Italian film legend Monica Vitti È MORTA PER ME

Padre, Figlio e Spirito Santo!

Most of her films I saw were snoozefest, except 'The Pizza Triangle.'

RiP

I loved her in L'Avventura and La Notte.

She does Blackface in L'ECLISSE (61), so she must condemned, not eulogized!

Will Alain Delon be next?

Clever, OP!

Why does she look like Carol Channing?

Pokoj joj duši.

Red desert was also pretty good. I loved all her films with Antonioni.

Great actress. Had been on the death watch list for sometime now as she had been suffering from Alzheimers for quite a while.

A true legend not only of Italian cinema and world cinema.

Great hair, great beauty, great voice. One of those natural, unique, interesting actresses they dont make anymore. Many if the French and Italian actors and actresses of her era have gotten quite old though.

hard to see this golden era move on.

Modesty Blaise was supposed to be her breakthrough English-speaking role, but it bombed.

I'm going to watch "L'avventura" tonight in her honor. Haven't seen it since college, many years ago.

a beautiful restored print of Modesty Blaise from Kino Lorber is streaming / the production design/art direction / costumes alone is worth tuning in.

Wooh...L'Avventura is a slog, I only made it through an hour. I'll probably try again tonight.

R16 - I understand L'avventura's place in film history, I also find it a bit slow going.

I think La Notte is a [bold]much[/bold] better and more effective film.

Modesty Blaise is a fantastically camp film with homos Dirk Bogardee, Terrence Stamp and others.

Vitti has had Alzeimers for years so death is probably in her best interest at this point, but no doubt about it she was a screen Goddess.

Like some other great Italian actresses she wasn't beautiful but she was sexy. Sultry. And she could do anything. Comedy, drama, camp. One of the greats.

^^^ thranks for the clip above R19

[quote] Modesty Blaise was supposed to be her breakthrough English-speaking role, but it bombed

It bombed (partly) because she was incapable of speaking English.

What’s the deal with her and dirk bogarde? He seemed to call her a beast or something in his diaries. Anyone know what his beef was?

[quote] a beast

'Beastly' is a word used by precious English schoolboys a hundred years ago to describe something that's horrid or distasteful.

He was upset that the movie was supposed to be a camp English comedy. But Vitti was inaudible and totally out of her depth trying to use English language.

She had a prominent Roman nose but it wasn't as elegant as Silvana Mangano's (in my opinion).

[quote] Great actress.

[quote] Great hair, great beauty, great voice. One of those natural, unique, interesting actresses

I don't think she was an actress. She didn't appear on stage or play different characters.

I would say she was an auteur's 'muse' or a sex-object for ticket-buyers to lust upon.

She attended the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome and toured for many years with theater troupes before her film career began. In 1964, Vitti returned to the stage, chosen by Franco Zeffirelli to play the Marilyn Monroe character in Arthur Miller’s "After the Fall". Miller came to Naples to see the production and praised Vitti’s performance. In the late 1980s she appeared in Neil SImon's "The Odd Couple" in Rome and noted, "I have done theater of all kinds from Aeschylus to Feydeau. And then the cinema, that mysterious and magical thing to which I have dedicated twenty years with infinite love, always putting off returning home, that is, to the theater. And here I am."

^ Who was her Odd Couple co-star? Rita Moreno or Sally Struthers?

Rosella Falk! (She was also in the "The Legend of Lylah Clare".)

LOL, R27!

Rosella Falk was a very famous Italian stage actress. Re her film work she was best known for Fellini's 8 1/2.

Didn't Rosella Falk play lesbians twice in movies?

(I suspect the bulk of the posters in this thread to be lesbians)

Another sad sign of change. Hey, at least we have Jennifer Lawrence and Kristen Stewart!!!

^ Sarcasm.

^^ ugh. Glamour is dead. No fabulous anything.

^ But Monica Vitti never wore glamorous clothes.

Her function in movies was to make other people tear off her clothes.

There was a DL poster named Modesty Blaise. I wonder whet?

That DL poster must have been rather camp.

L’Avventura is simply one of the greatest films ever made. It rivals anything Bergman, Fellini, Tarkovsky or Ozu ever created. The audio commentary by Gene Youngblood on the Criterion Collection release is really worth listening to.

Those saying Vitti couldn’t act don’t know their ass from their elbow. She was a BRILLIANT actress, the likes of which you would be hard pressed to find today.

You sound like an enthusiast, R38.

