Year 1968. It comes out Once upon a time there was the West by Sergio Leone. Among the protagonists is Claudia Cardinale, Jill, a former prostitute, who arrives at the Sweetwater construction site, discovered widow and owner of all the ground. There it is raped by Frank, Henry Fonda, assassin and criminal who wants to take everything away. In summary, in that sequence, there is a good part of the life, true, by Claudia Cardinale. From a prevaricating and violent relationship he had a not yet twenty -year -old son, passing him off for a few years for his brother. As in the film (Henry Fonda was over thirty years older) the criminal male was a man much bigger than her. But Claudia as Jill had then been able to take her destiny in her hand, not without stumbles, but always with your head held high.
His family He had landed in Tunis from Sicily, the father came from the Island of Femmine. In particular, they resided in La Goulette, where a discreet community had been established to the point that an area is still called Sicily. There was born Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinal on April 15, 1938. Sixteen -year -old emerges and rebellious his image ends up in a documentary electrocutioning everyone. And the cinema arrives, a particle in the days of the love of Jacques Baratier with Omar Sharif. But Claudia doesn’t want to know about cinema. But then in 1957 it happens that he wins involuntarily and without choosing to participate, the competition of “Italian girl most beautiful in Tunisia”. And the prize consists of a participation in the Venice exhibition. Where depopulated, he should go to the experimental center, he speaks French, Sicilian, Arabic but not the Italian, yet everyone wants it, but it turns his back on the enticements and starts again for Tunisia. But it turns out pregnant. Bad story in general. Very bad for a girl not yet twenty years old towards the late 1950s.
To give a hand Franco Cristaldi, producer of the Vides, intervenes, who puts her under a very narrow contract and sends her to secretly give birth to London. Claudia is not only beautiful, she has an irresistible sensuality and a roca voice that sucks fantastic worlds. Thus, Obtorto neck for her, fortunately for us, begins her great film adventure. Her Italian debut is sister under key in the usual unknown people. Then it’s a succession of movies. Among others A cursed cheating of germs, The beautiful antonio of Bolognini, Rocco and his brothers of Visconti, The girl with the suitcase of Zurlini, as well as some incursion abroad. The year of true consecration, however, is 1963. Visconti entrusts her with the role of Angelica next to Alain Delon’s Tancredi in The leopard, While Fellini proposes it as a traveled Claudia, with her real voice, in 8½ Next to Marcello Mastroianni. Fantastic. If it were not that the two directors at the time deducted cordially and the filming of the two films were simultaneously. With Claudia forced to “commute” between Sicily and Rome, black of hair with Visconti, blonde with Fellini, rigid script with one, improvisation with the other. A nightmare, told by Francesco Piccolo in The beautiful confusion (Einaudi). And to complete a year of fireworks here is The pink panther by Blake Edwards with Peter Sellers e Bube’s girlfriend of Comencini. Shortly after he marries, in the United States, Franco Cristaldi who adopts Patrick.
Claudia is now a consecrated international diva. About ten years later, for I guappicrosses the director Pasquale Squitieri eccentric and peripheral figure in Italian cinema, not for Cardinal, who falls in love with the same age. He closes with Cristaldi, starting a new relationship that will last for a long time and that, according to Cardinal herself, gives her back that freedom that had always missed her in relationships and therefore was the only true great love for her, also crowned by the birth of a daughter.
Very few It was the Italian actresses who managed to impose themselves internationally, Claudia did so with a remarkable nonchalance, working with some of the greatest directors, of all countries. Among the infinite titles of his filmography it is worth reporting Laugh gunsnot because it is an unforgettable film, but because next to her as a co -star there is Brigitte Bardot, the actress who in the 1950s unleashed her curiosity as a girl. Then that madness of Werner Herzog, Fitzcarraldo With the highly splashing Klaus Kinski committed to building work theaters in the middle of the Amazon forest. Finally, a cameo in which he plays herself in Férid Bougherir’s film A summer in La Goulette.
IMPOSSIBLE Avoid the list effect of the phone talking about Claudia Cardinale and the boasted films that saw her protagonist. And then it is better to move the shot to his desire to help young directors, even better if debutants, offering them unexpected possibilities, a sensitivity that has become an institution a couple of years ago thanks to the foundation that took its name. Many of his externations that can always be shared on the environment, LGBTQ, violence against women. Then, apart from the prizes obtained for his professional activity, he had the highest official awards by Italy, but also of France, Portugal, Tunisia and Bulgaria. Always available in participating in popular events and in making her humanitarian contribution, perhaps the thing that most liked her was to receive the honorary citizenship of the Municipality of Isola delle Femmine. From there, and from Trapani for part of his mother, his victorious adventure had started which ended in France, in Nemours, after 87 years.
