Lhe staple has been part of women’s clothing for a very long time. It became commonplace in the 19thand century and allows stripping as fast as choreographed. It is, in any case, this last advantage that the film industry chooses to exploit. The choice is vast. Let us therefore select one of the most memorable scenes: it remains, sixty years later, a model of the genre. It takes place in the sketch film Yesterday, today and tomorrow (1963), by Vittorio De Sica.
The director brought together two of the biggest names in cinema at the time, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. The episode entitled “Mara” places them around a pink bed, in the small room of a prostitute who receives her client. Like Tex Avery’s wolf, howling at the moon at the foot of his beauty who is combing her hair, in full effervescence and drunk with desire, Mastroianni interprets his score like a dog-dog who hops and pretends to be beautiful. Seeing the decisive moment fast approaching, he still jumps fully dressed on the bed to come and curl up, paws in circles, very wise.
Tension escalates
Splendid, in a sumptuous Dior negligee, Sophia Loren finishes installing the decor, leaves the mirror of her dressing table, gets up and throws a record. She is calm and now stands facing him; without trembling, she begins the first bars of a striptease. Stunned and overexcited, Marcello Mastroianni lets out a few grunts, while standing perfectly still. The tension rises a notch when, after having taken all her time to roll up her stockings and undo her corset, the moment of capsizing arrives.
Facing the window, Sophia now has her back to him. There she is, getting ready to undo her black lace bra, when suddenly, without anything or anyone seeming to invite her, she stops, pauses, then pivots on herself in a flash. The languorous movement of the parade is definitely broken. She will have commanded the slightest pulsation. To signal the end of the performance, she finally crosses her arms over her chest and thus leaves Marcello K.-O., on the mat.
An omnipresent motif, this moment when one dresses or undresses is a good indicator of the relationship between men and women in a given society and time. In the way that bodies are stripped bare and clothes are unfastened, it is then easier to see what the gaze stops on, slips or clings to.