Do you speak the Italian language? Are you a lesbian?

R38 - almost the entire first hour was the people walking around the island looking for the missing woman. Not exactly exciting stuff.

I think l’Avventura for me is like Chinatown. I maybe didn’t quite get it on the first viewing but days later thought about it and then since rewatching it have grown to really appreciate it.

[quote] Most of her films I saw were snoozefests.

Antonioni's films were abstruse, snobby snoozefests set in a hot climate.

He served as a counterpoint to Bergman who made abstruse, snobby snoozefests set in a cold climate.

"Blow Up" is groovy!

Monica Vitti was coming up when June Allyson was still US top ten female box office. College campuses were very ready for Monica.... It's hard to wrap your head around how square the 50s were.

I find myself appreciating Red Desert more and more. Antonioni is my choice for greatest director of the past 70 years.

[quote] L’Avventura is simply one of the greatest films ever made. It rivals anything Bergman, Fellini, Tarkovsky or Ozu ever created.

I love Antonioni but to me L'Aventura feels like a transitional film. La Notte and L'Eclisse perfected what the first film tried to do. And then he went on and made Red Desert and Blow Up, two other classics. I'd say he made at least four classics.

The last 5 minutes of "Eclipse", ending at dusk.

Vitti's funeral turn out was huge. Much larger than Raffaella Carra's which surprises a bit. It has been reported that Vitti died of COVID.

Modesty Blaise

HUGE crowd at her funeral. I've never seen this in Rome. Placards, the mass projected on an outdoor screne, etc.

As one gentleman says in this clip her death signals the of a great period in Italian film. It's over. Finished.

[quote]Like some other great Italian actresses she wasn't beautiful

[quote]I don't think she was an actress. She didn't appear on stage or play different characters.

Oh my, some of the things you read on DataLounge...

Not beautiful? Couldn't act? Watch this clip and report back to us.

R50 But, but...Guadagnino

Poor woman. Old, Alzheimers, vulnerable and somebody brings COVID in the house. She didn't deserve all this but at least her "husband" didn't put a pillow over her face 10 years ago as we suspected he would do.

R53 Don't want to sound insensitive, but she was all and ill.

I mesnt old

These big hands.

[quote] As one gentleman says in this clip her death signals the of a great period in Italian film. It's over. Finished.

Why do people make silly statements like this. The films can still be enjoyed and there’s still actresses and actors from that era living.

R57 It's Italy. That's what you say. Pino Danieli dies and it's the end of Italian pop music. And so on.

The Italian press is calling her "The Queen of Italian Cinema".

Until Sophia dies.

"Time" magazine did the same thing for decades. Every actor who died was "the last great star of Hollywood's Golden Age".

Immature people and Italians like hyperbole.

^ Said by an "It's The Greatest Country In The World!" American

Generally Sophia is not liked in Italy. Her greatest crime is that she left. Didn't pay her taxes either She's no Monica Vitti.

I'm no hetero expert on female beauty but even Blind Freddy can tell us that Sophia had a masculine cleft jaw and nostrils like a steam train. And Monica had an over-large Roman nose. While, on the other hand, Lollobrigida had a very pleasing countenance.

By the way, I'm talking about these women as objects because their fame and their wealth derives from their physical appearance.

R63 Watch the video starting at 1:03

That is one of the most beautiful women ever. That is a star.

Cinema does not end just because people die. We will continue to dance the dance of cinema…

The gentleman in the clip said that a particular time in Italian film died with her. And he's right. He didn't say cinema is dead

Cinecitta is nothing like it was during the Golden Age of Italian film Now it cranks out tacky TV shows. All the greats are gone.

Well either way that aspect of the film industry died long before Vitti did so it still doesn’t really make sense to make it seem as though her death was the nail in the coffin.

It is true though that nothing much is left of Italian cinematography. I really don't think that Sorrentino and Guadagnino can be compared to, not only the greatest Italian filmmakers, but not even to the less known ones as Ettore Scola or Marco Ferreri.

As for Monica Vitti I haven't heard that she was even considered to be be a sex bomb like Sophia Loren but an excellent actress and later in her career a great comedian.

Although to me Sophia Loren looks more like an exotic bird with that small head on big body. And I don't find her face particularly beautiful. She is the sort that appeals to straight men. They have the worst taste in women. Just like DLers in men. Must be cause dick has no eyes.

Arabella is an camp fest of FABULOUS art deco.