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Monica Vitti – a sad childhood, a glittering career and a bitter old age

1966. Monica Vitti by Bert Stern.

In the early-1960s, director Michelangelo Antonioni made four revolutionary movies with actress Monica Vitti. All of them now have cult status on the arthouse circuit.

Much has been written about Antonioni’s films, but almost all of it takes the form of reviews and critical appraisals. It casts no light on his relationship with Monica Vitti. What’s clear nevertheless is that for him she was both muse and lover. In that sense their relationship is reminiscent of that of Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, their counterparts in France.

And while there’s plenty of material available about Anna Karina, there seems to be almost nothing published in English about Monica Vitti. Searches of the Internet (beyond Wikipedia) and even the British Library prove pretty much fruitless. For the time being at least, she remains for the most part something of a beautiful enigma – unless you can read Italian.

So what can we glean about her to provide a backdrop to the photos showcased here? Well, she was a superbly versatile actress, equally adept at playing the angst-ridden roles in which Antonioni cast her and turning her hand to comedy. Let’s take a look at her through the lens of her career.

Monica Vitti grows up and becomes an actress

Born in Rome in 1931 and christened Maria Luisa Ceciarelli, she has an unhappy childhood, her attention-seeking belittled by her family, her relationship with her mother strained. As the only daughter, she feels she’s treated very differently from her brothers: “I had very strict parents. My two brothers were power and freedom. I was powerlessness and seclusion.” Her experiences as a child will mark her for life – she will never want to have a family and will be wary of marriage.

She makes her stage debut age 14 and acting becomes a form of escapism:

When at fourteen-and-a-half I had almost decided I had had enough of life, I realized that I could act, carry on just pretending to be someone else, and making people laugh as much as possible on the stage and screen; in life it was much more difficult.

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Monica Vitti relaxes on a sofa with a magazine

Monica Vitti relaxes

Around 1963. Monica Vitti relaxes on a sofa with a magazine. On the back of the photo is an Italy's News Photos agency stamp.

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Monica Vitti with Dirk Bogarde

Monica Vitti with Dirk Bogarde

1966. Monica Vitti with Dirk Bogarde, her co-star in Modesty Blaise. This photo probably taken at the movie's premiere. On the back of the photo is an International Magazine Service agency stamp.

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Monica Vitti with Carlo Ponti and Vanessa Redgrave in Cannes

Monica Vitti with Carlo Ponti and Vanessa Redgrave in Cannes

1967. Monica Vitti with Carlo Ponti and Vanessa Redgrave at the Cannes Film Festival for the screening of Blow-Up. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

A 10 414/24
XXè FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DU FILM A CANNES
LA GRANDE-BRETAGNE A PRESENTE, AU FESTIVAL DE CANNES, UN FILM DU CELEBRE METEUR EN SCENE ITALIEN MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI...

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Monica Vitti in Beate Loro

Monica Vitti in Beate Loro

1975. Monica Vitti in Beate Loro (Lucky Them). A caption on the back of the photo reads:

“Lucky them!!!” (Beate Loro) is the title of the film that Claudia CARDINALE and Monica VITTI are filming, for the first time, together. In the romance of Don Quixote now, Monica Vitti is a modern Don Quixote with a ‘Honda’ and Claudia...

When Monica is 18 years old, her family – brothers as well as parents – emigrates to the US. She stays behind and at some point soon after graduating from Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1953, she assumes the stage name Monica Vitti (her mother’s birth name was Vittiglia). Her early career is unremarkable. She tours Germany with an Italian acting troupe and has a role in a stage production of Niccolò Machiavelli’s La Mandragola in Rome. For a few years she’s a struggling actress, combining theatre work with appearances in a miscellany of made-for-TV movies and series.

Around 1962. Michelangelo Antonioni adjusts Monica Vitti’s costume. Photo by Claude Schwartz.

Monica collaborates with Michelangelo Antonioni

Then, in 1957, Michelangelo Antonioni sees her in a Feydeau farce and invites her to dub the voice of reporter Dorian Gray in his forthcoming film Il Grido (The Cry). One day, working in the dubbing studio, Monica is unaware that he has come in and is standing behind her, watching her. After a while, he says, “You have a beautiful neck. You could be in the movies.” Turning point in her life.

