Hi !
I’d like to comment on the film “Maladie d’amour” as i respectfully feel
you’re missing the point which makes the plot work better than you have it and in a much more poignant way.After they’ve moved to that small french village in the outskirts of Bordeaux (where the main action takes place),Kinski’s character doesn’t leave Clément just because she suddenly gets bored of her provincial housewife’s life but because she realizes he sacrificed his promising career as a surgeon to become a GP , agonizes about it and she feels guilty ( see the moving scene in the church where she finds him crying ),in short she sacrifices herself and their love so that he can resume his career.Bergeron tells her during their “honeymoon” in Italy that he’s seen to it that Clement was hired again by a prestigious colleague of his.The film was intended as a modern version of “Camille” ( la dame aux camélias) hence the fleeting perception that this lost girl out of nowhere is a slut indeed (like 19 th century or belle epoque courtesans) but that in the face of the all-round bourgeoisie’s hypocrisy, her much purer and more noble heart brings her to the point of self-sacrifice for the sake of her young lover’s interests and she becomes ill in the process like the delicate flower she also is (cancer in the place of consumption as in “Camille” ).
While the film is not everything it could have been and a box office flop in France upon release, Kinski ,who was much admired here, got a nomination for the César for Best Actress ( our annual film award ceremony).At the time,with the only other continental European film industry having crumbled by and large throughout the 80’s ( I mean the Italian one) , French cinema was the only remaining european film industry healthy enough to provide films and parts of a wide variety to a great amount of actors and actresses.I know that she was already sort of bowing out , wanting to concentrate on her children’s upbringing to mend her tormented childhood so in a sense mine is a wish that doesn’t deserve to be brought up but I have always felt that instead of going to Italy for the next 7 films (Even the taviani brothers and Lina Wertmüller were alreaday in sharp artistic decline by then ), she should have signified more forcefully to the french directors that she wanted to work here in France (maybe the way her counterpart Romy Schneider had done twenty years before , becoming the biggest and most admired “French” film star of the 70’s and remaining so until her untimely and tragic death at 43 in 1982).
With the high regard in which kinski was held , there is no question she would have provided big competition to our biggest stars of the time ( the Binoche , Béart and even Adjani and the likes, especially since Adjani, then at the top, was consistently refusing every offer thrown at her and never really resumed on a full scale basis since then).A pity because whith both adjani’s sporadic appearances and kinski’s sort of retreating into her private life ( plus Romy schneider’s death), I feel that something has been missing in our French cinema in the last thirty plus years.That sort of nervous feminine incandescence…French cinema is fond of his actresses and offers quite a space for them to express themselves in a variety of film genres , from auteur movies to more popular forms and kinski could have met any of those genres with perfecction.She was beloved and still is by those who remember her and how talented and charismatic she was and I really feel that the current perception of hers would be quite different had she been a big French star for one or two more decades.Even the perception of hers as an international film star would have been different had she benefitted from the reputation of our cinema at least within the cinephilic circles ( it’s not all about box office but also about movie reviews and artistic recognition).
She might not have appeared in another big scale american movie like ‘revolution’ or another ” cat people’ but she might have got another “Paris Texas” or another “Tess”. Her career remains an enigma to me what with so much “éclat” and talent ( though I understand she wanted to focus on her family life…and I hope it worked for her).That she ended up in direct-to-cable productions, B movies or third rate productions (with the accompanying notion of younger people not knowing her at all or believing she is one of those second rate tv actors) is much to my chagrin.To me,she is nothing of a second rate actress.Talentwise, she ranks up there with the best.
Hi, Bertrand! Many thanks for your comment – it’s actually the first one ever here, so happy it was thoughtful and insightful. It makes me want to go back and watch Maladie again, see if I perhaps missed something!
Can’t argue at all with the rest of what you wrote. Nastassja – and I write this on her 60th birthday – deserved a much more renowned career than she had.
May I ask where to find this movie? I’ve been searching it for years, and once someone posted it on dailymotion but it’s mirror image, not easy to watch. Then it’s gone too. Even rare as L’alba is on YouTube now 🙂 Hope you will see and reply this Jim, and thank you very much for this almighty site!!
