-U23510465281wkF-1440x752@IlSole24Ore-Web.jpg?r=1170x507 "Sandra Milo, the “girl of the century” who played Italy, has died")
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Great art and small gossip, palaces of power and Catholicism of miracles, socialism and sheets: twentieth-century Italy, whether we like it or not, was all these things together. This is why we can say that with Sandra Milo – who died at the age of 90 in her home in Rome – the “girl of the century” goes away a little, someone who lived a lot, loved too much, acted often, on both large and small screen. And accompanied key figures in the history of the country such as Federico Fellini and Bettino Craxi.
«Ciro», first meme in television history
Film actress, TV presenter, gossip personality, meme before they even invented memes thanks to that «Who? Cyrus? Where?” shouted live on TV in 1990 to those who warned her of her son’s phantom admission to hospital after an accident. A fake news before the invention of fake news around which the country discussed for months. Because what happened to Sandra Milo happened to Italy.
From Tunisia to Cinecittà
Italian from overseas, with the name of Salvatrice Elena Greco, she was born in Tunis (curiously the same city as Claudia Cardinale, another woman who would make Frederick the Great’s head turn) to a Sicilian father and a Tuscan mother. She moved to Viareggio as a child and at 15 she married for the first time which lasted just 21 days. She was a plus size girl in the era of plus size girls, she made her cinema debut at the age of 22 alongside Alberto Sordi in Lo scapolo (1955). From there one film after another and Roberto Rossellini wants her with Vittorio De Sica in General della Rovere (1959). Everything suggested that big cinema would be her destiny, but Sandra Milo had more than one destiny.
Fellini’s «Sandrocchia».
And so a not exactly memorable interpretation of Vanina Vanini (1961), again for Rossellini, leads some critics to give her the nickname “Canina Canini”. There are those who say that she is not an actress of important works and her career then turns towards cassette films, but the greatest of all will take care of calling her back to the perimeter of great cinema: Federico Fellini. Milo, whom the Maestro addresses with the affectionate nickname of “Sandrocchia”, embodies the Fellini woman par excellence, as prosperous as she is uninhibited, and finds herself playing the part of herself in masterpieces such as 8½ (1963) and Juliet of the Spirits (1965). But Fellini is above all “the great love” of Sandra Milo’s life, as he will have the opportunity to tell on several occasions.
The second television life
Sandra’s second public life was that of the 1980s, the decade of Milano da bere and the Rai-Fininvest television duopoly. The actress, who has always been close to the PSI, has a relationship with Bettino Craxi and she hangs out on the parceled out Rai 2 to the point of becoming the host of cult programs such as Piccoli Fans (1987-1989). Someone, referring to the socialist circle of the high society, will coin the expression “dwarfs and dancers”. All this before the Tangentopoli storm arrives.