La signora senza camelie
Antonioni took his cue from Gina Lollobrigida’s biography for this biting portrayal of the post-war Cinecittà studios, where greed for money is the motivating factor. The beautiful young shop girl Clara is launched as a film star, but soon has doubts about her newly acquired status. The film is part of a programme to mark the Antonioni exhibition ‘Il maestro del cinema moderno’.
Clara – a role performed by Antonioni”s first muse Lucia Bosé, who was elected Miss Italy in 1947 – rockets to fame as the lead actress in a run of unpretentious crowd pleasers produced by Cinecittà. Her parents, blinded by the prospect of wealth and fame, push their daughter to marry a rich producer but Clara revolts and demands a serious part in a serious film. Her performance as Jeanne d”Arc, however, is mercilessly slashed by the established film critics.
Antonioni based his second film with Bosé – who previously starred in Cronaca di un amore – on the life story of the headstrong film star Gina Lollobrigida, who achieved fame in the late 1940s as the classical raven-haired Italian beauty in comedies and musicals and was once dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world”.
Antonioni”s third feature film incorporates themes that would continue to fascinate him all his life: reflections on the meaning of cinema and women who refuse to live up to the expectations of their community.
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Michelangelo Antonioni
From 12 September 2015 to 17 January 2016, Eye presented Michelangelo Antonioni – Il maestro del cinema moderno, an exhibition about one of the foremost innovators in film from the last century. The exhibition showed how Antonioni renewed the grammar of film by thinking in terms of the image and less in terms of narrative.
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