Claudia Cardinale on Monday
recalled Pasquale Squitieri at her long-time partner and
Neapolitan director's funeral at Rome's Church of the Artists.
"I loved him for his intelligence, his beauty, his culture,
and he was also a lot of fun and a bit mad," said the former
screen diva of the director she was with for 30 years and with
whom she had a daughter.
"It was me who chose him," she said after arriving on the arm
of Squitieri's widow Ottavia Fusco.
Fusco clarified that Squitieri, 78, did not die of cancer but
"after a car accident".
She said she had brought with her the lyrics of a song he
once wrote for her in Neapolitan dialect.
Squitieri and Cardinale's daughter Claudine said she greeted
with a "wry smile the posthumous support" for a man whose
rightwing political views alienated many on the Italian cultural
scene.
"The showbiz world," she said," did not understood his
continued dedication to social issues, in which he made some
beautiful things, others less so".
"He had a very deep sense of duty," said Claudine.
Squitieri started in spaghetti westerns before making a
series of politically conscious thrillers.
In his later years he was a Senator for the post-fascist and
now defunct National Alliance party.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
