100 years ago Giulietta Masina, Gelsomina forever

(by Giorgio Gosetti) (ANSA) - ROME, FEBRUARY 20 - She was born 100 years ago in San Giorgio diPiano (a step away from Bologna) on February 21, 1921 GiuliettaMasina, the unforgettable muse of Federico Fellini who would be dismissed from the stage lights on March 23, 1994, a few months after the death of her husband, the great Rimini. Agiulietta has never weighed the identification with her artist husband, known on the national radio (EIAR) in the middle of the war, in 1941, and her pygmalion in the cinema since his first film, "Variety Lights", directed alongside Alberto Lattuada in 1950 . But today a wrong would be done by limiting Masina's talent to her Fellini roles as Gianfranco Angelucci remembers well in the beautiful volume dedicated to her that the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and Edizioni Sabinae publish in the centenary of her birth. Italian cinema remembers her, together with Anna Magnani, among the absolute protagonists of an era that ferries Cinecittà from the glories of the Fascist era to international splendor: from "Senza petà" (1948) to "La strada" (1954), from "Nella city ​​of hell "(1958) to" FrauHolle "(1986), the path of that small and only apparently fragile creature born for the screen, is marked by memorable appearances. Juliet was a magical apparition, an elf who came down to earth to restore grace to the world: under the reflectors she lit up and transformed, the symbol of a woman who guarded the values ​​and secrets of the best of humanity. For many years the major directors have assigned her the roles of socialite, prostitute, victim of male brutality, But each time her smile lit up the screen and showed that another possibility always exists, even for the most unfortunate. His Gelsomina, an unforgettable elf alongside Zampanò (AnthonyQuinn) and the Fool (Richard Basehart) conquers the Academy stage which consecrates "La strada" with the Oscar for best foreign film, also winner of the Lion in Venice. From the hospital bed, Fellini wrote to her "Giuliettina my beloved, if always a little girl in very good condition and together with the tuovecchierello we will do some more" fuss ". With you close I am still capable of doing somersaults". (HANDLE).