Kinski Boots
Inspired by a recent conversation with Davy H I dug out the soundtrack album to Francis Ford Coppola’s visually extravagant 1982 musical One From The Heart and sunk myself once more into its lush songs by the sandpaper-and-silk pairing of Tom Waits and Crystal Gaye. Listening to it also reminded me how heartbreakingly gorgeous Nastassja Kinski was in the film and the main reason I went to see it twice when it came out, her short-but-very-sweet role as an alluring trapeze artist was about the best argument I’d ever heard for running away and joining the circus.
With her exotic, pouty face and heavy-lidded eyes Kinski was almost dangerously sexy as if she’d been created for the sole purpose of driving men crazy and back then I would have gladly crawled on my hands and knees across broken glass just to touch the hem of her garment, or at least ask her to be my girlfriend. I wasn’t the only one either as she was usually cast in films as the mysterious object of desire that men would risk everything for (not just in the land of make-believe either, one famous director completely lost his mind over her.) In Cat People a man even risks being eaten alive by a panther just so he can have sex with her which, when you’re talking about Nastassja Kinski, seemed like a perfectly reasonable chance to take.
Download: This One’s From The Heart – Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle (mp3)
Download: Cat People (original single version) – David Bowie (mp3)
Once again you have me wondering if we were separated at birth. Cat people as well as being an awesome film was totally my chance to see the at the time sexiest woman I could imagine in the buff, Kinski was sex on legs.
A gorgeous film, at least in my memory–I’ve not seen it since ’83 (Lumiere, St. Martins Lane)–fond vague recollection of a delicate trapeze scene; I treasured a copy of the poster, now lost.
I saw it at The Lumiere too, that was a lovely cinema. Saw ‘Paris, Texas’ there too.
Yes, the Lumiere was wonderful–spacious yet somehow tucked quietly away in a corner; saw Koyaanisqatsi there (come to think of it that was prompted by a trailer that accompanyied One From the Heart…); caught Paris, Texas at a kind of charming cramped contrast to the Lumiere–Screen on Baker Street. What was the name of the cinema opposite Camden Town tube? Seems it was linked to the Lumiere. Saw Repo Man there, January 84…
Sorry, that was Jan of 85 for Repo Man: headed up to Camden to escape an electricity failure where I lived in Brunswick Square.