Giulietta Masina was born 100 years ago in San Giorgio di Piano (a step away from Bologna) on February 21, 1921, the unforgettable muse of Federico Fellini who would take leave of the stage lights on March 23, 1994, a few months after the death of her husband, the Great Rimini. Juliet was never bothered by 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 well remembers in the beautiful volume dedicated to her that the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and Edizioni Sabinae publish on the centenary of her birth. In fact, 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 the international splendor between the 40s and the 60s: from "Senza pietà" (Alberto Lattuada, 1948) to "La strada" (1954), from "In the city the hell" (Renato Castellani, 1958) to "Frau Holle" (Juraj Jakubisko, 1986), the path of that small and only apparently fragile creature born for the screen, it is punctuated by memorable appearances. Juliet was a magical apparition, an elf who came down to earth to restore grace and sweetness to the world: in the spotlight she lit up and transformed, a 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.
The daughter of a violinist and a teacher, Giulietta Masina grew up in Rome as a child, the guest of a Milanese aunt who was widowed. He attended schools in an Ursuline college where he became familiar with the stage, in school plays and then at the university theater Ateneo. He began working on the radio in 1942, paired with the famous announcer Angelo Zanobini. The two interpreted the popular adventures of Cico and Pallina (first engaged and then newlyweds) in the column "Il terziglio": the young Fellini wrote the skits and soon asked to be introduced to her parents. The two still lived in the house of Juliet's aunt when, to avoid Frederick's call to arms, they married on 30 October 1943. Two years later, in 1945 after the war just ended, after the dramatic mourning for the loss of her son Pier Federico who died just 11 days after his birth, the girl graduated in literature and returned to the theater paired with a very young Marcello Mastroianni with "Angelica "by Leo Ferrero.
He could successfully follow his theatrical career, but he preferred to stay on the radio with the new "Adventures of Cico and Pallina" and snatched a part in Roberto Rossellini's "Paisà". The following year, in 1948, Alberto Lattuada wanted her alongside his wife, Carla Del Poggio, in the cast of "Senza Pietà", entrusting her with the role of the young prostitute with a golden heart Marcella. She is immediately appreciated, but with difficulty she undoes a character who will also make her famous: this is how she appears in "Persiane chiuse" by Luigi Comencini, "Wanda the sinner" by Duilio Coletti and then as Cabiria in "Lo sheicco bianco", the true debut of her husband in 1952. The international triumph will wait only two years. In the meantime he starred with Rossellini ("Europa '51"), Lizzani ("At the edge of the metropolis"), Giorgio Bianchi ("The bother"), Giuseppe Amato ("Forbidden women"). But it is his Gelsomina, an unforgettable elf alongside Zampanò (Anthony Quinn) and the Fool (Richard Basehart) who conquered the audience of the Academy which consecrates "La strada" with the highest prize, the Oscar for best foreign film, winner also of the Silver Lion in Venice. Fellini will never leave her anymore, for her he will resurrect the character of the prostitute Cabiria in the 1957 film "The nights of Cabiria", after the critical success of "Il bidone" (1955) and then in "Giulietta degli spiriti" (1965) which in she is explicitly dedicated. The artistic partnership will be renewed again in 1985, alongside his family friend Marcello Mastroianni, with "Ginger and Fred", an authentic swan song of an era and a cinema that Giulietta Masina went through with a shy and tenacious personality. Eduardo De Filippo had written for her the role of "Fortunella" in the 1958 film of the same name and it is a name that sums up her artistic character and her public image well. In private, however, hers was not a simple life, marked by secret pains and an inner maturity that she would have shown above all in the television dramas that made her popular to the television audience from "Eleonora" by Silverio Blasi (1973) to "Camilla" by Sandro Bolchi (1976). Finally, unforgettable remains the bizarre foray into Hollywood cinema alongside Katharine Hepburn ("The madwoman of Chaillot") in which Bryan Forbes and John Huston imposed the character of Gabrielle just to pay her homage.
His last appearance in the cinema dates back to 1991 when he accepted the invitation of Jean-Louis Bertuccelli on the set of "One day perhaps", a melancholy farewell to the scenes of a great and small woman whom our cinema knew as "a fairy with an indomitable character. , straight as a wire ". From the hospital bed, Fellini wrote to her "« My beloved Giuliettina, you are always a very young girl and together with your old watercolor we will do some more "fuss". With you close I am still capable of doing somersaults. "At her funeral Giulietta Masina wanted that for her as for the great Federico, Mauro Maur, first trumpet of the orchestra of the opera of Rome, played the aria by Nino Rota for the ballet of "La strada".