The actress, who died yesterday at age 87, acted in the same year (1963) in two masterpieces, that of Luchino Visconti and “Eight and a half”, by Fellini. Here the evocation of a key scene of the first film
The entry into the scene of Claudia Cardinale (1938-2025) in “The catpardo”of Luchino Viscontiis one of the best in the history of cinema. Viscontiborn operator, was guided to her by the “Puccini principle”, composer of a unique dramatic sense, according to which the heroin of a drama must take its appearance on stage as necessary, so that the public’s expectation is increasingly increasing.
In “The catpardo” (1963), Visconti This teaching led to the extreme: to Angelica, the character of Cardinaleit is seen for the first time only at the exact time of starting the film, which in its international version lasts a little less than 3 hours (and 3 hours 40 in its restored copy).
Don Calogero (Paolo Stoppa), The mayor of the town of Donnafugata, Sicily, where part of the action takes place, is the father of Angelica, whom the protagonists of the film only knew as a child and who will now see again, already turned into a splendid girl, when she attends the great dance offered by Prince Don Fabrizio (BURT LANCASTER), in his summer palace.
The appearance of Angelica, materialized in a masterful staging, purely “viscontian”, gives a definitive turn to the film. Not only for the lighting of the dazzling figure of Cardinalewho with his wide and vaporous white dress takes a few shy, hesitant steps, with his eyes down when entering a world that does not belong to him, the Castle of the Salina, but in the contraplanes of the rest of the characters, whose expressions anticipate and tell, without words, the drama that he will overtake.
Tancredi (Alain Delon), who with his only healthy eye – the other is involved due to a combat wound during the Garibaldi expedition in Sicily – observes it unbelievable, beautified; The anguish and contained anger of Concetta (Lucilla Morlacchi), daughter of Prince Fabrizio and promised of Tancredi, who already warns that he has his rival in front of himself; Prince himself, whose smile is rapidly blurred in a gesture of surprise for the beauty of recently, and Garibaldino Don Francesco Paolo (Serge Reggiani), Who tilts his head as a sign of severe approval.
Only after the presentations, the dialogues, and the famous waltz of Giuseppe Verdiwith arrangements of Nino brokenthat the Prince and Angelica dance, but that only entry, of a few planes, that triumphant and silent income, defines in its entirety the spirit of the book: The emergence of a representative of the flourishing bourgeoisie after the Italian unification, and the irremediable decline of the aristocracy, which seeks a pact with that bourgeoisieand that both in the novel of Lampedusa as in the film of Visconti They acquire, as one of their multiple forms, the immediate love interest of Tancredi in Angelica, who leads him to put aside his aristocratic Prima Concetta. That only scene, of a few seconds, would suffice to consider “The catpardo” Like what it is, a masterpiece.
That same 1963, and simultaneously, Claudia Cardinale He also acted in “Eight and a half”of Federico Fellini (It was a year of masterpieces). Much later, in a television report, she compared the styles of both directors. “I moved between the two, and that caused me some problems. One loved me brunette, and the other, to take the opposite, loved me blonde. So I had to be dying my hair continuously.”
“With Luchino Visconti it was almost like doing theater,” he continued. “On the set, even a fly was flying; one could not speak, you could not laugh, or smile. Fellini, on the other hand, worked without a script, everything was improvisation. Marcello [Mastroianni] He spoke so much on the phone that Federico ordered to put a telephone cabin on the set so that he did not have to be coming out every time. “
“Working for Fellini, being his muse, was a dream. If chaos did not reign, Federico could not work. I needed it. It was the opposite end of Visconti, and I worked with both at the same time. But they were two extremes that gave me wonderful, unforgettable, unrepeatable things.”
“However, they looked like: Luchino and Federico deeply loved their actors, their tenderness was infinite. With them I maintained an affectionate bond throughout life. The cinema, at that time, was adventure. It was passion.”
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
