Monica Vitti, the great Italian screen actress who was "the muse of incommunicability" for legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni, turned 90 Wednesday away from the public eye as she has been since retiring in 2002.
Vitti, who starred in Antonioni's great existential-angst cycle
L'avventura, La Notte, L'eclissi, and Deserto Rosso in the
1960s, boosted her range and acclaim in popular lighter, sexier
and funnier fare by another cinema great, Mario Monicelli.
She won five David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress, seven
Italian Golden Globes for Best Actress, the Career Golden Globe,
and the Venice Film Festival Career Golden Lion Award.
A documentary by Fabrizio Corallo marking her birthday features
comic actor and director Carlo Verdone saying "(Alberto) Sordi
thought she was great, better than any other female lead,
because of her proverbial timing, and he loved her too".
He added: "Ordinary people felt she was close to them, she had
entered into everyone's hearts".
Vitti's other notable films include On My Way to the Crusades, I
Met a Girl Who... (1967) with Tony Curtis, The Girl with a
Pistol (1968) with Stanley Baker, The Bitch Wants Blood (1969)
with Maurice Ronet, and Help Me, My Love (1969) with Sordi,
Italy's most popular comic actor of his generation.
Vitti starred with Marcello Mastroianni in Ettore Scola's highly
successful romantic comedy Dramma della gelosia (The Pizza
Triangle, 1970). She followed it with Ninì Tirabusciò, la donna
che inventò la mossa (1970), Le coppie (1970) with Sordi, The
Pacifist (1970), La supertestimone (1971), That's How We Women
Are (1971), and Orders Are Orders (1972).[13]
Vitti was in a version of La Tosca (1973) and a comedy Teresa
the Thief (1973). She made Polvere di stelle (1973), directed by
Alberto Sordi, for which she won the 1974 David di Donatello
award for Best Actress.
Vitti played a key part in one of the episodic vignettes in Luis
Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty (1974). She did two films with
Claudia Cardinale, The Immortal Bachelor (1975) and Blonde in
Black Leather (1975).
She was in Duck in Orange Sauce (1975), Mimì Bluette... fiore
del mio giardino (1976), Basta che non si sappia in giro!..
(1977), L'altra metà del cielo (1977), State Reasons (1978), Il
cilindro (1978), Per vivere meglio, divertitevi con noi (1978),
Amori miei (1978) and Tigers in Lipstick (1979) (with Ursula
Andress).
Vitti's second English-language film was An Almost Perfect
Affair (1979), directed by Michael Ritchie and co-starring Keith
Carradine, which was set during the Cannes Film Festival.
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