I got it off a certain private tracker called C_inemag_eddon. If you have access to it, it’s on there. Otherwise… Is the email address you gave a valid one? I can maybe help. 🙂
My son William Hickey was in the film. It was interesting because the film crew had to find locations that had no power lines or airplanes flying overhead. The filmed in Lake Bled, Slovenia and Salzburg, Austria and Rome, Italy. I got to meet Ms. Kinski. She was very gracious to my wife and I on the set when we visited our son, who was only 13 years old at the time.
Hi,
Are you still active? I found this site, when I had almost completed my own Nastassja collection. I think I have gathered 3 movies on dvd, which wern’t reviewed here, yet. Maybe you’d like to conatct me to exchange opinions and infos!
Sonja Kinski: I consider this name as a beautiful heritage. The talent and the madness of my grandfather and my mother have always been a source of inspiration for me. Let’s say that I experienced certain things that made me immediately become an adult.
Did you know your grandfather?
SK: At home, his name was never spoken. My mother hated him so much that I feel like I’m betraying her by even being interested in him. It was my friends who confirmed to me that he was a brilliant man. With us, family relations have always been very complicated. The only person with whom we maintain a link is my uncle Nikolai Kinski, my mother’s half-brother, born in 1976, and who is an actor in Berlin. I like him a lot.
Were you raised in the United States?
SK: Not completely. I was born in Switzerland and spent the first years of my life in Rome with my parents. I was 6 years old when they separated. My mother, who had just met Quincy Jones, then moved to Los Angeles with my brother Aljosha and me.
Do you adapt easily to this new life?
SK: No. At school, as I don’t speak the language well, all the children make fun of me. I’m the laughingstock of the playground, they call me “the Italian”, “the foreigner”, and no one wants to be my friend. I’m also very big for my age. I’m a head taller than my classmates and everyone thinks I’ve repeated a grade several times! To make matters worse, I find myself ugly and am very complexed. Every evening, I throw myself crying into the arms of my mother, who spends her time reassuring and comforting me…
At that time, your mother still shoots a lot for the cinema…
SK: Whenever she can, she takes me on set. An atmosphere that I do not like at all, these moments of over-excitement which alternate with great phases of immobility. I tell myself that I will never do this job! Mom can see that I’m unhappy and she’s going to do a wonderful thing: put her career on hold for fifteen years to devote herself exclusively to her children. I have the most amazing mother ever. I love her.
What relationship do you have with Quincy Jones, your stepfather?
SK: Excellent. Even today, when he has been separated from my mother for a long time, I consider him my father. He alone knew how to listen to me, give me life advice, push me to become what I really was. I owe him as much as my mother and I can’t thank him enough. I also get along very well with my little sister, Kenya, that mom and him had together and who is now 18 years old.
What was your family life like?
SK: At the beginning, we lived in a big house with a swimming pool and a garden, surrounded by six dogs. When my mother stopped working to take care of us, things changed a bit! The good thing is that we were raised away from the glitter. Mom did the shopping herself and we never had a driver to drive us to school! I may be the daughter of an actress, the least we can say is that I do not have delusions of grandeur. I don’t squander what I earn, because I know how to count, and that fame necessarily goes through ups and downs.
What kind of mother was Nastassja?
SK: She’s a very funny woman – she can do some mind-blowing impersonations! – but she can also be very strict about certain things. With her, when I was younger, no smoking, wearing a miniskirt or displaying a cleavage. I always had to look proper, elegant. She is obsessed with vulgarity.
Until what age did you remain this model teenager?
SK: Up to 17 years old. I then entered a phase of rebellion where I was particularly obnoxious to my mother. I started going out a lot, dancing until the end of the night. I suddenly wanted to feel alive.
How did your mother react?
SK: She was sad. She spent her nights distraught, haunting the bars with a photo of me in her hand, asking everyone if they’ve seen this young girl. She didn’t find me once. Sometimes some would say to her sympathetically, “Don’t worry. I know where she is. Nothing bad will happen to her.”
How did this teenage crisis end?
SK: Through my discovery of cinema and the deep desire to make it my profession. And also the desire to give meaning to my life.
