Alida Valli

At 84 years old, Alida Valli has this physical status:

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Early life

Valli was born in Pola, Istria, Italy (today Pula, Croatia; it had not existed in Austria-Hungary until 1918). She was of Austrian, Slovenian, and Italian descent, but "she was never meant to be anything other than Italian." Baron Luigi Altenburger (also Altempurger), an Austrian-Italian descendant of the Counts d'Arco, was a maternal grandmother of the Roman senator Ettore Tolomei. Silvia Oberecker Della Martina, Valli's mother, was born in Pola and was a "culturally advanced" housewife with half Slovene and half Italian descent. Valli's mother was the granddaughter of Felix Oberecker (also Obecker) and Virginia Della Martina from Pola, Austria (then part of Austria). Rodolfo, Valli's maternal granduncle, was a close friend of Gabriele D'Annunzio. Valli was multilingual. She grew up speaking Slovene, Italian, and German, and she was equally fluent in Serbo-Croatian, French, and English. She will film her dialogue in European films with international casts and dub herself for the soundtrack, often in Italian.

Valli was christened Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg. Dr.h.c. was also a name she earned during her lifetime. The III. University of Rome, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of France and Knight of the Italian Republic.

Personal life

Carlo Cugnasca, her adolescent love, was a well-known Italian acrobatic pilot. He served as a fighter pilot with Regia Aeronautica and was killed in a mission against British-controlled Tobruk on April 14 1941.

Valli married Oscar de Mejo in 1943 and demanded divorce from him in 1949, but the pair later reconciled. Before their marriage ended in divorce in 1952, they had two sons together, and she returned to Italy. Giancarlo Zagni, an Italian film director, married her in the early 1960s, divorced in 1970.

Valli's film career suffered in 1953 due to a scandal surrounding Wilma Montesi's death, whose body was discovered on a public beach near Ostia. Prolonged investigations have resulted, involving allegations of drug use and sex orgies in Roman society. Valli's lover, jazz guitarist Piero Piccioni (son of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs), was among the accused, who were cleared, leaving the case unsolved.

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Career

Valli, a socially gifted teenager, travelled to Rome, where she attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the country's oldest school for film actors and directors, and still one of the most prestigious. At the time, she lived with her uncle Ettore Tolomei. Valli began her film career in 1934 in Il cappello a tre punte (The Three Cornered Hat) during the so-called Telefoni Bianchi cinema period. Mille lire al mese (1939), the actress' first big success, was in the film Mille lire al mese (1939). She gained her fame as a dramatic actress in Piccolo mondo antico (1941), directed by Mario Soldati, for which she received a special Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival after numerous appearances in a variety of comedies. She appeared in many films during the Second World War, including Stasera niente di nuovo (1942) (whose song "Ma l'amore no" became the Italian fort's leitmotif) and the diptych Ne Vivi / Addio Kira. (1943) (based on Ayn Rand's book We the Living). Both of these movies were almost blocked by the Italian government under Benito Mussolini, but they were finally allowed because the book on which they were based was anti-Soviet. The films were popular, and the public quickly understood that they were just as opposed to fascism as communism. However, the films were eventually banned from theaters as the German and Italian governments, which had abhorred communism, discovered that the film contained an anti-fascist message.

Valli, who was still widely regarded as the "most beautiful woman in the world" in her early 20s, was involved in English-language films, and she assumed she had discovered a second Ingrid Bergman in her early 20s, who reportedly signed her to a deal. In Gregory Peck's The Paradine Case (1947), she appeared in great successes and memorable films; also in Orson Welles and Frank Sinatra's The Miracle of the Bells (1948), one of the best British films ever produced worldwide and the British Film Institute's pick as the best British film of all time; and in Robert Cotten's Walk Softly, Stranger (1950). She gained international recognition through these and other films, and she was often credited with the cursive word Valli, which would later become her characteristic 'word mark' in America. "To make her sound even more exotic," she says. She opined the single-name reference in 1951. "It's silly going around with just one name," she said. "People get me mixed up with Rudy Vallée." The actress could not comply with Selznick's stringent guidelines, ensuring her actor's termination, but not with a large fine.

She returned to Europe in the early 1950s and appeared in numerous French and Italian films. She had a great success in Senso, directed by Luchino Visconti in 1954. She portrayed a Venetian countes torn between patriotic ideals and an adulterous love for an officer (played by Farley Granger) of the occupying Austrian forces in this film, set in mid-19th-century Venice during the Risorgimento.

Valli decided not to make films in 1956, instead focusing on the stage. She worked with an Italian company that made Broadway plays.

She appeared in Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans visage, 1959) (Eyes Without a Face, 1959) with Pierre Brasseur. She appeared in many films with famous photographers, including Pier Paolo Rex (1967), 1967; Bernardo Bertolucci's La strategia del ragno, 1976; and Dario Argento's Suspiria, 1977. Mira Sorvino played her in Semana Santa (2002), her last film role. She was also known in Italy for her appearances in such plays as Ibsen's Rosmersholm; Pirandello's Henry IV; John Osborne's Epitaph; and Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. Alida Valli, a film student at the Venice International Film Festival in 1997, received the Golden Lion award for her career.

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