give
In the comedy, his cheerful and longing women bring destructive, misogynistic, self-harming, masochistic drives against the light. His Goddess of Stardust she is the first sacrificial victim who is an avant-garde diva. In We women are like that, by Dino Risi (1971), the contradictions of a relationship between the sexes in avoidable change are vented on the protagonist’s body, symbolizing a contradictory and false liberalization of customs. He then explained: “Women have always surprised me: they are strong, they have hope in their hearts and in the future”.
In short, she is Vitti, together with Mariangela Melato, the undisputed protagonist on the big screen of the social transformation of the 70s. A protagonist charged with the unmistakable explosive charms of her infinite energy and many melancholy doubts as spies of a progress that is difficult to digest. Hence the acting of a diva who has never posed as such, and who knows how to make a figure of baroque and exasperated acting without being overwhelmed. The comic register makes the Vitti model acceptable to the public, not disturbing. Over the years his figure becomes rounded. The strange, beautiful face, almost Nordic, and the sharp and marked bistro look of Antonioni’s films give way to a more rounded and familiar oval. His making people laugh overshadow the always beautiful legs.
Reassuring
Funny and ironic Monica is as reassuring as her comedies. Not for nothing in those years will be the foreign actresses Charlotte Rampling, Catherine Deneuve, Maria Schneider to interpret the dramatic anxieties of our cinema. But the Italian Comedy has “its Vitti”: one that appeals to women who identify with it, while for the dreams of Italian males one looks abroad. She herself commented «The actresses – let’s say – ugly who are successful in Italy today owe it to me. I am the one who broke down the door ». Victory is the protagonist of the Eclipse: “There are days when having a needle, a cloth or a man in your hand is the same thing.” Of course, one so scared and frightened. If the devastated Giuliana of The red desert, victim of the neo-capitalist society, which in a famous joke “your hair hurts” is too bourgeois in there, wrapped in her green coat, the difficulties of Claudia de The adventure they wrap themselves in mystery to fix themselves away from most, Monica, after the artistic partnership and not only with Antonioni, has to reinvent herself.
It is therefore obvious for her to get in tune with the public thanks to The girl with the gun, by Mario Monicelli, 1968, a young Sicilian seduced and abandoned, or in Ninì Tirabusiò, the woman who invented the move, 1970. Con My love, help me, by Alberto Sordi, 1969, are slaps in a burst. Again with Sordi, in 1982 he plays I know you know I know, a film about the erroneously discounted newspaper of a Roman couple. The audience loves her, she laughs about it. And with the irony, the confidentiality, the style that will distinguish his long forty years of career he will even be able to challenge the “right-thinking” without excess and with intelligence. “Anything happens in bed,” she dared to admit. But to one like this, with that smile and that unmistakable voice even Italy at the time could only concede. Shy, Maria Luisa Ceciarelli, aka Monica Vitti, will always say very little about her relationship with Antonioni, which lasted a decade. “I don’t know how much Antonioni owes to me: I’ve never asked myself and I don’t want to know,” will be his comment. In 1995 he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Venice. In 2000 she married the still photographer Roberto Russo. He hasn’t appeared in public for years. They describe her as ill, certainly still indomitable. In 1988, “Le Monde” published the news of his death. She thanked the reporters for a gaffe that would certainly “extend her life.” When the irony is classy. Happy birthday, Monica!