Word: contessa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Charles Boyer. The material, adapted from a novel by Maurice Druon called Film of Memory, would seem suited to all: a sentimental, gilded fairy tale about a poor Italian provincial (Liza) who comes to Rome to work in a hotel. She buddies up with a batty, once regal contessa (Bergman), who urges her always to "be yourself-the world worships an original." The girl follows this advice and becomes a first-magnitude movie star...
...reached an age where I am starting a new career as a character actress," says Ingrid Bergman, now at work on her 43rd film. The movie, which will be titled A Matter of Time in English-speaking countries and Nina elsewhere, stars Bergman as an aged contessa and Liza Minnelli as a young hotel chambermaid enthralled by the older woman's reminiscences. Bergman, who still needs nearly an hour-long makeup job to affect the wrinkled look, says the contessa "is just the opposite of my own character because she is destroying herself by dreams of her youth...
...believe that he would be invited out for a drink, much less in for the night. Moreover, though his dialogue is fixed in the '20s, his scenes are mired in the '60s. The female of the species have a few humorous lines, as when a naked contessa looks up at her slavering lover and whispers, " 'Ave I told you dat I 'ave de clap?" But the men all founder with such painful lyrics as "her organ was her treasure, even though she sold it each night for a few pieces of silver...
...some of the girls he admired into famous fictional characters. Agnes von Kurowsky, his World War I nurse, became Catherine in A Farewell to Arms; a hard-drinking English aristocrat, Lady Duff Twysden, turned up as Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises; the aging colonel's lissome contessa in Across the River and Into the Trees is a highly romanticized version of 19-year-old Adriana Ivancich, an Italian beauty whom the Hemingways knew in Venice...
Breaking out begins to seem somewhat less urgent, however, when Major General Frigg meets the villa's owner, the young and widowed Contessa di Montefiore (Sylva Koscina), who lives in the gatehouse outside the wire. And when Frigg finds a secret passageway that leads from his bedroom directly into hers, it becomes clear to him that his generals will need weeks of preparation-calisthenics, Italian lessons, etc. -before an escape attempt is feasible...