Claudia Cardinale: «Working with Monica Vitti? It wasn’t the best experience.”

He will be 85 in April but Claudia Cardinale, like all self-respecting divas, she stands the test of time because legends like hers never fade. Born in Tunisia and living in Paris, Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale – this is her baptismal name – looks at her past and her career with tenderness, retracing the salient stages of her successes, loves and conquests in a long interview granted to the Corriere della Sera during which Claudia Cardinale leaves nothing out: from her childhood in Tunisia to the terrible memory of the war – «My mother who gave us a sugar cube to make us overcome the fear» -, from the Italian spirit she never denied – «I feel Italian, even if of French culture» – to the terrible rape she suffered and which led her to keep the child born from that violence: her son Patrick, who was initially presented as her brother only to later reveal the truth in a historic interview with Enzo Biagi.

«They were very difficult months. Far from my homeland. Grappling with a culture and a language, the Italian one, that I didn’t understand well. Catapulted into the world of cinema, which was both a salvation and a great unknown. Federico Cristaldi understood that I was pregnant when I went to ask to break the contract. My relationship with him strengthened in that moment. I had become transparent», says Cardinale, recalling the first successes at the box office – such as The usual unknown by Mario Monicelli, in which she took part in a small role – and the label of the most beautiful woman in the world that the newspapers gave her even if she, she admits today, “never felt truly beautiful”. Because? «As a child, the “beauty” of the family was my sister Blanche, a blonde with blue eyes. Bella really was, and she always has been. I, so dark, perhaps seemed more obvious: in a Sicilian family, moreover in Tunisia…”.

Together with the review of the great directors with whom she has worked, to whom Claudia Cardinale reserves adjectives full of respect and admiration – Luchino Visconti «master of cinema and life»; Federico Fellini, who deserves credit for having Cardinale recite for the first time with his real voice in half past eight, “fun and challenging”; Sergio Leone «delightful and simple»-the actress also reveals something about her former colleagues and, above all, about her former colleagues: like Monica Vitti, with which it seems he did not get along too well. “Working with her was not the best experience. Vitti was mesmerizing. Strong, intense; but she was less accustomed than I to sharing the scene with another woman. There was no animosity; but there was not even the beginning of a real friendship.’ With Brigitte Bardot relations, on the other hand, have always been excellent unlike what was reported by the newspapers of the time – «She was my absolute “idola”. She is a few years older than me: so as a girl, even before making films, I saw her in films. I was so honored to work with her.”

After elegantly dodging the question about former French president Jacques Chirac’s alleged crush on her – «I supported his electoral campaign because at that moment he seemed to me the right president and so the press made a whole story out of it. The photos showing us “together” were collages. They had removed the face of my friend Jacques Moisant and put in that of Chirac» -, and having confirmed the deep friendship that binds her to Alain Delonwith which it shared the set de The Leopard di Visconti – «He’s a friend. We met often, both in the films and in her life »-, Claudia Cardinale reserves some sweet words towards her daughter Claudia, with whom she has recently created a Foundation « which can be a generational bridge », and of the colleague Gina Lollobrigida, who died on 16 January at the age of 95 – «Gina’s passing is very sad for me. She was a woman so full of energy and interest, that she didn’t seem like she could shut down … I share Sophia’s words, she will remain burning in our hearts and in the memory of cinema ». She, for her part, at her death says she does not think but that she is, however, worried about the uncertain times we are living in, feeling she has to give advice to young girls: «Protect your dignity. Always, at all times, in all circumstances.”

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