Italian actress Monica Vitti has died
at the age of 90, former Rome mayor and cinema critic Walter
Veltroni tweeted Wednesday.
Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli in Rome, on 3 November 1931, Vitti
became an Italian and world screen icon, the muse of dark
'incommunicability' maestro Michelangelo Antonioni and later
partner of great comic actor Alberto Sordi.
She had been absent from public life due to Alzheimer's since
2001 when she was received at the presidential palace for the
Italian Oscars, the David di Donatello Awards.
Veltroni tweeted: "Roberto Russo, her companion in these years,
asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more. I do so
with great grief, affection, and nostalgia".
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,
broader, bawdier and funnier fare by another cinema great, Mario
Monicelli, and played opposite with comic great Sordi in several
hits.
Among the male leads she played opposite were Marcello
Mastroianni, Alain Delon, Richard Harris, Terence Stamp, Michael
Caine, and Dirk Bogarde.
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 last
November 3 featured 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 Nini' Tirabuscio' , la donna che invento'
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).
Vitti was in a version of La Tosca (1973) and a comedy Teresa
the Thief (1973). She made Polvere di stelle (1973), directed by
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), Mimi' Bluette... fiore
del mio giardino (1976), Basta che non si sappia in giro!..
(1977), L'altra meta' 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.
In 2000, Vitti married Roberto Russo, with whom she had been in
a relationship since 1973.
She made her last public appearance in 2002 at the Paris
premiere of the stage-musical Notre-Dame de Paris.
In 2011, it was disclosed that Alzheimer's disease had
"removed her from the public gaze for the last 15 years."
In 2018, her husband confirmed she was still living at home with
him in Rome and that he looked after her personally, with the
assistance of a caregiver.
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