In Praise of Claudia Cardinale - John Baxter extols the virtues of the great Italian actress - Screening at the Randwick Ritz 18-21 July

CLAUDIA CARDINALE: BEYOND BEAUTY

Cinema Reborn is partnering with the Italian Institite of Culture in Sydney, FARE Cinema and the Randwick Ritz to present a mini-retrospective of the films of the great Italian actor Claudia Cardinale. In case you are still wondering about how many of the four film selection you should see at the Randwick Ritz from 18-21 July  here is a specially written appreciation of the star by Australian writer John Baxter who, among his many books, wrote the best biography in English of Federico Fellini.  John writes:

Is there a more radiant moment in the western than that where Claudia Cardinale alights from the train in Sergio Leone’s  Once Upon a Time in the West? A little ridiculous in her straw hat (above), she’s initially lost in the bustle of other passengers, the strangeness of some Native Americans filing stoically past. Even the hands of the station clock don’t agree with those on the tiny watch on her wrist. It’s as if the next gust of desert wind will blow her away. But then a few notes of a lone and wordless female voice signify her growing resolve. With each step increasingly in charge, she strides ahead, two boys in her wake struggling with her bags, and, passing through the station building, steps out into her new life while Tonino Delli Colli’s camera and Ennio Morricone’s music soar above our heads. 

Few performers do entrances as wellas Cardinale, and this is one of the finest. To it, one could add her radiantfirst appearance in Visconti’s The Leopard, once again her own woman, sailing through the gaping men in the prince’s salon to pay her respects to the senior woman in the room, and the moment in Otto et Mezzo, where she appears (below) at the spa to Marcello Mastroianni’s jaded film-maker. Fellini was nota director of women, for whom he had little time on or off the set, but for Cardinale he made an exception.  In this film, she becomes the embodiment of hope, a manifestation of the feminine purity and joy in which Guido Anselmi has almost ceased to believe.

The same quality enchants young Jacques Perrin in Girl with a Suitcase, the deranged Mastroianni in Henry IV, and the men in any other of her performances one cares to name: grizzled western mercenaries Burt Lancaster and Woody Strode in The Professionals; Jean Sorel in Visconti’s operatically over-wrought Sandra;  as the puzzled young wife to an impotent Mastroianni in Il Bel’Antonio,  and, among the most memorable, the gypsy thief Vénus opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo’s swashbuckling 18th century brigand of de Broca’s Cartouche. When her character is killed in that film, somethingis extinguished in the men who love her. Having draped her in jewels and reverently lowered her body into the river,  sole passenger in a golden coach, Belmondo says quietly to his followers “Now to die, and quickly.” Nobody disagrees. 

For bookings and session times: https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/events/claudia-cardinale-beyond-beauty

LE SAMOURAI RETURNS

…and for those who missed out on the big hit of Cinema Reborn’s 2024 season the Ritz, and in Melbourne the Hawthorn Lido and the Elsternwick Classic, are now screening dailyJean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 masterpiece Le  Samourai. Book via the theatres’ websites.