Background
Monica Vitti was born on 3 November, 1931 in Rome, Italy.
Monica Vitti was born on 3 November, 1931 in Rome, Italy.
She acted in amateur productions as a teenager, then trained as an actor at Rome's National Academy of Dramatic Arts (graduating in 1953) and at Pittman's College, where she played a teen in a charity performance of Dario Niccodemi's La nemica. She toured Germany with an Italian acting troupe and her first stage appearance in Rome was for a production of Niccolò Machiavelli's La Mandragola.
She first worked for Antonioni dubbing Dorian Gray in II Grido. Thereafter, she was the girlfriend drawn into replacing the vanished Lea Masari in L’Awentura; the brittle societv girl who sees the impossibility of loving Mastroianni in La Notte: the girl subtlv brutalized by Alain Delon in The Eclipse; and the demented wile in The Bed Desert. That is her most anguished film, less through acting than because the actress is struggling to grasp the unexplained psychosis of the part. Against that, we can remember the lifted skv at certain moments in The Eclipse: the airfield scene, and the briet abandon of the African dance. It is a series of films that will always be ol importance in the history of director-actress relations not least because of her relative ordinariness in other directors’ hands.
Away from Antonioni, Monica Yitti has often seemed thick-lipped, huskv, and stolid, no more or less than the young Silvana Mangano: an episode from Les Quatres Vérités (Luis Garcia Berlanga); Château en Suède (63, Roger Vadim); Dragées au Poivre (Jacques Baratier); in an episode from Alta Infidelta (Luciano Salee); "La Minestre,” episode from Le Bambole (Franco Rossi); Il Disco Volante (Tinto Brass); Fai in Fretta ad Uccidenni. (Francesco Maselli); “Fata Sabina,” episode from Le Fate (Salce); as a Sicilian girl hunting for her seducer in Britain in La Ragazza con la Pistola (Monicelli); La Femme Ecarlate (Jean Yalére); La Cintura di Castita (Festa Campanile); La Moglie del Prete (Dino Risi); Amore, Mio Aiutami (Alberto Sordi); Nini Tirabuscio la Donna die Inventa la Mossa (Marcello Fondato); La Pacifista (Miklos Jancso); in two episodes from Le Coppie (Monieelli and Vittorio de Sica); Teresa la Ladra (Carlo di Palma); Tosca (Luigi Magni); The Phantom of Liberty (Luis Bunuel); La Raison d'Etat (André Cayatte); An Almost Perfect Affair (Michael Ritchie); The Mystery of Oberwald (Antonioni); I Know That You Know I Know (Alberto Sordi); Trenta Minuti d’Amore (Marco Vicario); and Scan- dolo Segreto, which she also directed.
(The Scarlet Lady: Monica Vitti, Maurice Ronet, Robert Hos...)
(Buy L'Avventura (English Subtitled): Read 119 Movies & TV...)
(Buy L'Eclisse (English Subtitled): Read 60 Movies & TV Re...)
(Buy La Notte (English Subtitled): Read 70 Movies & TV Rev...)
Michelangelo Antonioni and Vitti met in the late 1950s, and their relationship grew stronger after L'Avventura was made, because it had shaped both their careers. However, by the late 1960s, they did not make any movies together, making the relationship strained until it officially ended. In a later interview, Vitti stated that Antonioni ended their relationship. They made the film Il mistero di Oberwald together in 1981.
In 1995 Vitti married Roberto Russo, with whom she has lived since 1975.