However, when you were younger, the idea of becoming an actress horrified you…
SK: Because I was very shy, introverted, and had no self-confidence. For years, I was only interested in painting and photography, towards which I wanted to direct my professional life. Let’s say that, little by little, in the absence of loving myself, I began to accept myself as I am.
How do you imagine yourself in ten years?
SK: For now, I am unable to project myself into the future, nor to have a stable relationship with a man. I’m just trying to rebuild myself, to feel good in my body and in my head after some past mistakes. I’m counting on cinema to help me stay the course!
I must get round to watching some of Sonia’s movies. Probably not quite enough for a whole site, unlike mom and granddaddy, but perhaps worth an article!
“There is nobody like my mom. I miss you mama @nastassja.kinski #youareajedi #survivor #doingthe best you can with what u have. And your killing it. I’m so proud of you for working on your book. I can’t imagine how hard that is to relive. ❤️❤️❤️. Love you mama”
“Nastassja Kinski played the young wife. She was one of the few actresses around who had not succumbed to the knife and was ravishing, if unhinged. She had a tiny voice. It was almost as if she had stopped dead in her tracks at the age of eight, but she had been on a film set all her life, so she knew how to dig her heels in when she wanted. Another fragile rock. She was a great actress, however, and her performance shone in Dangerous Lesbians (as I’d soon renamed the production).”
– Rupert Everett, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins
Where do I begin? Wonderful David gets the credit always for some of my favorite things ever said to me or to anyone on a set. Hands down. Such as “You were late to set so lovely Jennifer is now going to say your lines.” Or, when, at the wrap party, after one of the lead actresses gave him a beautiful leatherbound script as a gift, he threw it onto the ground and said, “You were the worst one!” As she ran off in tears, he looked around as if to ask, What did I say?
David had an obsession with not crying. There were all these gruesome murders and torturings and funerals, all things you would cry about, but he would become very upset whenever an actress was crying. We were shooting a scene in which one of the lead actresses loses her baby, and she was preparing for the highly emotional moment.
“Where is she?” David said impatiently.
“She’s preparing to cry,” said the first assistant director, very quietly trying to keep the mood.
“I don’t want her to cry!” David said.
The actress walked onto the set, and she was sobbing, ready to shoot this very sad scene. Through her tears she said, “Are we ready yet?”
And David said, “We have four minutes to shoot this before lunch; please stop crying!”
She ran off crying — for real. And . . . what’s for lunch?
I have a wonderful Polaroid of David in my autograph book that I snapped when he wasn’t looking. I knew I would always want to remember exactly what he looked like. I look at that picture and start to laugh. It’s the back of beautiful Nastassja Kinski’s head, and David is inches from her ear, giving her direction. You can’t see Nastassja’s face, you have to imagine it, but I have a feeling her eyes may have been crossed.
If David was dismissive with other members of the cast, sometimes it seemed as if he was overdirecting Nastassja. One day David asked her if she was ready to act the scene. We had been called to rehearse, but David told Nastassja to go through the whole performance. Well somehow, Nastassja thought this meant the camera was rolling, so she proceeded to act out this highly emotional monologue. It was brilliant, but no one was filming it! The cameraman was trying to signal David to ask if he should start rolling, but David was just oblivious, waving him off for having interrupted Nastassja! He was completely engaged in “directing” her, and Nastassja obliged in giving one hell of a performance. We all just stood there watching, not knowing what to do. When she finished, David said to her, “That was beautiful, darling — the perfect amount of emotion. Would you like to put one on film now?”
Nastassja said, “I thought you were shooting?” She was, of course, wondering why he or anyone else hadn’t stopped her. We all felt terrible. Here we were again, up against lunch, and with little time to shoot the actual scene. We all stood helpless, wanting to help Nastassja but not wanting to interfere with David. She said, “Well, now I can’t do it with everyone looking at me,” which she meant figuratively — but David literally instructed us to turn away and not to look at Nastassja. David said, “No one is looking, Nastassja, you may begin!” I was looking at Jennifer like, What is happening? Why are we doing this? We were all turned around waiting for her to start, but now began the discussion of whether or not there was time. “And . . . that’s lunch,” said the first assistant director. I grabbed a Polaroid camera and secretly snapped David and Nastassja’s picture to put in my journal.
