Monica Vitti, one of the icons of post-WWII Italian film, has died at the age of 90, accordin to the Italian culture ministry, which said she was best known for her starring roles in films by Michelangelo Antonioni. Described by one critic as “the high priestess of frosty sensuality, She passed away on Wednesday after a long struggle with Alzheimers, which kept her out sf the public eye for some twenty years.
The actress won five David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress—the Italian Oscar—and a career Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1995. Born as Maria Luisca Ceciarelli in Rome in 1931, Vitti was first seen by international audiences in Antonioni’s 1960 film L’Avventura, in which she played the role of a woman involved in a relationship with her girlfriend’s lover. She later appeared in the two other films in the director’s so-called “Trilogy of Alienation”: La Notte (AKA “La Noche”) (1961), with Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni; and L’Eclisse (1962), with Alain Delon. Vitti also played opposite Richard Harris in Antonioni’s first color film, Red Desert (1965), mouthing her now-famous line “My hair hurts.”
Later in the 1960s, Vitti appeared in a number of non-Italian productions, including Modesty Blaise (1966) with Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde, and On My Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who… (1967) with Tony Curtis. She later made a few films with the comedic actor Alberto Sordi, such as Polvere di stelle (1973) and I Know That You Know That I Know (1982). She also appeared as Mrs. Foucauld in Luis Buñuel’s 1974 surrealist comedy The Phantom of Liberty.
Describing her collaboration with Antonioni, Gilberto Perez wrote “In her films with him, Vitti is as much beholding as beheld, identified with the director, whose gaze she doubles. Other male directors have adopted the point of view of a female character, but none has made a woman his surrogate in the way that Antonioni has Monica Vitti.
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She is survived by her husband and longtime companion, Roberto Russo.