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DNW
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Yorkshire
Just because …
Posted by DNW on 2013/10/01
From a picture floating around the Internet. Very “60’s”
No particular reason for re-posting it. I just think that the image has a certain atmosphere, and even beauty. In fact I find it almost mesmerizing.
Our friend Ropelight likes boats, maybe he can do something with this.
A calm sea
UPDATE: I deliberately withheld any reference to the subject matter from the title of this posting because although I was fascinated by the image I didn’t want to attract attention to it on the usual grounds of prurience.
I figured it would just appear as part of the “home page” series.
Nonetheless it’s received an unusual number of individual page clicks. A sophisticated readership this one, unless there are lots of people using search engines to look up the phrase “Just because”, and winding up here.
FYI then, the lady is/was a model and actress in Italian new wave type films.
Regardless of her looks, she’s as you might expect, also Italian by nationality.
The photo is probably, I would guess, from the late 1950’s to possibly the mid 60’s.
I came across her while wracking my mind for alternative movies my folks might be interested in watching, rather than the brainless and unamusing crap they pay for in their monthly satellite bill.
If anyone can “guess” her name, I’ll post an image of a combustion turbine as your reward …
I’ll throw in an image of a copy milling machine too, if you can name one of her movies.
Second update: A PRIZEWINNER!
The contest only lasted a few hours and is well over. Yet commenter out-of-the-blue Tom Hamilton comes in late and wins a prize nonetheless, because: a, he used the word “existential” in his comment, and b, I had a couple of pictures left over.
Therefore, as an anodyne for government shutdown boredom, or in order to more fully celebrate it, let’s review 1960’s female style, Italian style …
A sixties look
Call the cigarette police
Blonde
11 Responses to “Just because …”
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Truth Before Dishonor 
Yorkshire said
My guess is Dyan Cannon. Bob & Carol, Ted & Alice.
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AOTC said
ive got nothin’
however, at first glance the picture brought to mind this song but i have no idea why.
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DNW said
Ok, The contest is over.
The puzzle comes from the fact that none of our old Common Sense blog crew would be likely to click on this post as an individual web page. So, while York or anyone else passing by might have glanced at the image as part of the homepage, since after all, it loads up as part of a long series, I couldn’t fathom (nautical talk here) the number of individual page hits shown by the admin stats counter, given the innocuous title I gave it.
Maybe passers-by figured there was more in the way of imagery.
Maybe some others find it oddly fascinating too, despite there being nothing overtly sexual in the image. The sea and light may have a lot to do with it.
I probably should also admit that while the woman in this photo doesn’t look exactly like a certain “significant other” I have in mind at the moment, the image she somewhat elusively projects in this particular photo especially, does very much.
The answer is in the next reply.
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DNW said
The actress in the image is a youngish 30’s, Monica Vitti, an Italian model and actress who came to prominence in the 1960s with her roles in the Michelangelo Antonio films, L’avventura, and Red Desert, the latter of which also starred Irish actor Richard Harris. As you might expect, the Red Desert has nothing to do with a literal desert, as per some John Wayne/Sophia Loren lost-city-in-the-Sahara type flick.
Those English speaking movie fans who search their memories for Antonio, are most likely to come up with the incomprehensible film “Blow-up”, which was famous during some of our childhood’s as much for the iconic 60’s image of Vanessa Redgrave posing topless in hiphuggers, her arms folded across her chest, as anything else.
More lastingly, we may remember this scene from some late night television showing of it years later, as we awoke from a drowse and shouted “Hey man, that’s Jeff Beck playing “Train kept a Rollin’ ”
Those Americans who stumbled across Vitti in the past will probably have a mental image of her that is rather different from the picture I posted, and one which probably stems from the 10 minutes they’ve spent trying to watch that campy 1960’s farce Modesty Blaise on a cable channel, before finally tuning it out due to boredom or bewilderment.
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DNW said
“Tom Hamilton” inadvertently placing his response in the site’s general comment policy section, says,
Thanks for your comment Tom. The contest is over, but because of your good taste, judgment, and contribution to our historical perspective, I’ll post up a couple more images of Ms Vitti.
If our lively contributor Miss AOTC had won, she would have won an image of an aerospace profiling mill. But them’s the breaks.
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AOTC said
dang. i never win anything… lol i did google the actress to find out who she was and found a boatload of pictures. WOW she was stunning. i think she must be about my moms age now.. low 80’s? i sort of think she actually does have Italian looks, i see a familiar roman slant to the nose. . i have cousins who resembles her “look”. my grandfather was from northern italy, fair skin light eyes and black hair. people did not guess him to be italian. now, grama was from rome, typical darker skin and eyes… but i digress….
hmm, “existential” movies. that’s a new one for me. im thinking maybe old Kierkegaard can help me understand. heh!
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DNW said
Once he helps you to understand, then you can help us to do so. My eyes glaze over trying to read any “existentialist” literature except perhaps Camus. Heidegger, always fascinating reading, and the first existentialist, may not be an existentialist.
Hey! you gave me an idea in case I ever become a high school English teacher: …
Existentialist movies … Christian fideism … “existence precedes essence” … “the horror movie as dream sequence” … “man’s condition of foundness [finds himself in the world without explanation]”
Compare and contrast in order to sift for a concept common to all of these themes.
What would you have to say regarding a connection, if any, between fideism and existentialism?
Can the principle of “intelligibility” be reconciled with any of these themes? If so how?
LOL
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DNW said
Digress all you like.
Yeah, she was arresting looking, especially in what must have been her late 20’s and early to mid 30’s years.
And now that you mention it, our subject does have perceptibly Italian looks (of one kind anyway) even in some of the most youthful images and even (again) in some of the most 60’s “mod look” shots.
As an exception to “the rule” (especially with her hair blonde) she probably becomes more intriguing.
Maybe this is part of why she seems so visually interesting despite not being of an obviously sex-pot type.
You can have a certain amount of fun with this, since we all realize that even in the most apparently homogeneous European nations, there are at least distinct genetic lineages, and, according to some physical anthropologists of the past, also recognizable physical types traceable to onetime culturally discrete populations.
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AOTC said
Kierkegaard. online course.
ok. i understand and can follow the video lessons so far, have read the Plato passages, and now thinking,”OK with a bit of perseverance, I can do this”. I took the quiz,missed one question, foolish mistake. all in all, I didn’t feel too lost….
that was until I visited the question and forum area. holy cow. not only do I not understand the vernacular, it appears these ‘classmates’ of mine are way out of my league. its been interesting reading their reams of comments. I guess ill stick with the course work and sit in the back of the class. LOL
i think i like malcom muggeridges’ summation of Kierkegaard as a ” weird little dane” ! ha!
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DNW said
AOTC said
2013/10/08 at 20:57 e
Kierkegaard. online course.
ok. i understand and can follow the video lessons so far, have read the Plato passages, and now thinking,”OK with a bit of perseverance, I can do this”. I took the quiz,missed one question, foolish mistake. all in all, I didn’t feel too lost….
that was until I visited the question and forum area. holy cow. not only do I not understand the vernacular, it appears these ‘classmates’ of mine are way out of my league. its been interesting reading their reams of comments. I guess ill stick with the course work and sit in the back of the class. LOL
i think i like malcom muggeridges’ summation of Kierkegaard as a ” weird little dane” ! ha!”
Keep us updated, and don’t worry about the classmates, or the main ideas. You will find you have been living out this existentialist argument all your life.
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AOTC said
*just because*
its archery season.
so,there is that. 🙂
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