The first time I heard the name Nastassja Kinski was when my grandfather Melvyn Douglas recommended a movie to me he had just seen called Tess, directed by Roman Polanski. I followed Nastassja’s career ever since and was almost starstruck at the notion of meeting her. In Bella Mafia , Nastassja played Sophia, one of Vanessa’s daughters by marriage. I thought it might be funny to show Nastassja what a big fan I was, so I brought a movie magazine I owned from the 1980s that had her on the cover to show her on the set. It was from around the time she had been in Cat People and Paris, Texas, a movie I really love. When I asked her if she would autograph it, she looked at me innocently and said, “Are you making fun of me?” I felt terrible. It was not my intention at all. I loved her. But maybe it is inappropriate to ask your costars to sign your movie memorabilia. There were five ladies in Bella Mafia , and there was always an ongoing issue with dresses. Who could, would, or should be wearing what? And how lowcut could it be? Every time I wanted to wear something I would see on the rack I would hear, “Sorry, Nastassja is wearing that. No, sorry, Jennifer is wearing the red.”
And cleavage. This ones got the dress with the cleavage. You’re wearing a sack. When we shot the poster, there was a brawl over ( diamond earrings. All the actresses had picked out the same pair of diamond earrings that they each insisted they had to wear. And no one wanted to hold the gun. I wasn’t a fighter, so I ended up with no earrings and holding a large pistol in the poster. One day I came to work, and I passed Nastassja. She said hello, very quietly, and I noticed something strange. She was wearing my dress.
“Hi,” she whispered as she passed. I should mention that Nastassja barely speaks above a whisper. Sexy in real life but tough when you’re trying to act with her. I would be with her in a scene, a foot away, and I would look at Jennifer and say, “I can’t hear anything. Is she talking?” Jennifer would answer in her signature baby voice, “What did you say?” That’s why I’m leaning forward in every scene. I could never hear my costars! I headed to wardrobe, and I said, “Guys, I just passed Nastassja and she is wearing my dress.”
“I know,” they said. “She saw it hanging there and she wanted to wear it.”
I said, “But I’m wearing it in the scene.”
The wardrobe lady was so blase by that point. She sighed. “Yeah,” she said. “We tried to explain that to her, but she liked it.”
I said, “I wore the dress in another scene. So we are both going to be wearing the same dress in different scenes. So our characters share dresses?”
They all shrugged. By that point, fatigue had set in. In the end, the only person who even noticed the double dress was my friend the designer Cynthia Rowley, who had lent me the dress in the first place. She was thrilled, of course, to see Nastassja Kinski wearing her dress, and Nastassja, as always, looked beautiful. But it was my dress!
I was so sad when Nastassja wrote in my autograph book: “Even though we hardly spoke, I want you to know I wanted to. I just get shy.” There’s a little heart next to it. I was so happy to reconnect with Nastassja recently. She still looks stunning, and I’m pushing for a Bella Mafia reunion … or intervention.
Hi – I hope this message will make its way to Nastassja or Sonia, because we are distant relatives, and I know exactly how our joint ancestor (Burian / Burkhard Chynsky) moved from Prague, Bohemia, Czechia, to the County of Moers, a part of Germany now bordering the Netherlands in 1576. Burian and his wife Magdalena Cloet (Pelden-Cloudt) lived in perilous wartimes, and their story could make a good movie someday. Please contact me if you have interest.
Hi !
I’d like to comment on the film “Maladie d’amour” as i respectfully feel
you’re missing the point which makes the plot work better than you have it and in a much more poignant way.After they’ve moved to that small french village in the outskirts of Bordeaux (where the main action takes place),Kinski’s character doesn’t leave Clément just because she suddenly gets bored of her provincial housewife’s life but because she realizes he sacrificed his promising career as a surgeon to become a GP , agonizes about it and she feels guilty ( see the moving scene in the church where she finds him crying ),in short she sacrifices herself and their love so that he can resume his career.Bergeron tells her during their “honeymoon” in Italy that he’s seen to it that Clement was hired again by a prestigious colleague of his.The film was intended as a modern version of “Camille” ( la dame aux camélias) hence the fleeting perception that this lost girl out of nowhere is a slut indeed (like 19 th century or belle epoque courtesans) but that in the face of the all-round bourgeoisie’s hypocrisy, her much purer and more noble heart brings her to the point of self-sacrifice for the sake of her young lover’s interests and she becomes ill in the process like the delicate flower she also is (cancer in the place of consumption as in “Camille” ).
