Alida Valli

[COP11]

Alida Valli (31 May 1921 – 22 April 2006), sometimes simply credited as Valli, was an Italian actress who appeared in over 100 films, including Mario Soldati's Piccolo mondo antico, Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case, Ayn Rand's We the Living, Carol Reed's The Third Man, Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido, Luchino Visconti's Senso, and Dario Argento's Suspiria.

Biography

Early life

Valli was born in Pola, Istria, Italy (today Pula, Croatia), to parents who both had mixed ancestry. Her paternal grandfather was the Baron Luigi Altenburger (also: Altempurger), an Austrian-Italian from Trento, a descendant of the Counts d'Arco; her paternal grandmother was Elisa Tomasi from Trento, a cousin of the Roman senator Ettore Tolomei. Valli's mother, Silvia Oberecker della Martina, born in Pola, was the daughter of the German-Austrian Felix Oberecker (also: Obrekar) from Laibach, Austria (now Ljubljana, Slovenia), her mother was Virginia della Martina from Pola, Istria (then part of Austria). Valli's maternal granduncle, Rodolfo, was a close friend of Gabriele d'Annunzio. Valli was christened Baroness Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. She also gained the titles Dr.h.c. of the III. University of Rome, Chevalier of Arts of France and Cavaliere of the Italian Republic.

Career

At fifteen, she went to Rome, where she attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a school for film actors and directors. At that time, she lived with her uncle Ettore Tolomei. Valli started her movie career in 1934, in Il cappello a tre punte (The Three Cornered Hat) during the so called Telefoni Bianchi cinema era. Her first big success came with the movie Mille lire al mese. After many roles in a large number of comedies, she earned her success as dramatic actress in Piccolo mondo antico (1941), directed by Mario Soldati, that also permitted her to win a special Best actress awards at Venice Film Festival and to became a movie star. During the Second World War, she starred in many movies, the more notables are Stasera niente di nuovo (1942) (which song "Ma l'amore no" became the leit-motif of the Italian forties) and the diptych Noi Vivi - Addio Kira! (1943) (two movies based on Ayn Rand's novel, We the Living. The movies were nearly censored by the Italian government under Benito Mussolini, but finally they were permitted because the novel upon which were based was anti-Soviet. The films were successful, and the public easily realized that they were as much against Fascism as Communism. After several weeks, however, the films were pulled from theaters as the German and Italian governments, which abhorred communism, found out the story also carried an anti-fascist message).

Valli had a career in English language films through David Selznick, who signed her to a contract, thinking that he had found a second Ingrid Bergman. In Hollywood, she performed in several movies: she was the murder suspect Maddalena Paradine in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947), and the mysterious Czech refugee wanted by the Russians in post-war Vienna in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949). But her foreign experience was not a great success due to the financial problems of Selznick's production company.

She returned to Europe in the early 1950s, and starred in many French and Italian films. In 1954, she had a great success in the melodramatic Senso, directed by Luchino Visconti. In that film, set in mid-1800s Venice during the Risorgimento, she played a Venetian countess torn between nationalistic feelings and an adulterous love for an officer (played by Farley Granger) of the occupying Austrian forces.

In 1959, she appeared in Georges Franju's horror masterpiece Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face). From the 1960s, she worked in several pictures with famous directors, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini (Edipo re, Oedipus Rex, 1967), Bernardo Bertolucci (La strategia del ragno, 1972; Novecento, 1976), and Dario Argento (Suspiria, 1977). Her final movie role was in Semana Santa (2002), with Mira Sorvino. In Italy, she was also well-known for her stage appearances in such plays as Ibsen's Rosmersholm; Pirandello's Henry IV; John Osborne's Epitaph for George Dillon; and Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. At 1997 Venice Film Festival Alida Valli obtained the Golden Lion award for her career.

Personal life

Valli's movie career suffered as a result of the infamous Wilma Montesi scandal, in which her lover and jazz musician Piero Piccioni (the son of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs) was involved. Montesi was a fashion model. Her body was found on a public beach near Ostia; prolonged investigations resulted, involving allegations of drug and sex orgies in Roman society. The accusation of Piccioni, of Ugo Montagna, and of Maurizio d'Assia (Moritz von Hessen, the son of Princess Mafalda of Savoy) were a major part of the scandal. Subsequently they were acquitted of the accusations.

Alida Valli had two sons with her husband Oscar de Mejo.

Valli's death at her home on 22 April 2006, was announced by the office of the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, whose statement read, "The Italian cinema has lost one of its most intense and striking faces". Another official statement by the Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi read, "La scomparsa di Alida Valli è una grave perdita per il cinema, il teatro e la cultura italiana" ("The death of Alida Valli is a great loss for the italian cinema, theatre and culture").

Valli was buried at Rome's Verano Cemetery.

The critic David Shipman wrote in his book The great movie stars: "...you will probably regard her as one of the half-dozen best actresses in the world" and the French critic Frédéric Mitterrand wrote: "...cette actrice fut la seule en Europe à égaler Marlène Dietrich ou Garbo".

[COP11]

[COP11]