“The Girl in the Fountain”. “She was unconscious and innocent, she played herself and got into a dangerous game.” Of Fellini who launched her in the Dolce Vita (but she was already famous) he said: «He gave me everything and took away everything, especially the possibility of doing other things».
«Marcello,
come here
, where are you?”. Monica mora, Mediterranean; Anita blonde, Nordic. The opposite. Ekberg & Bellucci, two different stories, two divas, two worlds. Anita lives again through Monica (Lifetime Achievement Award at the Turin Film Festival) but also in archive footage, when she is with Mastroianni at the Trevi Fountain. It is the film by Antongiulio Panizzi (in theaters today and tomorrow for Eagle). Is titled The Girl in the Fountain.
Would you, Monica, have wanted to live in the time of La Dolce Vita?
“On the one hand, it was an incredible moment for Italian cinema, which went around the world, a source of inspiration still today; on the other, women were relegated to being only mothers and wives and an actress could not, would no longer be the symbol of desire. Then comes this Nordic bombshell, blonde, free… ».
Free but a prisoner of herself.
“She was unconscious and innocent, because she bared herself without protection and did not want to be anything other than what she was, the woman dreamed of, idealized. She entered a dangerous game, she could not escape from herself. The problem is when Marilyn Monroe thinks she is Marilyn Monroe. Anita Ekberg exchanged desire for love. But it was a precise historical period ».
You, on the other hand, when you take off your heels …
“I go home and help my daughters with their homework. Today women have a role in society and actresses have a longer career. And even though I am neither 25, nor 30, nor 40 and not even 50… I’m still here. I don’t have to be ashamed of the time that passes. And I can express myself by not being tied to the stereotype of the beautiful actress. Fortunately we are no longer embalmed and untouchable ».
Anita was born on September 29, she on September 30.
“I did not know. We had to have something in common ».
In Hollywood, before meeting Fellini, the sex bomb was created.
“I think (and I say it for myself too) that careers are not built at a table.”
Monica, what would she have about Ekberg’s character …
“What would I have wanted? That kind of lightness that she had until the end and helped her to survive. She died poor. Even the dramatic things were as if he were telling them with a smile ».
A diva who makes another diva, with respect and a little malice and irony, for example when in the kitchen …
“I beat the eggs and say love love love like Anita? Then I bring out the catchphrase of the beauty: still with the object women? But they told me I look like her physically. But what, for nothing! I put on the lenses, the wig … But that’s okay, you can see that there was a communion of souls and you understand it in a magical, dreamlike moment, a la Fellini, when in a dream the little girl appears in the garden of the villa outside Rome of Anita ».
In the villa she takes a bow and arrow and …
«I point to the drone that wants to take me back, it is a tribute to her, who once used the bow against the paparazzi, it is a metaphor, it is as if we were saying thank you Anita, from your experience we have understood many things. The film is one masterclass on the creative process of an actor, I did it on tiptoe and in humility, without violating the scene of the fountain. It is as if we were giving light back to a woman whose light has been taken from life ».
Ekberg said of Fellini: he gave me and took away everything, especially the possibility of doing other things.
«The sweet life it is so incredible that we are still here talking about it. She was already a star but became even more so. Maybe that film also made her cry, maybe she too was responsible “
Anita embodied the sexual prey, she always recited herself.
«And it seems easy to you, you need talent in that too. What is the title of that film? Being John Malkovich ».
He had a troubled relationship with the paparazzi.
He smiles: “I have such beautiful photos of them that I post them on Instagram.”
She was robbed by her second husband, he also took away her Ferrari. Have you ever been “cheated” in love?
“Love is a strange game, we all abandon and betray, it’s a dance where we learn human relationships and learn about ourselves”.
Anita went up so high, and fell so low.
“At some point he needed to work and he accepted any film. Ours is one masterclass on the creative process of an actor, a small jewel, as if we were giving light to a woman who has been turned off by life. Isabelle Huppert says, it is not cinema that kills us: it is life ».
And as an icon of Nordic beauty, at Christmas she will be a witch with white hair.
“Yes in La Befana comes at night 2. Sait will be an all-Italian end of the year “.
November 30, 2021 (change November 30, 2021 | 18:26)
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