While the film is not everything it could have been and a box office flop in France upon release, Kinski ,who was much admired here, got a nomination for the César for Best Actress ( our annual film award ceremony).At the time,with the only other continental European film industry having crumbled by and large throughout the 80’s ( I mean the Italian one) , French cinema was the only remaining european film industry healthy enough to provide films and parts of a wide variety to a great amount of actors and actresses.I know that she was already sort of bowing out , wanting to concentrate on her children’s upbringing to mend her tormented childhood so in a sense mine is a wish that doesn’t deserve to be brought up but I have always felt that instead of going to Italy for the next 7 films (Even the taviani brothers and Lina Wertmüller were alreaday in sharp artistic decline by then ), she should have signified more forcefully to the french directors that she wanted to work here in France (maybe the way her counterpart Romy Schneider had done twenty years before , becoming the biggest and most admired “French” film star of the 70’s and remaining so until her untimely and tragic death at 43 in 1982).
With the high regard in which kinski was held , there is no question she would have provided big competition to our biggest stars of the time ( the Binoche , Béart and even Adjani and the likes, especially since Adjani, then at the top, was consistently refusing every offer thrown at her and never really resumed on a full scale basis since then).A pity because whith both adjani’s sporadic appearances and kinski’s sort of retreating into her private life ( plus Romy schneider’s death), I feel that something has been missing in our French cinema in the last thirty plus years.That sort of nervous feminine incandescence…French cinema is fond of his actresses and offers quite a space for them to express themselves in a variety of film genres , from auteur movies to more popular forms and kinski could have met any of those genres with perfecction.She was beloved and still is by those who remember her and how talented and charismatic she was and I really feel that the current perception of hers would be quite different had she been a big French star for one or two more decades.Even the perception of hers as an international film star would have been different had she benefitted from the reputation of our cinema at least within the cinephilic circles ( it’s not all about box office but also about movie reviews and artistic recognition).
She might not have appeared in another big scale american movie like ‘revolution’ or another ” cat people’ but she might have got another “Paris Texas” or another “Tess”. Her career remains an enigma to me what with so much “éclat” and talent ( though I understand she wanted to focus on her family life…and I hope it worked for her).That she ended up in direct-to-cable productions, B movies or third rate productions (with the accompanying notion of younger people not knowing her at all or believing she is one of those second rate tv actors) is much to my chagrin.To me,she is nothing of a second rate actress.Talentwise, she ranks up there with the best.
Hi, Bertrand! Many thanks for your comment – it’s actually the first one ever here, so happy it was thoughtful and insightful. It makes me want to go back and watch Maladie again, see if I perhaps missed something!
Can’t argue at all with the rest of what you wrote. Nastassja – and I write this on her 60th birthday – deserved a much more renowned career than she had.
Best wishes, and thanks again.
Jim
May I ask where to find this movie? I’ve been searching it for years, and once someone posted it on dailymotion but it’s mirror image, not easy to watch. Then it’s gone too. Even rare as L’alba is on YouTube now 🙂 Hope you will see and reply this Jim, and thank you very much for this almighty site!!
Hi, thanks for commenting!
I got it off a certain private tracker called C_inemag_eddon. If you have access to it, it’s on there. Otherwise… Is the email address you gave a valid one? I can maybe help. 🙂
Found it but there’s no signup options. Feel free to send mails, we can chat about Ms.Kinski’s too 🙂
My son William Hickey was in the film. It was interesting because the film crew had to find locations that had no power lines or airplanes flying overhead. The filmed in Lake Bled, Slovenia and Salzburg, Austria and Rome, Italy. I got to meet Ms. Kinski. She was very gracious to my wife and I on the set when we visited our son, who was only 13 years old at the time.
