Claudia Cardinale, cinema icon, died on the age of 87 | EUROtoday
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“Iwas very lucky. At the end of his life, the sentence returned as a leitmotif, recalling that the celebrity happa at 20, icon of an era when the beautiful Italians gave the touch of sensuality that the public demanded on film. The luck, above all, to play under the direction of the older ones, Visconti, Fellini, Sergio Leone, to give the reply to legends, from Mastroianni to Burt Lancaster, via Delon, Belmondo and Omar Sharif…
Claudia Cardinale was one of many final nice figures of our cinema, with this contact of glamor which additionally made the legend of the Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida or Monica Vitti, these which reigned by her facet within the post-war interval.
However, nothing predestined her to such a profession: she grew up in Tunis on the time of the French protectorate, Sicilian roots, a father engineer of railways, strict schooling. Little Claudia already has character, the fights don’t scare her and her brothers watch her carefully throughout her outings exterior the household house … She goals of being an explorer or a instructor within the depths of the desert, even when the cinema is already invited into her life: she negotiates onerous along with her father the periods of Saturday and even does figuration in a brief movie on Tunisian sailors …
Claudia Cardinale, the “most beautiful Italian of Tunis”
Her destiny modified at 17, when she accompanied her mom within the competitors of probably the most stunning Italian in Tunis, a charity the place she helps to promote raffle tickets. We push her on stage, she is elected and gained a keep in Venice for the Mostra. She went there in 1955 chaperted by her mom, wearing djellaba and burnous, however causes a small riot when she bathes in bikini on the seaside of the Excelsior: the paparazzi are unleashed in entrance of this brunette with a burning look, tinged with insolence, whereas the brokers proceed to signal contracts…
The younger girl refuses every part, leaves to Tunis, then finally ends up giving in and indicators a contract with producer Franco Cristaldi, whom she then marries. In actuality, she has no selection: she was raped by a person who retains harassing her and finds herself pregnant. She refuses to have an abortion, Cristaldi then takes care of getting her discreetly giving her again to London. “He had the idea of saying that the baby was my little brother. And I was forced to assume this lie to avoid scandal and protect my career. She will wait seven years before admitting the truth about the identity of her son Patrick.
Visconti, Fellini, Leone … The actress of the greatest directors
The cinema will save it: it immediately prints its wild beauty on many Italian films – The pigeon,, Italian murder,, The girl at the suitcase – and continues success with the greatest directors, like Luchino Visconti (Rocco and his brothers,, The cheetah With Delon and Burt Lancaster), Philippe de Broca (Cartridge With Belmondo), Federico Fellini (Eight and a half), Henry Hathaway (The largest circus in the worldwith John Wayne and Rita Hayworth) or Sergio Leone and the famous Once upon a time in the west…
Behind her Mediterranean beauty, all the filmmakers quickly seized the deaf violence, the insolence and the passion she had in her. “Claudia seems like a feline who lets himself be caressed on the lounge couch,” said Visconti. But beware, the pussy can be transformed into a tigress. She will shred the tamer’s hand. »»
She proves it once again when she suddenly left Cristaldi in 1972 to live with the Neapolitan director Pasquale Squieri, which she knew on the set of Lucia and the Gouapes. A thunderbolt in her career: some filmmakers turn away, the films are becoming rarer, she pays dearly her love story … Squieri is the man of her life, twenty-seven years together, a dozen films and a girl, Claudia. It is for her and to escape the Italian paparazzi that she ends up settling in Paris.
Claudia, the brawler
She will never give up cinema, turning in total in more than a hundred films, alternating between France and Italy, where she has always remained popular, also tried in the theater to interpret works by Pirandello or Tennessee Williams, accumulating rewards and invitations in many festivals, always ready to defend causes, the right of women, that of homosexuals – Hudson -, the fight against AIDS or the death penalty with Amnesty International … Claudia the brawler woke up and was not afraid to take out the claws, as during his childhood, under the sun of Tunisia.
To uncover
The kangaroo of the day
Answer
It will at all times stay devoted to the nation, returning there usually to search out its roots, its inhabitants, its flavors and its colours. She knew just one homeland, the cinema, which allowed her to merge her French, Tunisian and Italian identities … But there was not a day of the yr with out her couscous. “I am not nostalgic, I never look behind me, I live the present moment,” she mentioned at some point to Africa Magazine. But I like the Bougainvilliers on the white homes with the blue shutters of Sidi Bou Saïd. »»
To learn: “My stars”, by Claudia Cardinale, ed. Michel Lafon.
https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/claudia-cardinale-icone-du-cinema-est-morte-a-l-age-de-87-ans-23-09-2025-2599459_3.php