Italian actress Monica Vitti died this Wednesday, February 2, 2022 at the age of 90 in Rome. She had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease since 1996. The actress with the hoarse voice and the indomitable hair was the wife and the muse of the master of cinema Michelangelo Antonioni.
Indeed, through her elegant mysterious presence, she 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. Her childhood had been marked by the war, during which she had found an escape with theater and comedy: “Under the bombs, when we had to take refuge in the shelters, me and my little brother improvised little plays to distract those around us.“
After her time at Antonioni, she became one of the protagonists of the Italian comedy, where she stood up to her male counterparts, of the caliber ofAlberto Sordi, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman Where 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 “disgraced” her to Scotland.
Antonioni’s companion from 1957 to 1967, she married the director and cinematographer Roberto Russo in 1995, after 20 years together. In 2011, the latter announced that Monica Vitti had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for almost 15 years. The actress had won 5 David di Donatello awards, a Golden Lion in Venice and a Silver Bear in Berlin.