Thanks for stopping by, and sharing the story!
Hi,
Are you still active? I found this site, when I had almost completed my own Nastassja collection. I think I have gathered 3 movies on dvd, which wern’t reviewed here, yet. Maybe you’d like to conatct me to exchange opinions and infos!
This movie put me to sleep! It needed more Nastassija and less Julian Sands
I felt this to be much better than Night Sun. Regardless of IMDB.
Terrific movie! Up there with Tess and Paris Texas
Interview with Sonja (03/17/2012)
https://www.parismatch.com/People/Sonja-Kinski-se-fait-un-prenom-159073
Translation:
Paris Match: Is the Kinski name easy to bear?
Sonja Kinski: I consider this name as a beautiful heritage. The talent and the madness of my grandfather and my mother have always been a source of inspiration for me. Let’s say that I experienced certain things that made me immediately become an adult.
Did you know your grandfather?
SK: At home, his name was never spoken. My mother hated him so much that I feel like I’m betraying her by even being interested in him. It was my friends who confirmed to me that he was a brilliant man. With us, family relations have always been very complicated. The only person with whom we maintain a link is my uncle Nikolai Kinski, my mother’s half-brother, born in 1976, and who is an actor in Berlin. I like him a lot.
Were you raised in the United States?
SK: Not completely. I was born in Switzerland and spent the first years of my life in Rome with my parents. I was 6 years old when they separated. My mother, who had just met Quincy Jones, then moved to Los Angeles with my brother Aljosha and me.
Do you adapt easily to this new life?
SK: No. At school, as I don’t speak the language well, all the children make fun of me. I’m the laughingstock of the playground, they call me “the Italian”, “the foreigner”, and no one wants to be my friend. I’m also very big for my age. I’m a head taller than my classmates and everyone thinks I’ve repeated a grade several times! To make matters worse, I find myself ugly and am very complexed. Every evening, I throw myself crying into the arms of my mother, who spends her time reassuring and comforting me…
At that time, your mother still shoots a lot for the cinema…
SK: Whenever she can, she takes me on set. An atmosphere that I do not like at all, these moments of over-excitement which alternate with great phases of immobility. I tell myself that I will never do this job! Mom can see that I’m unhappy and she’s going to do a wonderful thing: put her career on hold for fifteen years to devote herself exclusively to her children. I have the most amazing mother ever. I love her.
What relationship do you have with Quincy Jones, your stepfather?
SK: Excellent. Even today, when he has been separated from my mother for a long time, I consider him my father. He alone knew how to listen to me, give me life advice, push me to become what I really was. I owe him as much as my mother and I can’t thank him enough. I also get along very well with my little sister, Kenya, that mom and him had together and who is now 18 years old.
What was your family life like?
SK: At the beginning, we lived in a big house with a swimming pool and a garden, surrounded by six dogs. When my mother stopped working to take care of us, things changed a bit! The good thing is that we were raised away from the glitter. Mom did the shopping herself and we never had a driver to drive us to school! I may be the daughter of an actress, the least we can say is that I do not have delusions of grandeur. I don’t squander what I earn, because I know how to count, and that fame necessarily goes through ups and downs.
What kind of mother was Nastassja?
SK: She’s a very funny woman – she can do some mind-blowing impersonations! – but she can also be very strict about certain things. With her, when I was younger, no smoking, wearing a miniskirt or displaying a cleavage. I always had to look proper, elegant. She is obsessed with vulgarity.
Until what age did you remain this model teenager?
SK: Up to 17 years old. I then entered a phase of rebellion where I was particularly obnoxious to my mother. I started going out a lot, dancing until the end of the night. I suddenly wanted to feel alive.
How did your mother react?
SK: She was sad. She spent her nights distraught, haunting the bars with a photo of me in her hand, asking everyone if they’ve seen this young girl. She didn’t find me once. Sometimes some would say to her sympathetically, “Don’t worry. I know where she is. Nothing bad will happen to her.”
How did this teenage crisis end?
SK: Through my discovery of cinema and the deep desire to make it my profession. And also the desire to give meaning to my life.
