Italy is mourning Silvana
Pampanini, a screen siren who starred in a string of hits in the
1950s and inspired legendary comic Totò's iconic song
'Malafemmina'.
Pampanini, 90, died after a long illness in a Rome hospital
Wednesday and will be buried in the Santa Croce basilica in
Rome's Flaminio district Friday.
Her body was laid out for people to pay their respects on
the Campidoglio (Capitol) Thursday, and a handful of nostalgic
admirers came to see the once-mythical beauty.
A spunky and captivating screen presence, Pampanini starred
in enough early 1950s gems to become an Italian cinema icon on a
par with slightly later divas Sophia Loren and Gina
Lollobrigida, her rivals for the affections of legions of male
admirers.
She sprang to fame with the film 'Bellezze in bicicletta'
(Beauties on a Bike) and went on to seal her status with the
all-time great 'Bella di Roma' (The Belle of Rome), a 1955
masterpiece by one of the maestros of the nascent Commedia
all'italiana movement, Luigi Comencini.
In it, she sparred vivaciously with comic legend Alberto
Sordi.
Pampanini went on to appear with other Italian greats
including Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman and Vittorio De
Sica.
She also starred alongside Buster Keaton in his quirky 1953
hit The Charming Enemy, as well as working extensively in French
cinema alongside the likes of Jean Gabin.
Although she went into a Garbo-like retirement in the
mid-1960s, Pampanini reappeared in 1983 with a cameo appearance
in Sordi's 'Il Tassinaro' (The Taxi Driver) in which she showed
how shapely her legs still were, prompting an alarmed Sordi to
warn her not to show them off to him too much or he would have
an accident.
While working on her breakthrough film, Bellezze in
Bicicletta, where she played an aspiring showgirl trying to
break into Totò's dance troupe, the comic genius famously fell
for her and vainly tried to work his 'tombeur de femmes' wiles
on her.
Smarting from her rejection, he wrote the iconic and for
the times audacious song 'Malafemmina' (Bad Girl), whose
haunting refrain is regularly played when tributes are made to
the immortal 'Prince' Antonio de Curtis.
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