Claudia Cardinale, whose performances graced such Italian cinematic masterpieces as Fellini’s 8 1/2, Visconti’s The Leopard and Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, has died. She was 87.
Cardinale died Tuesday in Nemours, near Paris, her agent Laurent Savry told the AFP.
Cardinale erupted onto the inyernational scene in the early ’60s and became, along with Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren one of the most prominent Italian stars of her epoch.
With more than 130 feature credits and a handful of theatrical roles in her name, she worked steadily from her debut in her early 20s until her death. She won three David di Donatello Awards — Italy’s Oscar — for best actress and received an honorary Golden Lion from the Venice Film Fest in 1993.
Although she always has been associated with Italian cinema, Cardinale was actually born in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, on April 15, 1938. She grew up speaking French, Arabic and the native Sicilian dialect of her emigrant parents, only learning Italian as an adult.
While studying at the Paul Cambon School in Tunis, Cardinale and a few classmates were cast in Frenchman Rene Vautier’s short film, Anneaux d’or, which eventually screened at the 1958 Berlin Film Fest, and she made her feature debut with a small role opposite a young Omar Sharif in Jacques Baratier’s Goha, which made it to Cannes that year.
Raped
Her plans were derailed when, at 19, she was raped, became pregnant and decided to keep the child, giving birth to a boy, Patrick. To ensure the child’s future and avoid the scandals, she signed with Italian producer Franco Cristaldi, who told her to pretend Patrick was her brother.
Cardinale remained under contract with Cristaldi for the 18 years, marrying the producer in 1966. Under his guidance, she did her best work, beginning with role opposite Vittorio Gassman and Renato Salvatori in Mario Monicelli’s classic heist comedy, Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958).
The next year, she headlined Valerio Zurlini’s neorealist romance Girl With a Suitcase, playing poor woman from the provinces in love with earnest, upper class boy. The film, which premiered in competition in Cannes, earned Cardinale international renown and her first di Donatello award.
In The Leopard, she played Angelica Sedara, a beautiful Sicilian who falls in love with Delon’s progressive aristocrat, Tancrede Falconeri, as the country is engulfed in political turmoil. The film won the Palme d’or in Cannes and is considered to be Visconti’s masterpiece. It screened in 2010 at a premiere of its 4K restoration, with Cardinale and Delon in attendance.
In a 2017 interview with Le Monde, Cardinale recalled shooting back-to-back movies with Visconti and Fellini, shuttling between the two sets: “Visconti was precise and meticulous, spoke to me in French and wanted me to have long brown hair,” she said. “Fellini was chaotic and didn’t have script; he spoke Italian to me, cut my hair short and dyed it blond. Those were the two most important films of my life.”
In The Pink Panther, Cardinale starred as the wealthy Princess Dala, whose priceless diamond becomes the target of an aristocratic jewel thief played by David Niven. Although her husky voice was dubbed, Cardinale was praised for her work– Niven teold her, “After spaghetti, you’re Italy’s greatest invention.”
John Wayne’s Daughter in Circus World
Cardinale’s most memorable English-language role was in a film directed by fellow Italian: Playing a former prostitute and frontier widow who fights to protect her land against ruthless railroad company in the epic spaghetti Western Once Upon a Time in the West(1968), Cardinale gave a fiery performance for Leone that included sadistic love scene with Henry Fonda.
“His wife stood behind the camera like a vulture, which completely paralyzed me,” Cardinale told Le Monde about shooting that sequence.
Cardinale was romantically linked with leading men throughout her early career, including Delon, Mastroianni, Belmondo and Steve McQueen. Yet she rarely spoke about her love life in public, only claiming in a late interview that she was “stupid” for having rejected the advances of Brando. “I never wanted to mix my private and public lives. No flirting. No flings.”
After divorcing Cristaldi in 1975, Cardinale lived with Neapolitan director Pasquale Squitieri, with whom she remained until his death in 2017. The two had a daughter, Claudia, and m,ade features including I guappi (1974), Corleone (1977), Claretta (1984) and Atto di dolore (1990).
Highlights of her career included Marco Ferreri’s satirical Vatican-set drama, L’udienza (1972); Visconti’s English-language Conversation Piece (1974), in which she reteamed with Lancaster; Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), in which she played a mistress brought into the jungle by her lover (Klaus Kinski); Marco Bellocchio’s Henry IV (1984) teaming again with Mastroianni
She also had brief career as a disco singer in the 1970s, releasing tracks like “Love Affair” and “Sun … I Love You,” all minor hits in Europe and Japan.
Cardinale appeared on the inside foldout of early releases of Bob Dylan’s 1966 Blonde on Blonde album (he was admirer) and caused a stir when she wore a miniskirt to meeting the pope in 1967.
In 2008, Cardinale was awarded a Legion of Honor in France, where she resided in the final decades of her life. In 2017, her dancing image–photo taken on a Rome rooftop in 1959–graced the poster of the 70th Cannes Film Fest.
Yu Need to Fight