His background and situation are very different from hers. He has fond memories of his childhood and is on his way to establishing himself as a film director, having started out writing screenplays and making documentaries. He is intellectual, aloof, meticulous.

Both Michelangelo and Monica are passionate about their work and fall for each other, professionally and personally. Their first collaboration takes two years to come to fruition and produces L’avventura. According to Monica, “Nobody wanted to take a chance on it and on me, an unknown.” The night that it is shown at the 1960 Cannes International Film Festival turns out to be the inflexion point for both their careers. Its screening provokes boos, whistles and catcalls. But the following morning the tables are turned. A group of highly regarded filmmakers and critics, led by Roberto Rossellini, issue a strongly worded statement:

Aware of the exceptional importance of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, “L’Avventura,” and appalled by the displays of hostility it has aroused, the undersigned critics and members of the profession are anxious to express their admiration for the maker of this film.

L’Avventura goes on to win the Festival’s Special Jury Prize. The following year, in a poll for British film magazine Sight and Sound, 70 critics from around the world nominate it as the second-greatest film ever made, after Citizen Kane. For her performance, Monica Vitti wins the Golden Globe Award for Best Breakthrough Actress in 1961.

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Monica Vitti looks at herself in the mirror

Monica Vitti looks at herself in the mirror

Around 1963. According to Fiorella Mannoia, a stand-in for her in various films, Monica Vitti had an incredible charisma. She could arrive on the set disheveled and without make-up, and pass almost unnoticed. But when she returned having made up and combed her hair, everyone just stopped for a moment. Photo by Angelo Frontoni.

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Monica Vitti arranges her hair

Monica Vitti arranges her hair

Around 1963. Monica Vitti photographed by Angelo Frontoni.

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Monica Vitti with backlit hair

Monica Vitti with backlit hair

Around 1962.Monica Vitti photographed by Angelo Frontoni. Although the photographer's stamp is on the back of this photo, another apparently from the same shoot is published in The Guardian, where it is captioned as "Monica Vitti in L'eclisse" and attributed to Sergio Strizzi.

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Monica Vitti has a think

Monica Vitti has a think

Around 1962. Monica Viti sits pensively in a rattan peacock chair. On the back of the photo is a Roma's Press agency stamp.

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Monica Vitti pouts for the camera

Monica Vitti pouts for the camera

Around 1963. Monica Vitti photographed by Angelo Frontoni.

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Monica Vitti looks at herself in the mirror

Monica Vitti looks at herself in the mirror

Around 1963. Monica Vitti photographed by Angelo Frontoni.

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Monica Vitti pouts for the camera

Monica Vitti pouts for the camera

1962. Monica Vitti looks like she's enjoying posing for the camera. According to Fiorella Mannoia, a stand-in for her in various films, "Monica wanted control over all her photos, she was very careful about how it was shot, the lights. She always told me, "When you present your profile, do so like this…" She taught me a lot. On the back of the photo are Agence Dalmas and International Magazine Service agency stamps.

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Monica Vitti relaxes

Monica Vitti relaxes

1962. Monica Vitti relaxes with a magazine. On the back of the photo are Agence Dalmas and International Magazine Service agency stamps.

So what’s all the fuss about? L’avventura is arguably Antonioni’s first masterpiece. He’s utterly uncompromising in the way he throws down the gauntlet to his audience: no real narrative, minimal tension, almost glacial tempo, desolate landscapes – both physical and emotional. His characters are wrapped up in themselves, incapable of forming relationships, dying of ennui rather than living their lives. It’s an extended meditation on the malaise of privileged contemporary society and the pointlessness of some people’s lives.

It could be dire but it’s not – at least not to the afficionados of the art house cinemas, who relish its sheer audaciousness as well as the wonderful acting, sets and cinematography. At the centre of L’avventura is Monica Vitti. Often she’s sphinx-like, challenging us to make out what’s going through her mind, how she’s feeling. But she can also be mercurial – from time to time emotions flit across her face as her mood lightens and darkens. It’s a mesmerizing performance, bang in line with what Antonioni is looking for:

What happens to the characters in my films is not important. I could have them do one thing, or another thing. People think that the events in a film are what the film is about. Not true. A film is about the characters, about changes going on inside them. The experiences they have during the course of the film are simply things that “happen to happen” to characters who do not begin and end when the film does.

