Happy birthday, dear dead girlfriend

It would have been the 41st birthday of Stephanie who, having died at 30, never manifested anything close to a middle-aged self. It's impossible to think of her middle-aged; she'll always be the gentle, sweet girl with the killer body and (as another admirer dubbed them) "museum-quality tits" (not obvious in this picture). Remembering her today made me think of the line in "Masculin-Feminin" where the young people go to a movie and, as heard in the narration:

We often went to the movies. The screen lit up and we trembled... But more often than not, Madeleine and I were disappointed. The pictures were dated, they flickered. And Marilyn Monroe had aged terribly. It made us sad. This wasn't the film we'd dreamed of. This wasn't the total film that each of us had carried within himself... the film we wanted to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, that we wanted to live.

Marilyn Monroe had aged? Yes, we got to see Marilyn in early middle age, and frankly I thought she looked fantastic. Take a look at her in "The Misfits." For his part, Jean-Pierre Leaud, star of "Masculin-Feminin," has aged much worse -- just do a Google Image search for him. Shocking. But few of us ever get old gracefully, at least as far as our bodies and appearance go, me included. Stephanie, with her violent death in a car crash at 30, was spared that, and lives always in memories as the young, gorgeous, sexually permissive San Francisco chick. How lucky I am to have had her in my life, and in my memories now.

Another obscure figure of the 60s

I was researching yet another obscure point for my current novel project today when I ran across this fun fact. Eva Green, a 27-year-old actress who appears in the new film "The Golden Compass," is the daughter of a French actress whose name will not ring a bell with many Americans -- Marlène Jobert. But perhaps this picture from the film I was researching, Godard's Masculin Feminin, will ring a bell:

(She is in the center in this picture, the only one I could find from the film. Note: The picture I put up earlier today was of the wrong actress. Oops.)

Here, by the way, is the bit of monologue I wanted from the Godard film:

We often went to the movies. The screen lit up, and we trembled... but more often than not, Madeline and I were disappointed. The pictures were dated, they flickered. And Marilyn Monroe had aged terribly. It made us sad.

This wasn't the film we'd dreamed of. This wasn't the total film that each of us had carried within himself... The film that we wanted to make -- or more secretly, no doubt -- that we wanted to live.

technorati: Godard, Eva Green, cinema