Valli WAS Italy. Not the easily exportable Italy - not a Loren, not a Lollobrigida, not even a Magnani of course (another great actress, but a completely different one). She was the other, less popular side of Italy - reserved, a bit sad, mysterious, an Italy where the sun doesn't always shine. Maybe because she came from the North (the place she was born in is actually now in Croatian territory), she embodied - even as a person, not only in her screen roles - the qualities of a part of Italy not many foreigners get to know well. She was more Venice than Rome - and easily the most respected actress in my country.
She started as a teenager in Fascist cinema - lively, carefree, spontaneous. The movies were terrible, but she was good, a real talent, and she became quickly a big star. In Hollywood she didn't get any decent roles - except maybe the one Hitchcock gave her. Nothing extraordinary, but at least that "woman with a past" - from Naples, a place an Alida Valli could never come from, but that's Hollywood of course - had a few interesting moments, and Valli was never more beautiful. When she finally came back to Italy, it was in the wrong moment. Neorealism produced some masterpieces, but it was an artistic movement which Valli could never really be a part of - too remote, too sophisticated, too aristocratic even, and, even if this was never openly said, too committed to the Fascist period.
Yet it was a communist director who gave her the role for which she will always be remembered. Communist, but a count - Luchino Visconti. "Senso" is one of the great romantic movies of all times. Romantic in the full artistic, intellectual meaning of the word. It may have been based on a minor XIX century Italian novel, but it was clearly German romanticism that Visconti was inspired by. She is amazing as Lidia - a brilliant portrayal of a woman in love, with the added anxiousness of a woman who knows that she is about to lose her beauty soon, and with that, lose her love too. From the beginning - following Farley Granger through the Venetian channels - till the end, her once beautiful face a mask of humiliation and revenge, it's a performance which deserves to be as famous abroad as it is here.
Visconti gave her the seal of approval of a new generation of great directors. Great roles followed. One of my favourite is in the French movie - and Golden Palm winner at Cannes - "Une Aussi Long Absence", as the woman who thinks - hopes - that the homeless tramp who's come into the small restaurant she owns begging for food may be her long lost husband. She was great in Bertolucci's "The Spider's Stratagem", as the mistress of the man whose death his son tries to solve (Bertolucci gave her another good supporting role later in his epic "1900"), effective as the probably lesbian teacher in Argento's big hit "Suspiria", and had an unforgettable moment in "Segreti Segreti", as the former nanny of the now grown up woman who may be a terrorist. Still living in the ancient family house, the old nanny just asks to look into the woman's eyes to know if she has really become what she is suspected of being. There is a great, long, silent close up of Valli's famous face as she does that, realizes the truth, and crumbles (it's her own failure, in a way). In the next scene, she leaves the house forever.
RIP Alida Valli
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Italy's Valli, star of "Third Man," dies
Alida Valli, one of Italy's most famous movie actresses, who starred in "The Third Man" and "The Paradine Case," has died aged 84.
Valli, who was also known by her family name Alida Altenburger, died at home in Rome, her son told Reuters.
She rose to fame in Italy in the late 1930s and 1940s with a string of romantic films that endeared her to her war-weary compatriots and earned her the soubriquet "Italy's girlfriend."
Her beauty and understated acting also got her noticed by Hollywood and when World War Two ended she was chosen to star in two of the most famous films of the post-war era.
In Alfred Hitchcock's 1947 courtroom thriller "The Paradine Case," she starred alongside Gregory Peck, while in the "Third Man" she played the girlfriend to Orson Welles' Harry Lime.
Welles later told his biographer Valli was "the sexiest thing you ever saw in your life."
She went on to work with many more of the 20th century's great directors, including Roger Vadim, Claude Chabrol, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Alida Valli, one of Italy's most famous movie actresses, who starred in "The Third Man" and "The Paradine Case," has died aged 84.
Valli, who was also known by her family name Alida Altenburger, died at home in Rome, her son told Reuters.
She rose to fame in Italy in the late 1930s and 1940s with a string of romantic films that endeared her to her war-weary compatriots and earned her the soubriquet "Italy's girlfriend."
Her beauty and understated acting also got her noticed by Hollywood and when World War Two ended she was chosen to star in two of the most famous films of the post-war era.
In Alfred Hitchcock's 1947 courtroom thriller "The Paradine Case," she starred alongside Gregory Peck, while in the "Third Man" she played the girlfriend to Orson Welles' Harry Lime.
Welles later told his biographer Valli was "the sexiest thing you ever saw in your life."
She went on to work with many more of the 20th century's great directors, including Roger Vadim, Claude Chabrol, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci.