Italian actress Monica Vitti has died at the age of 90, the Italian Minister of Culture announced on Wednesday February 2. “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“, he wrote. Affected by the diseaseAlzheimer’sthe actress had retired from public life for several years. She was known for her many roles in the films of her compatriot, the Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, whose Adventure and The Eclipse.
The author and former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, said he was very affected on Twitter. “Roberto Russo, his companion for all these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more, I do it with pain, affection, regret“, he wrote. EShe married director and cinematographer Roberto Russo in 1995.
A soft gaze tinged with melancholy, a bewitching hoarse voice and an indomitable mop of hair: Monica Vitti perfectly embodied the tormented characters of the “tetralogy of incommunicability“: Adventure (1960), The night (1961), The Eclipse (1962), and The Red Desert (1964), four films which brought Antonioni into the pantheon of world cinema, while giving the actress then thirty years of age international notoriety.
“I had the chance to start my career with a man of great talent”, but also “spiritual, full of life and enthusiasm“, recognized the actress in an interview with Italian television in 1982.
Born in Rome on November 3, 1931, Monica Vitti, graduated in 1953 from the National Academy of Dramatic Art, first embarked on a theatrical career, where her comic talent already shines, one of her trademarks. It is also in supporting roles in comic cinema that she was spotted by Michelangelo Antonioni, with whom she quickly established an artistic and sentimental relationship.
This is how she successively embodies the tormented Claudia of Adventurethe tempting Valentina of The nightthe mysterious Vittoria of The Eclipse and the neurotic Giuliana of red desert.
After her passage at Antonioni, of which she was the companion for ten years, from 1957 to 1967, she became one of the protagonists of the Italian comedy, where she stood up to her male counterparts, of the caliber of Alberto Sordi. , Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman or Nino Manfredi. She shines in particular in The girl with the gun (1968), a successful film by Mario Monicelli where she plays Assunta, a Sicilian who pursues the man who killed her all the way to Scotland.dishonored“.
Monica Vitti also worked with the great filmmakers of the time such as Joseph Losey (Modesty Blaise) or Ettore Scola (drama of jealousy in which she replies to Marcello Mastroiani). The actress also came to directing in 1990 with Scandal segreto.
“Monica Vitti was the only one of her generation able to cover the whole range of expressions of Italian cinema: the neurotic bourgeois woman, translating the incommunicability of Michelangelo Antonioni and the popular woman of contagious joy with Alberto Sordi“, greeted the Italian daily La Repubblica Wednesday, February 2. “Point of reference for all the actresses who came after her, Monica Vitti was all at once: deep, enigmatic, sensual, funny. And intellectual, popular, melancholic, intelligent. Bellissima“.
The actress has won numerous awards throughout her career, including five David di Donatello (Italian Caesars), a Golden Lion in Venice for Lifetime Achievement and a Silver Bear in Berlin.
The Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi saluted “an actress of great irony and extraordinary talent“, Who “conquered generations of Italians thanks to his spirit, his talent and his beauty“.”She made Italian cinema shine all over the worldr,” he claimed.
The Italian star Sophia Loren paid tribute to “a great actress“: “his disappearance is a great loss not only for the cinema but for all of us“, she told the Italian agency Adnkronos.
The former president of the Cannes Film Festival Gilles Jacob paid tribute to him on Twitter: “Sublime, she played the neighbors of landing with a class of goddess and the queens with the simplicity of the neighbor of landing“.”Bardot got Vadim to throw it. Monica got Antonioni. Then she gave herself up to the luxury of Italian comedy with Scola, Monicelli and the others. She became a world star by remaining herself, laughing and simple“, he summarized.