(ANSA) – ROME, OCTOBER 31 – November 3 is a beautiful date to celebrate Monica Vitti’s 90th birthday, one of those actresses who even today make Italian cinema immortal in the world.
According to the Catholic liturgy, the anniversaries of all the saints are behind us and the dead are honored. She, Monica the unforgettable, seems to have left everything behind for the past twenty years, yet the limbo in which she spends her life is populated by images, celebrations, memories that always give her back to us very vivid, an icon that goes beyond time, the disease, oblivion. For her, cinema has always been an elixir of life and even today it gives her an eternal present. We know that the truth is much more painful, a form of Alzheimer’s that has isolated her from the world and that her husband Roberto Russo defends with great rigor and respect by fighting against the “rumors” and false news that populate the network at regular intervals. .
We know that his last public appearance dates back to 19 years ago (at the premiere of Notre Dame de Paris) and that already in previous years his participation in official events had rarefied after a retirement from the scene that dates back to 2001, when he was received at the Quirinale for the David di Donatello. Yet it is as if she had never detached herself from the show and is one of those names that even the youngest recognize: cinephiles for his memorable partnership with Michelangelo Antonioni in the 1960s, spectators for the spectacular understanding with Alberto Sordi in the heart. of the best season of Italian comedy.
Monica is the living embodiment of the golden age of Italian cinema: two-faced like the great actresses: face, voice, charisma that no other has been able to repeat.
Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli in Rome, on November 3, 1931, raised in Sicily before the war due to her father’s job (trade inspector), in love with acting since adolescence (when she staged home shows to distract her brothers from horrors of bombs in the last years of the war), he graduated in 1953 from the Academy of Dramatic Art under the guidance of Silvio d’Amico and with an exceptional teacher-companion like Sergio Tofano. There are already all the signs of her ductility as an interpreter: the first pushes her to the stage to face great dramatic roles (Shakespeare, Molière, Nicodemi’s “The enemy” with which she conquers the audience), the second leads her to free her histrionic verve in the successful series of comedies inspired by the character of Mr. Bonaventura, then a very popular comic book hero. In the meantime, she has given herself a stage name to replace the nickname of “Setti Vistini” with which friends and family called her for her ability to change quickly like a Fregoli character. She chooses a surname that reminds her of her beloved mother (Adele Vittiglia) and a name that “sounds good” to her and is not yet in fashion. She made her debut in cinema in ’55 with a small role in Guido Salvini’s Adriana Lecouvreur alongside sacred monsters such as Valentina Cortese, Gabriele Ferzetti and Memo Benassi, but 5 years later she embodied herself in Antonioni’s silent muse for the first of four films. they go under the sign of “incommunicability”: The adventure.
In the following four years she will become an international diva thanks to unforgettable titles such as La notte, L’eclisse, Deserto rosso, but the meeting with Antonioni dates back to 1957 when she lends her voice to Dorian Gray in Il grido. All the great international directors also want her because in addition to a beautiful and mysterious face she sports a hoarse and mellow voice which (just like Claudia Cardinale in the same years) affirms a difference from the traditional school of diction. Yet the hood of the mysterious and icy woman is not for her, just like the image of being distant and unknowable. In the same 60s she tried her hand several times with TV and had a special recognition with her participation in the tormented jury of the 1968 Cannes festival when she resigned from her role in solidarity with the protesters of the Nouvelle Vague. It is in this moment that she decides to give a cut to her more consolidated image and embraces the idea of comedy thanks to Mario Monicelli who wants her to be the protagonist of The girl with the gun.
Success is popular, immediate, contagious. In the middle of ’68, the emancipation of the shy Sicilian Assunta Patané who chases the man who dishonored her (Carlo Giuffrè) to England to then understand that one can be free and honored even without going through the honor killing, makes noise and the director draws from Vitti a bright and unexpected talent that will soon allow her to fight on an equal footing with the colonels of the Italian comedy. The only winning woman with their own weapons and unaltered femininity in a world of more or less misogynistic males, Monica Vitti dominates in the Italian cinema of the 70s. He allows himself quality extravagances (as in the roles sewn on his charm by Miklos Jacso ‘, Luis Bunuel, Andre’ Cayatte), works with the great Italians (from Dino Risi to Ettore Scola, from Monicelli to Luigi Magni de La Tosca), alongside Antonioni in the electronic experimentation of The Mystery of Oberwald), triumphs paired with Alberto Sordi (especially thanks to Polvere di stelle directed by Albertone), pushes to the debut behind the camera before Carlo Di Palma (the great director of photography who has become the her partner) and then the photographer Roberto Russo who made her directorial debut with Flirt which won her the award for best actress in Berlin in 1983.
Together with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement that in 1995 was given to her by Gillo Pontecorvo at the Venice Film Festival, it is one of the major international awards alongside the 5 David, 12 Golden Globes and 3 Silver Ribbons earned at home. Never stopping in his thirst for life and challenge, he also conquers television audiences together with Mina (Milleluci in ’74 and Domenica in twenty years later), he writes two autobiographical books, he signs his only direction (Secret Scandal) in 1990, brings in the theater the great American comedy from The Strange Couple to the First Page. At the dawn of the new century the volcano goes out, almost inadvertently and only the dedication of her husband Roberto Russo protects her from the morbid curiosity of the paparazzi. So today we can see and remember her in the fullness of her art and her vitality: with that warm, throaty laugh, without affectation, which she would extract from the hat seeing the thousand celebrations, exhibitions, tributes dedicated to her in recent months.
(ANSA).
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