Claudia Cardinale: More than a muse

The Australian Centre for the Moving image will celebrate the career of one of Italy's finest exports, 60s screen darling Claudia Cardinale.

For half a century, the fierce talent of luminous Italian screen goddess Claudia Cardinale has moved many a cinemagoer, not least Roberta Ciabarra, who still recalls her first glimpse of Cardinale.

Ciabarra – curator of an Australian Centre for the Moving Image's (ACMI) Cadrinale retrospective – was three years old when she sneaked a peek at Cardinale's American film debut, Blake Edwards' The Pink Panther (1963).

“I saw The Pink Panther from the back seat of my parents' car at the drive-in. I was supposed to be asleep by the time the main feature came on,” she recalls. “The lovely lady with the upswept beehive reminded me of my mother.” The little girl, entranced by the unforgettable Cardinale, was not the only Ciabarra family member affected by the exotic beauty: “Even my dad is excited by this season!”

He's not alone. Claudia Cardinale was one of a select group of actresses from the Continent that captured the imagination of the world at a time when 'movie-star glamour' was at its most beguiling. Along with her Italian countrywomen Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, and their French sisters Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot, Cardinale came to epitomise an essence that the Italians call 'grinta'. “She conveyed a paradoxical sense of modesty,” says Ciabarra. “She manages to express fiery determination and vulnerability at the same time. Her unselfconsciousness, the wonderful emotional immediacy she conveys on screen, and that husky, joyous, deep-throated laugh, all deepen her allure.”

Cardinale holds a unique place in the history of that period, when the great European beauties of world cinema were not just redefining the role of the onscreen 'sex symbol'; they were also inspiring the leading fashion designers of the time. “Deneuve became synonymous with Yves Saint Laurent and (Audrey) Hepburn with Givenchy,” recalls Ciabarra, “(but) Cardinale was more often associated with the auteur directors she worked with like Visconti, Fellini and Leone.”

It is an opinion that Cardinale herself supports. In her 1995 autobiography Io Claudia, Tu Claudia, co-authored with documentarian and long-time friend Anna Maria Mori, Cardinale said, “I think that the most important thing, to act well, is the actor's attitude towards their director. An actor must understand what it is their director expects and at that point, be guided by that initial intuition, or impulse. The secret is in letting oneself go.”

Such trust led some of the most iconic screen images in European cinema history, and guided Ciabarra in her understanding of the films that defined Cardinale's career. “Some of her favourite performances in films from her early career came out of working relationships with directors with whom she developed a deep affinity. Pietro Germi, in Un Maledetto Imbroglio (The Facts of Murder, 1959), Mauro Bolognini in Il Bell'Antonio (1960) and Valerio Zurlini in La ragazza con la valigia (Girl with a Suitcase, 1961).” Under Luchino Visconti, Cardinale teamed with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon to create the indelibly beautiful Il gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963). As part of the ACMI program, Ciabarra has programmed their 1965 collaboration Vaghe Stelle Dell'Orsa (Sandra of a Thousand Delights), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and unseen in Australian cinemas since the mid 1970s.

One of the most popular screenings is sure to be Luigi Zampa's 1970 bittersweet romantic drama Bello, onesto, emigrato Australia sposerebbe compaesana illibata (The Girl in Australia). At the height of their respective careers, Cardinale and co-star Albert Sordi travelled to Australia to film the mail-order bride comedy. “The (all-Italian) cast and crew were, as you can imagine, rapturously greeted by Italians who had settled in Australia,” says Ciabarra. “Both Sordi and Cardinale were established stars by this time and new and recent arrivals from Italy could barely believe their eyes when they saw the two appear on location in unexpected places like Broken Hill and the Gold Coast.” The actress remembered this professional period fondly, and “still maintains that Australia has the most beautiful sunsets in the world,” Ciabarra recounts.

Roberta Ciabarra has long aspired to create a retrospective of Claudia Cardinale's films; her appreciation of film grew whilst studying cinema at the University of Melbourne and in subsequent roles with art house distributor NewVision Films and in the screen development and documentary divisions of Film Victoria. “We have a fairly democratic process in the Film Programs' unit at ACMI, in that each of us can pitch ideas for seasons we have a particular interest in. The Claudia Cardinale season is one I've had in mind for a few years now but the catalyst for putting it together finally came in the form of restored and newly struck 35mm prints of (Sergio) Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West,” she recalls with glee. “I certainly couldn't resist the prospect of presenting a fully restored, complete and uncut print of Leone's epic western.”

Also screening at the retrospective is the film that shaped 1960s European cinema, and Claudia Cardinale's onscreen essence, at its zenith – in Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963, above). For Ciabarra, it represents the spirit that defined one of the most exciting periods in global cinema. “Cardinale's incandescent performance in Fellini's 8 ½ – her face, voice and luminous presence – are like a current that runs through some of the most important films to come out of 1960s Italian cinema.”

The performance still defines Claudia Cardinale to this day, as she continues to embody a yearning for both artistic integrity (she recently finished shooting actor/director's Nicole Garcia's Un balcon sur la mer) and social equality (she has been UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Defence of Women's Rights since 1999). For Roberta Ciabarra, presenting the films that helped define the actress' identity has special meaning. “She (developed) a more independent sense of the direction she wanted her career to take. She was [able to] forge her own way as an actor and to pursue the film, theatre and humanitarian projects that speak to her own passions.”

The Claudia Cardinale retrospective runs from Friday 19 February - Sunday 28 February 2010 at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Full details and screening info at www.acmi.net.au.