Luisa Mattioni, Giorgia Moll and Dada Galeotti are Sabine women in ROMULUS AND THE SABINES (1961)
In PEPLUM movies, the lack of a beach has never stopped producers in showcasing a bevy of sunbathing babes. This aspect sorta makes sense here since the focus of the story are the Sabine women but I doubt the women of that period actually sunbathed this way. Giorgia Moll's career started in the 1950s and lasted up until the year 1970. She made a bunch of genre films, including THIEF OF BAGHDAD (1961) with Steve Reeves. Her artistic peak was most likely her starring role in Jean-Luc Godard's CONTEMPT (1963).
Very nice pictures indeed. There is a famous mural in Pompeii that shows young women playing ball and wearing bikinis.
ReplyDeleteGenerally however upper class women in Ancient Rome went to great lengths to keep their complexions as light as possible. This included smearing white lead on their faces! Suntans were associated with field slaves, who were at the bottom of the social pyramid.
Patrician women also sometimes wore wigs made from the lighter colored hair of female slaves from Gaul and Britannia. Mistresses did not hesitate to have their slave women with desirable hair color sheared like sheep for their wigs.
This is one reason why I tend to prefer the more fantasy-based peplums over the "historical" epics. When the hero can run around without a shirt, the ladies can (sometimes) be seen wearing skimpier outfits than would be historically "accurate".
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