its day will come eventually.

The film would open across Europe in late 1984 to some acclaim but it was greeted by mostly-mixed reviews and poor box office when it opened in the States in January of 85. Among the critics who responded to the film were Janet Maslin who would write, "Kinski is radiant...she brings an immense vibrancy to the role of a small-town girl with many suitors, including one who becomes her father-in-law, in a rambling and populous story that is eventually less than the sum of its parts. However, as photographed by Juan Ruiz Anchia, Miss Kinski is even able to make a great deal out of a sequence in which she wears a damp, diaphanous housedress and scrubs the floor...Mr. Konchalovsky, who is capable of anything from sweeping emotional overstatement to attention-getting symbolism (a chair representing the Maria-Ivan union sits on that hilltop throughout most of the film) to Altmanesque clutter, has quite an eye for eccentric talent." Kevin Thomas also celebrated the film with, ""An impeccable piece of vintage Americana...special and rewarding...disquieting authentic...Kinski is undeniably sensual...a fresh, liberating perspective and universality to a quintessentially American experience." Too many critics missed how great the film was but almost everyone rightly celebrated Kinski, who was honored with the coveted Silver Ribbon award from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists. Konchalovsky was nominated for best foreign film director at the 1985 Cesar awards but otherwise Maria's Lovers failed to gather much momentum. The Silver Ribbon was a big deal for Kinski though as it would mark one of the only times that the critical establishment finally recognized her as the wonderfully effective actress she was.

Maria's Lovers is a really special film and it is absolutely essential for fans of Nastassja Kinski. It is currently available on Region 1 DVD in a fairly good widescreen presentation that unfortunately only includes the trailer as an extra. Konchalovsky would thankfully be given more attention for his directing skills with his next movie, the very exciting and well made Runaway Train (1985).

Maria's Lovers would mark the end to Nastassja Kinski's golden period as a star in America. After shooting Harem, she would film Revolution which would prove disastrous and she would work almost exclusively in European films for the next decade. When thinking of this I can only agree with Nastassja’s quote concerning her friend Roman Polanski’s exile from the States…”It’s America’s loss.” and Maria's Lovers is as great a testament as any to Kinski's truly distinctive and otherwordly talent.