In the immediate post-war period and throughout the 1950s, if there was a face that represented Italian beauty in the eyes of the world, it was Gina Lollobrigida
The Bersagliera is gone. She at 95 (she was born in Subiaco, near Rome, on July 4, 1927) Gina Lollobrigida died the most beautiful woman in the world, as one of his famous successes of the 1950s was called.
In the immediate post-war period and throughout the 1950s, if there was a face that represented Italian beauty in the eyes of the world, it was that one. by Gina Lollobrigida. More than Loren but also more than Bos and Canale (who had preceded her in the 1947 Miss Italy contest) and more than Mangano or Pampanini. It is no coincidence that Orson Welles chose her to shoot the pilot of a series of reports from Europe for the American television chain ABC, that Portrait of Gina
(1958) which beyond the rather cumbersome presence of the director-narrator already contained a curious reflection on the fact that Italian actresses, and Lollobrigida in particular, were more loved and appreciated abroad than in Italy.
In fact, after the exploit at Miss Italy and the debut in the photo story under the name of Diana Loris, il
Italian cinema struggles to appreciate its qualities. He makes his debut in an anonymous bit part in the film Black Eagle (1946) by Riccardo Freda (the dark-haired girl at the party in the palace of the usurper Gino Cervi) and up to
Hammer bells
(1949) by Zampa, where she plays a prostitute who entrusts her savings to a priest, who is never the protagonist. She starts getting noticed with Hearts without borders (1950, by Zampa), with Monicelli who wants it in Dog’s life (1950), semi-serious Time.news of a vaudeville troupe struggling more with hunger than with success and with Lizzani who puts her among the partisans who rebel against the Nazis with weapons in Danger! Banditi!.
But its qualities do not escape the American Howard Hughes who calls it a Hollywood to get her to sign a contract that Lollobrigida will break (she had discovered that she had to be locked up in a gilded cage), giving up a perhaps very successful career. Luckily she opens the doors for her to France where Christian-Jaque wants her for Fanfan The Tulip (1952), in the role (pleasantly low-cut) of the gypsy Adeline who conquers Grard Philippe with her false predictions, unable to resist her charm. Charm that the focus of the episode The beauty of Phryne (and Other times by Alessandro Blasetti, also ’52), where the lawyer De Sica gets her acquitted of the charge of having poisoned her husband by convincing an all-male jury that if the law requires acquitting mentally handicapped women why shouldn’t she do the same with an extraordinary example of increased physique just like the Lollobrigida?
Carried in triumph by that acclaiming jury (and by an audience increasingly captivated by her beauty but also by her contagious sympathy) and finally also appreciated for her interpretative skills, thanks to a series of dramatic and decidedly demanding roles (after The infidels by Monicelli, the absolute protagonist in The provincial of Soldiersboth from 1953) the Lollo — as everyone calls it by now — also becomes one money star with the role of Maria called the bersagliera in Bread love and fantasy by Luigi Comencini (1953).
Appreciated abroad, applauded in Italy, the Lollobrigida
becomes the protagonist of numerous international productions: The treasure of Africa at John Huston (1954) alongside Humphrey Bogart (who declared that compared to Lollobrigida, Marilyn Monroe looked like Shirley Temple), The most beautiful woman in the world (’54) of Robert Z. Leonard, . Trapeze (’56) by Carol Reed, The hunchback of Notre Dame
(’56) by Jean Delannoy, The law
(1959) by Jules Dassin and Solomon and the queen of Sheba (’59) by King Vidor. Without forgetting the Italian cinema where she returns in the role of the Bersagliere in Bread love and jealousy (’54) also by Comencini (however avoiding interpreting the third episode, Bread love and…replaced by the enemy Loren) and above all in The Roman (also ’54) where she finds Luigi Zampa who directs her in the complex and dramatic character created by Alberto Moravia, a choice that certainly goes against the tide, even risky towards the tastes of the public, but which the actress claims with pride, demonstrating her abilities dramatic and of an artistic ambition certainly not widespread at the time. And in the meantime Time on 16 August 1954 he dedicated the cover to her while the French baptized a new brand of bras with her name (le Loll).
Also in the fifties was born a sonAndrea Milko, from the Slovenian doctor Milko Skofic whom she had married in 1949 and from whom she separated in 1971, without remarrying, while many flirtations have been attributed to her, from heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard to Fidel Castro. And as her beauty brand begins to fade, her career begins to slow down: a few major titles still in the early 1960s — Come back in September (’61) in Robert Mulligan, The beauty
of Hippolyta by Giancarlo Zagni (’62), Imperial Venus di Delannoy (’62), The Straw Woman (’64) says Basil Dearden, A beautiful November (’68) by Mauro Bolognini — and a few too many roles to exploit the popularity of yesteryear. It will still be Comencini who wants her as the Blue Fairy in his television version of Pinocchio (’72) probably the last real test of an authentic star as an actress, who built her entire career on the determination and courage of even counter-current choices – how many roles as a lost, exploited and defeated woman – without ever being able to ( or wanting to) lean on someone who could help her.
In the seventies the name of Lollobrigida
returns to occupy the chronicles for the alleged marriage with the much younger Spanish entrepreneur Javier Rigau and more recently for his son’s (failed) attempt to make it interdict. But they fell – real or invented, it doesn’t matter – that it doesn’t even count to remember and that they won’t be able to darken the proud and luminous beauty of the unforgettable Bersagliere in everyone’s heart.
January 16, 2023 (change January 16, 2023 | 2:09 pm)
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