Marina Pierro (born 9 October 1956, or 1960) is an Italian actress, model, writer, and film director, who is best known for her artistic relationship with Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006).
Pierro followed photography and theatre courses; studied French; had interests in astrology, esotericism, and psychoanalysis; and maintained a passion for cinema and acting.
[4] Pierro moved to Rome and began a career in modelling, doing fashion spreads for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue Italia, whilst looking for film work.
[7]Pierro mentioned she was going to appear alongside James Mason and Luciana Paluzzi in a film by Allen Reisner titled Greenhouse Flower, but this project never eventuated.
This was the director everyone was talking about for the scandal caused by his films, such as The Beast, which I had actually seen a while before, and which had made a strong impression on me for the beauty of the cinematography, the framing, its daring style.
"[9] Pierro was greatly affected by the experience of meeting Borowczyk and appearing in Behind Convent Walls: Walerian was an extremely polite person, yet not quite formal...
David Thomson wrote, Italian actress Marina Pierro...starred in most of Borowczyk's late features and became a muse to supplant [Ligia] Branice.
While the latter usually played a precious flower in danger of being trampled, Pierro's proud Italianate features, confident pose, and well-rounded body signified a perfect femininity for the Polish director.
[14]Portraying Margherita as a doe-eyed femme fatale outwitting the men around her, Pierro spends most of her time in Immoral Women either naked or dressed in flimsy, transparent veils, and engaged in graphic sex scenes.
Reviewing Immoral Women for L'Express, Michel Braudeau wrote, Walerian Borowczyk imagines in his own fashion the death of Raphael in the features of his model Margherita Luti...
Beautiful, indeed, like "La Fornarina" of Rome, [Pierro] has the magnificent indifference [and] the cold sensuality of a heroine of Stendhal's Italian Chroniques, and the camera of Borowczyk pays a passionate homage...
[16]Describing Immoral Women as "a surreal masterpiece and possibly Borowczyk's finest work" in the online film journal Senses of Cinema in 2005, Scott Murray wrote, "Marina Pierro, having now replaced Ligia Branice (Goto, l’île d’amour, Blanche, etc.)
She manipulates men while allowing them to think of her as a victim, her murderous revenge and theft merely the acts of a woman reasserting control over her own destiny (and image)… In a world of marginalized women, she has used a natural asset (her sex) to attain what is otherwise denied her (wealth).
Swiss actor Howard Vernon, who appeared in the film as Jekyll's scientific rival Dr Lanyon, later claimed, "Borowczyk was very much in love with the leading actress, Marina Pierro, an Italian girl.
The complete opposite of Mr Hyde, who is played by Gérard Zalcberg, whose face was a merciless, relentless mask – a disturbing, duplicitous identity.
[23]The book Borowczyk: Cinéaste Onirique was released in conjunction with Docteur Jekyll et les femmes in 1981 and included a preface by Borowczyk's friend, the French Surrealist writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues, who wrote, We cannot but praise this great filmmaker, who lives by and for the exaltation of the female body, for tightening the union of Jekyll and Hyde, and giving the dual character invented by Stevenson a new double: a bride, a lover, a devilish sister, a carnal reflection, wonderfully embodied by the Raphaelite beauty of Marina Pierro.
The French title, which translates as Dr Jekyll and the Women, is not only ridiculous, but also misleading, and psychologically puerile, compared to the complexity and depth found both in the book and within the concept of the film.
In 1982, Pierro had a notable role in cult filmmaker Jean Rollin's French horror film La Morte Vivante (The Living Dead Girl) as Hélène, the friend and blood-sister of the titular character (played by Françoise Blanchard).
In this film - based upon the writings of Ovid - Pierro plays Claudia, wife of the Roman commander Macarius (Michele Placido) in Augustan Rome.
The film's coda takes place in the present day, with Pierro playing Claudine Cartier, a young archaeologist en route from Rome to Paris.
[37]Love Rites screened out of competition at Le Festival international du film fantastique d'Avoriaz in 1988 and enjoyed commercial success in Italy, where it was released as Regina della Notte (Queen of the Night).
However, Borowczyk and Pierro returned to a period setting for what turned out to be their final collaboration: "Un traitement justifié", an episode of the French-German erotic television series Softly from Paris (a.k.a.
Filmed in 1989 and first broadcast on 3 February 1990, Pierro plays an adulterous wife, Bianca (or Blanche) in an episode adapted from the fifth tale of the seventh night in Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th century collection The Decameron.
You can certainly defend them against charges of misogyny by pointing out that the female characters in his later films are generally far stronger-willed and far more in control of their sexual pleasure than was the norm in 1970s cinema, something that became especially clear when [Borowczyk] began a decade-plus collaboration with the Italian actress Marina Pierro.
[39]For Redeemer magazine in 1993, Peter Tombs wrote, Marina Pierro is an extraordinary actress who combines a sullen sensuality with an ethereal, almost nervous intensity.
Her white skin, jet black hair and hypnotic eyes have made her an unforgettable presence in five films from the Polish born master of erotic cinema, Walerian Borowczyk.
[40]Of her relationship with Borowczyk, Pierro herself stated, ...above all we were united - we discovered it by working together – by the same visual conception of cinema, in which the fantastic and the poetic, the divine and the diabolical, and the "strange fascination" coexist.
In his official website, Alessio Pierro describes Borowczyk as "an exceptional teacher" who was important for his formation by exploring various techniques of cinema and painting with him.
Pierro has stated she is writing a book titled Ali d’inchiostro (Wings of Ink) about "the artistic path" that united her and Borowczyk, and she is also working on a film project based on a story by Gustav Meyrink.
I don't feel I have given up acting, I simply enhanced my directorial point of view more but I would be ready to come back at any time for a real film and with directors who make their cinema a personal and authentically-felt vision, Sokurov, David Lynch, Bela Tarr, to name a few.