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Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti in Venice

Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti in Venice

1964. Posing alongside Antonioni on a boat on the Grand Canal, Monica Vitti seems to be feeling an autumn chill...

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Monica Vitti and Rossana Rory in L'eclisse

Monica Vitti and Rossana Rory in L’eclisse

1962. Vittoria (Monica Vitti), whose relationship with her boyfriend Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) is on the rocks, visits her neighbour Anita...

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Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso

Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso

1964. Il deserto rosso is set against a forbidding industrial landscape around Ravenna. Monica Vitti plays the part of Giuliana,...

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Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso

Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso

1964. Il deserto rosso is Michelangelo Antonioni's first colour film, so too bad this shot is in black and white....

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Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni outside the Excelsior Hotel, Venice

Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni outside the Excelsior Hotel, Venice

1962. Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni descend the steps in front of the Excelsior Hotel in Venice. A caption on...

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Monica Vitti with Michelangelo Antonioni at the Venice Biennale

Monica Vitti with Michelangelo Antonioni at the Venice Biennale

1962. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

VENICE SEPTEMBER 1962
ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
...

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Monica Vitti filming a scene for L'eclisse

Monica Vitti filming a scene for L’eclisse

1962. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

ROME/ Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni (l’Avventura – La...

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Monica Vitti with Michelangelo Antonioni at the 1964 Venice International Film Festival

Monica Vitti with Michelangelo Antonioni at the 1964 Venice International Film Festival

1964. Michelangelo Antonioni holds the Golden Lion award he has received for his latest film, Il deserto rosso (Red Desert)....

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L’avventura is the film that puts Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti in the international limelight. It is the first of four they make together over the space of just a few years. The others are La notte (1961), L’eclisse (1962) and Il deserto rosso (1964) – all absolute classics.

With her earnings from L’avventura, Monica buys an apartment in Rome. Michelangelo moves into the apartment directly above hers, with an inside staircase connecting the two flats. Like Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard, Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni are also lovers – their affair lasts a decade before the couple part ways. But before that, Monica does a complete U-turn with her career.

Monica turns to comedy… and tragedy

As Monica Vitti’s fame as an actress grows, offers come rolling in. She’s not interested in going to Hollywood but she’s afraid of getting typecast. So in the mid-1960s she switches from Antonioni’s angst-ridden arthouse films to comedy. In her own words (translated):

I realized I had a talent for comedy when I recited tragic roles in a way that made my friends at the Academy laugh. I understood only later what an extraordinary gift it was.

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Monica Vitti on location

Monica Vitti on location

1966. Monica Vitti on location to film Fai in fretta ad uccidermi... ho freddo! (Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold). A...

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Monica Vitti on location

Monica Vitti on location

1966. Monica Vitti on location to film Fai in fretta ad uccidermi... ho freddo! (Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold). A...

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Monica Vitti on location

Monica Vitti on location

1966. Monica Vitti on location to film Fai in fretta ad uccidermi... ho freddo! (Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold). A...

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Monica Vitti on location

Monica Vitti on location

1966. Monica Vitti on location to film Fai in fretta ad uccidermi... ho freddo! (Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold). A...

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Monica Vitti as Sabina in Le Fate

Monica Vitti as Sabina in Le Fate

1966. Monica Vitti as Sabina in Le Fate, which was released in the US as Sex Quartet. Her co-stars include...

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Monica Vitti relaxes on the beach

Monica Vitti relaxes on the beach

1967. Monica Vitti relaxes on the beach in a break from location shooting for La cintura di castità (The Chastity...

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Monica Vitti as Boccadoro in La cintura di castità

Monica Vitti as Boccadoro in La cintura di castità

1967. Monica Vitti as the beautiful Boccadoro in La cintura di castità (The Chastity Belt). An example of the sex...

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Monica Vitti as Boccadoro in La cintura di castità

Monica Vitti as Boccadoro in La cintura di castità

1967. Monica Vitti plays the beautiful Boccadoro, daughter of a game warden and lusted over by the uncouth and misogynistic...