However, when you were younger, the idea of becoming an actress horrified you…
SK: Because I was very shy, introverted, and had no self-confidence. For years, I was only interested in painting and photography, towards which I wanted to direct my professional life. Let’s say that, little by little, in the absence of loving myself, I began to accept myself as I am.
How do you imagine yourself in ten years?
SK: For now, I am unable to project myself into the future, nor to have a stable relationship with a man. I’m just trying to rebuild myself, to feel good in my body and in my head after some past mistakes. I’m counting on cinema to help me stay the course!
I must get round to watching some of Sonia’s movies. Probably not quite enough for a whole site, unlike mom and granddaddy, but perhaps worth an article!
This is from Sonja’s instagram account:
https://imgur.com/ASGAUID
“There is nobody like my mom. I miss you mama @nastassja.kinski #youareajedi #survivor #doingthe best you can with what u have. And your killing it. I’m so proud of you for working on your book. I can’t imagine how hard that is to relive. ❤️❤️❤️. Love you mama”
I would Love to Have a Signed Photo Of Nastassja, Is there Any Info on how to go About this Request?
“Nastassja Kinski played the young wife. She was one of the few actresses around who had not succumbed to the knife and was ravishing, if unhinged. She had a tiny voice. It was almost as if she had stopped dead in her tracks at the age of eight, but she had been on a film set all her life, so she knew how to dig her heels in when she wanted. Another fragile rock. She was a great actress, however, and her performance shone in Dangerous Lesbians (as I’d soon renamed the production).”
– Rupert Everett, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins
https://imgur.com/cZRhvA3
Lovely anecdote! Thanks for sharing it.
Illeana Douglas covers this production in her memoir:
https://archive.org/details/iblamedennishopp0000doug
Where do I begin? Wonderful David gets the credit always for some of my favorite things ever said to me or to anyone on a set. Hands down. Such as “You were late to set so lovely Jennifer is now going to say your lines.” Or, when, at the wrap party, after one of the lead actresses gave him a beautiful leatherbound script as a gift, he threw it onto the ground and said, “You were the worst one!” As she ran off in tears, he looked around as if to ask, What did I say?
https://imgur.com/APQY4SY
David had an obsession with not crying. There were all these gruesome murders and torturings and funerals, all things you would cry about, but he would become very upset whenever an actress was crying. We were shooting a scene in which one of the lead actresses loses her baby, and she was preparing for the highly emotional moment.
“Where is she?” David said impatiently.
“She’s preparing to cry,” said the first assistant director, very quietly trying to keep the mood.
“I don’t want her to cry!” David said.
The actress walked onto the set, and she was sobbing, ready to shoot this very sad scene. Through her tears she said, “Are we ready yet?”
And David said, “We have four minutes to shoot this before lunch; please stop crying!”
She ran off crying — for real. And . . . what’s for lunch?
https://imgur.com/juKj1oo
I have a wonderful Polaroid of David in my autograph book that I snapped when he wasn’t looking. I knew I would always want to remember exactly what he looked like. I look at that picture and start to laugh. It’s the back of beautiful Nastassja Kinski’s head, and David is inches from her ear, giving her direction. You can’t see Nastassja’s face, you have to imagine it, but I have a feeling her eyes may have been crossed.
If David was dismissive with other members of the cast, sometimes it seemed as if he was overdirecting Nastassja. One day David asked her if she was ready to act the scene. We had been called to rehearse, but David told Nastassja to go through the whole performance. Well somehow, Nastassja thought this meant the camera was rolling, so she proceeded to act out this highly emotional monologue. It was brilliant, but no one was filming it! The cameraman was trying to signal David to ask if he should start rolling, but David was just oblivious, waving him off for having interrupted Nastassja! He was completely engaged in “directing” her, and Nastassja obliged in giving one hell of a performance. We all just stood there watching, not knowing what to do. When she finished, David said to her, “That was beautiful, darling — the perfect amount of emotion. Would you like to put one on film now?”
