Italian actress Monica Vitti has died at the age of 90, the Minister of Culture announced on Wednesday. ” Farewell to Monica Vitti, farewell to the queen of Italian cinema. Today is a really sad day, a great artist and a great Italian goes missing “, can we read in the press release by Dario Franceschini.
It is an icon of Italian cinema who left on February 2, 2022. The one who brilliantly illuminated the work of her compatriot Michelangelo Antonioni, whom she met in 1957 on the dubbing of the film The Scream, was also a theater actress. This is also where she started at the age of 14. Michelangelo Antonioni chooses her to play Adventure in 1960. It was the beginning of a rich collaboration between the actress and the filmmaker with whom she would shoot The night (1961), The Eclipse (1962) and The Red Desert (1964).
Born in 1931 in Rome, Maria Luisa Ceciarelli will delight the hearts of Italians and chain roles with films like Modesty Blaise, The girl with the gun or films by great directors like Ettore Scola – drama of jealousy (1970) with Marcello Mastroianni or The Phantom of Liberty. His mythical presence has been rewarded on many occasions: five David di Donatello (the Italian Caesars), a Golden Lion in Venice for his entire career, a Silver Bear in Berlin, the rank of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.
She liked to embody, to play, to change her identity for the time of a role. She was thus Claudia in Adventurein The nightVittoria in The Eclipse or Giuliana in red deserte, in turn tormented, temptress, mysterious or neurotic. She was also the first comic actress in Italy, sharing the bill equally with her male colleagues Alberto Sordi, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman or Nino Manfredi. A woman of commitment asserting her independence, she refused to marry the men in her life, Michelangelo Antonioni and Roberto Russo.
In 1990, she directed her own film Secret scandal. For fifteen years, she had been ill with Alzheimer’s disease.