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In 1960s Italy, commedia all’italiana is all the rage. It’s a movie genre that combines straightforward comedy with biting social satire – Divorzio all’italiana (Divorce Italian Style, 1961) is an early example. Monica is the first woman to establish herself in this genre, which up to now has been dominated by men. Two of her big successes are in La ragazza con la pistola (The Girl with a Pistol, 1968) and Dramma della gelosia: tutti i particolari in cronaca (The Pizza Triangle, 1970).

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. Loosely based on a comic strip and directed by Joseph Losey and characterized by Variety magazine as “one of...

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Monica Vitti looks in the mirror

Monica Vitti looks in the mirror

1966. Monica Vitti looks at herself in a make-up mirror in this publicity shot for Fai in fretta ad uccidermi......

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Monica Vitti on the set of Château en Suède

Monica Vitti on the set of Château en Suède

1963. Château en Suède is directed by Roger Vadim and released in the US as Nutty, Naughty Chateau – classy....

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Monica Vitti on set for La ragazza con la pistola

Monica Vitti on set for La ragazza con la pistola

1968. Monica Vitti on set for La ragazza con la pistola (The Girl with a Pistol). A caption on the...

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. The film's plot in a nutshell… Modesty Blaise is summoned by the British government in a plot to deliver...

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. With its op art sets, music by Johnny Dankworth and throw-away attitude, Modesty Blaise is a perfect period piece...

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. Modesty Blaise is nothing like the runaway box-office success its producers hope it will be on its release. Not...

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Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise

1966. Unlike her male counterparts in other spy thrillers of the time such as James Bond, Modesty Blaise is an...

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During the remainder of the 1960s and through the 1970s she also works with a number of international film directors including Luis Buñuel – Le Fantôme de la Liberté (The Phantom of Liberty, 1974). But outside of Italy and of the arthouse circuit, she’s probably best remembered as the eponymous heroine of Modesty Blaise (1966), in which the criminal-mastermind-turned-secret-agent she plays is the antithesis of the characters she assumed for Antonioni.

In the 1980s she makes a few more films, including a last one with Antonioni, before returning to the theatre both as actress and teacher. She also has an unsuccessful go at writing and directing as her career gradually winds down. In 1995 she marries Roberto Russo, with whom she has been living for ten years, and soon after that she is diagnosed as suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

Monica Vitti died on 2 February 2022.

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l'avventura

1. Monica Vitti talks about L’avventura

More specifically, she talks about the hostile reception the film received the night of its premiere at the 1960 Cannes International Film Festival… and the unexpected critical support it garnered the following day.

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il deserto rosso

2. Il deserto rosso

A news clip of Michelangelo Antonioni at the 1964 Venice International Film Festival followed by a trailer for Il deserto rosso.

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modesty blaise

3. Modesty Blaise

A trailer for the zany, spoof-secret-agent comedy thriller – a rare opportunity to see Monica Vitti in an English-language film.

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comedy vitti style

4. Comedy Vitti Style

An audiovisual essay by Pasquale Lannone including clips from seven Monica Vitti movie comedies. An accompanying note is available online.

Want to know more about Monica Vitti?

If you can get hold of a copy, The Continental Actress – European Film Stars of the Postwar Era by Kerry Segrave and Linda Martin has a brief chapter on Monica Vitti.

Online, as well as Wikipedia there are a few articles worth reading:

  • Monica Vitti compie 85 anni, ecco i dieci motivi per amare quest’attrice unica by Arianna Finos for la Reppublica.
  • Monica Vitti compie 87 anni, ma lei non può festeggiare: ultime notizie at Virgilio.
  • L’eclisse: Antonioni and Vitti by Gilberto Perez for The Criterion Collection.
  • Monica Vitti – Icon, Diva, Comedian! at arsenal.
  • Monica Vitti Alian Elkann interview.
  • A Note on Comedy Vitti Style (2015) by Pasquale Iannone at Necsus.

Russian Information Network promises much but doesn’t seem reliable.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard
Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard – fiction and friction
Claudia Cardinale – up for a challenge
Françoise Dorléac – what might have been
The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster
Yvonne Furneaux as Emma in La Dolce Vita
Yvonne Furneaux – glamorous English export

Filed Under: Crew, Films, Stars Tagged With: Cannes International Film Festival, commedia all’italiana, Il deserto rosso, L’avventura, La notte, Michelangelo Antonioni, Modesty Blaise, Monica Vitti

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