Nastassja said, “I thought you were shooting?” She was, of course, wondering why he or anyone else hadn’t stopped her. We all felt terrible. Here we were again, up against lunch, and with little time to shoot the actual scene. We all stood helpless, wanting to help Nastassja but not wanting to interfere with David. She said, “Well, now I can’t do it with everyone looking at me,” which she meant figuratively — but David literally instructed us to turn away and not to look at Nastassja. David said, “No one is looking, Nastassja, you may begin!” I was looking at Jennifer like, What is happening? Why are we doing this? We were all turned around waiting for her to start, but now began the discussion of whether or not there was time. “And . . . that’s lunch,” said the first assistant director. I grabbed a Polaroid camera and secretly snapped David and Nastassja’s picture to put in my journal.
Nastassja Kinski
The first time I heard the name Nastassja Kinski was when my grandfather Melvyn Douglas recommended a movie to me he had just seen called Tess, directed by Roman Polanski. I followed Nastassja’s career ever since and was almost starstruck at the notion of meeting her. In Bella Mafia , Nastassja played Sophia, one of Vanessa’s daughters by marriage. I thought it might be funny to show Nastassja what a big fan I was, so I brought a movie magazine I owned from the 1980s that had her on the cover to show her on the set. It was from around the time she had been in Cat People and Paris, Texas, a movie I really love. When I asked her if she would autograph it, she looked at me innocently and said, “Are you making fun of me?” I felt terrible. It was not my intention at all. I loved her. But maybe it is inappropriate to ask your costars to sign your movie memorabilia. There were five ladies in Bella Mafia , and there was always an ongoing issue with dresses. Who could, would, or should be wearing what? And how lowcut could it be? Every time I wanted to wear something I would see on the rack I would hear, “Sorry, Nastassja is wearing that. No, sorry, Jennifer is wearing the red.”
And cleavage. This ones got the dress with the cleavage. You’re wearing a sack. When we shot the poster, there was a brawl over ( diamond earrings. All the actresses had picked out the same pair of diamond earrings that they each insisted they had to wear. And no one wanted to hold the gun. I wasn’t a fighter, so I ended up with no earrings and holding a large pistol in the poster. One day I came to work, and I passed Nastassja. She said hello, very quietly, and I noticed something strange. She was wearing my dress.
“Hi,” she whispered as she passed. I should mention that Nastassja barely speaks above a whisper. Sexy in real life but tough when you’re trying to act with her. I would be with her in a scene, a foot away, and I would look at Jennifer and say, “I can’t hear anything. Is she talking?” Jennifer would answer in her signature baby voice, “What did you say?” That’s why I’m leaning forward in every scene. I could never hear my costars! I headed to wardrobe, and I said, “Guys, I just passed Nastassja and she is wearing my dress.”
“I know,” they said. “She saw it hanging there and she wanted to wear it.”
I said, “But I’m wearing it in the scene.”
The wardrobe lady was so blase by that point. She sighed. “Yeah,” she said. “We tried to explain that to her, but she liked it.”
I said, “I wore the dress in another scene. So we are both going to be wearing the same dress in different scenes. So our characters share dresses?”
They all shrugged. By that point, fatigue had set in. In the end, the only person who even noticed the double dress was my friend the designer Cynthia Rowley, who had lent me the dress in the first place. She was thrilled, of course, to see Nastassja Kinski wearing her dress, and Nastassja, as always, looked beautiful. But it was my dress!
I was so sad when Nastassja wrote in my autograph book: “Even though we hardly spoke, I want you to know I wanted to. I just get shy.” There’s a little heart next to it. I was so happy to reconnect with Nastassja recently. She still looks stunning, and I’m pushing for a Bella Mafia reunion … or intervention.
https://imgur.com/AgkqQ2W
https://imgur.com/wzJkIAL
Hi – I hope this message will make its way to Nastassja or Sonia, because we are distant relatives, and I know exactly how our joint ancestor (Burian / Burkhard Chynsky) moved from Prague, Bohemia, Czechia, to the County of Moers, a part of Germany now bordering the Netherlands in 1576. Burian and his wife Magdalena Cloet (Pelden-Cloudt) lived in perilous wartimes, and their story could make a good movie someday. Please contact me if you have interest.
I have the film in dvd format. Could make a copy and send.
So beautiful 😍