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| Claudia Cardinale at the Marrakech Film Festival some years ago for a tribute. She regretted that cinema had forgotten “how to dream." Photo: Richard Mowe |
One of the last of the great screen divas, Claudia Cardinale, or CC for short, has died at her home in the French medieval town of Nemours, aged 87.
She was frequently likened to a cat, and she managed to maintain that unmistakeable feline demeanour in a film career that spanned Hollywood and Europe and high profile films from The Pink Panther to The Leopard.
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| Claudia Cardinale. Literary icon Alberto Moravia described her as “a goddess of love.” Photo: UniFrance |
She had an ability to stay aloof from the effect she had on men. In one interview some years ago at the Marrakech Film Festival, she told me: "Yes, it was director Luchino Visconti who compared me to a cat who then turns into a tigress.” And it was Visconti who gave her one of her most memorable roles in his sumptuous Sicilian epic.
She continued to confide: "I suppose he was right. You have to be a bit of a tiger to last for decades in the movies - otherwise you are eaten by people. I have met so many actors who think they are the centre of the universe after two films. I had my feet on the ground and I am not easily impressed. You must be clear-headed. I don't go around surrounded by bodyguards. I can defend myself, although it has not always been easy.”
In her memoirs she revealed that she became pregnant as the result of rape by a Frenchman she hardly knew. When she told him she was expecting a baby he took her to an abortionist. She was horrified, an⁄d was determined to have the child - although she made her first three films with a rapidly expanding girth.
After the child was born - her son Patrick, an interior designer - she became involved with producer Franco Cristaldi, who made her pretend that the baby was her little brother for fear of harming her career. Patrick was not informed of the true circumstances until he was six. She only went public on the saga when a newspaper threatened to publish her secret.
She found her comfort in the cinema, overcoming the hurdle of being branded the Italian Brigitte Bardot - she was conveniently CC to her BB but Cardinale declined to pout or to take her clothes off. She once told me in another interview: “That wouldn't have been very imaginative. I have always been a professional actress, and all the things around that do not bother me.
Having chosen to live in France as her home, she felt French by adoption, although her family roots are in Sicily where she was born on 15 April, 1938. Her great-grandfather sailed across the Mediterranean to Tunisia to build boats. She grew up in Carthage - and feels the proud product of three cultures. Her passport to the world of cinema was winning the Most Beautiful Girl in Tunis contest in 1957, which included as part of the prize a trip to the Venice Film Festival.
On the Lido she attracted a flurry of attention. Even such sober minds as the literary icon Alberto Moravia were describing her as the next "goddess of love" in an interview with Variety. She made her film début with a small role opposite Omar Sharif in 1958’s Goha.
Shortly thereafter, Italy's finest directors were queuing up to cast her: Pier Paolo Pasolini chose her for Il Bell' Antonio; Visconti offered Rocco And His Brothers and The Leopard, in which she danced so memorably with Burt Lancaster, and Federico Fellini gave her Eight And A Half.
She explained that in those early days producers and directors didn't like her voice because it sounded a bit bizarre. In any case her first language was French and when she arrived in Italy, she was unable to speak a word of Italian. Fellini was the first director to allow her to use her own voice.
People almost knew her voice before they recognised her. She suggested she had played saints and sinners with equal aplomb. She had the privilege of starting out in the Sixties which she has characterised as “a fantastically creative time.” Latterly she chose to work only when the mood and subject suit her.
She always attempted to keep her professional and private life separate, although frequently it has overlapped. She was involved with Pasquale Squitieri, a writer, director, and sometime politician, who was the father of her daughter, also Claudia.
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| Claudia Cardinale. The late David Niven suggested she was “best invention to come out of Italy since spaghetti.” Photo: UniFrance |
Cardinale and Squitieri never married and she referred to him constantly and rather quaintly as her companion. She claimed she had the right recipe for a successful relationship - they saw each other for two months, then did not see each other for a long time. She has said that living together could become a habit. She liked the fact that Squitieri, who died in 2017, was an intellectual and she appreciated being challenged by him. He had lived in Rome while she maintained an apartment in the Marais district of Paris before moving south to Nemours.
Besides her film career Cardinale became a roving ambassadress for UNESCO, dealing specifically with the problems of women and children in such trouble spots as Africa and Afghanistan.
She claimed she had only good memories of her screen partners. She was only 22 when she had "the time of my life" with John Wayne and Rita Hayworth as her screen parents in The Magnificent Showman, in which a Western meets the circus. Wayne presented her with his chair from John Ford and his coffee cup labelled The Duke. They were among her prized possessions.
When she joined Sergio Leone for his masterwork western Once Upon A Time In The West, she found that her land baroness had to do a love scene with Fonda's cold-blooded gunslinger. Leone played Ennio Morricone's music on the set to put her in the mood. Then she had spotted his wife sitting by the camera glaring at them. She told me: "It was then it seems easy, I don't like it."
She considered her work with the director Richard Brooks on The Professionals as her most satisfying American experience. She was the farmer's wife snatched by a bandito, Jack Palance. Her husband hires four mercenaries to bring her home, but the trouble is she is happy in Mexico. Cardinale empathised with the woman's spunk. Studios were always beating a path to her door to put her under contract, but she wanted to keep a foot in both continents, and declined their entreaties.
Acting colleagues of her generation tended to band together. She and Sophia Loren, a supposed rival, talked to each other regularly. She counted Jeanne Moreau and Alain Delon among her close friends.
She took all the awards and recognition she has received over the years with a pinch of humility. She said she does not like to live in the past. She admitted she had a lot of energy, even if she used to smoke rather heavily.
She treasured the comments by her co-star from The Pink Panther, the late David Niven, who described her as the “best invention to come out of Italy since spaghetti.”
Much of current cinema she has dismissed as delivering an overdose of reality and technology. She has noted that the Italian Neo-realists, like Vittorio De Sica, gave reality a poetical edge.
She has suggested that the best kind of special effects come from the heart. She regretted that in many ways cinema seemed to have forgotten how to dream. Sweet dreams, Signora Cardinale.
