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Monica Vitti 1964 in »Red Desert«
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ddp images / ddp
It was her neck that brought Monica Vitti to the cinema, or rather, to the films of Michelangelo Antonioni.
During a flying visit to a dubbing studio, the director only saw the aspiring actress from behind.
'You have a nice neck.
You should act in movies."
At least that's how one of the most beautiful collaborations in cinema history is said to have begun.
And because neither Antonioni nor Vitti later became world stars because of romantic anecdotes and sentimental storytelling, but on the contrary brought psychological fragility and formal experimentation to the cinema, one can readily believe this legend.
Vitti ultimately acted in four of Antonioni's films, and she is unforgettable in each and every one of them.
Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli in 1931, the Roman was drawn to acting from an early age.
Her first theater roles earned her excellent reviews, and in 1954 she made her cinema debut in »Ridere, ridere, ridere«.
Six years later she finally cast Antonio in »L'avventura« (»Those who play with love«).
Initially booed at the Cannes premiere, the film is now regarded as one of the best of the 20th century.
Nobody's sympathy
In »L'avventura« Vitti plays a woman whose best friend disappears while on a boat trip in the Mediterranean.
Together with her friend's husband, she goes on a search, but the destination becomes more and more unclear the closer they get to each other.
Sometimes a crime story seems to unfold, then suddenly impressions from the life of the Italian upper class come into focus.
Fragments of feelings and conflicts do not come together, they remain as illegible as Vitti's angular face, which draws attention and at the same time wards off identification.
Her character doesn't represent anyone but herself, she doesn't need anyone's sympathy.
It is probably precisely for this reason that Vitti succeeds in embodying a new type of woman in »L'avventura« – a woman who has freed herself from being interpreted by men and is trying to build her own identity from the constantly multiplying offers of post-war capitalist society.
After a supporting role in Antonioni's »La notte« from 1961, which describes the fall of a marriage in a single night and which is only accelerated by Vitti as the wife's rival, the fabrication of one's own identity is dealt with in »L'ecclisse« (»Love 1962«, also: »Solar Eclipse«) finally to the fragile narrative principle.
Vitti's character, Vittoria, begins the film with an ending: she breaks off a relationship.
A new affair, this time with the stockbroker Piero (Alain Delon), seems to be imminent and yet, like the other episodes that take Vittoria both through Rome and suddenly to Verona, it never becomes emotionally tangible.
Vitti herself called what her characters experienced »alienazione«: alienation, isolation.
The uneasiness of an entire generation
As universal as these feelings are, for the longest time it was almost exclusively men who were supposed to express them in the cinema.
With Antonioni, on the other hand, Vitti could not only be a modern woman, but also a modern human being: the uneasiness of an entire generation about consumer society and its pathologies crystallized in her.
In their last film together, »Red Desert« in 1964, they turned this diagnosis into dystopia with ruthless consistency.
In a (post)industrial landscape riddled with toxic waste and ruins, Vitti's character slowly but inexorably goes insane.
Here Vitti and Antonioni avoid all the pitfalls of female hysteria that less clever artists would have caught themselves.
Even before Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari theorized it in »Anti-Oedipus« in 1972, they expressed it in »Red Desert«: Going mad is possibly the most sensible way to react to the demands of the world.
»I dedicated my life, my mind, my eyes, everything to my work«
After »Rote Wüste« Vitti and Antonioni went their separate ways, both artistically and privately.
An architecturally curious house in northern Sardinia called »la grande cupola« should have been her home.
Now, for almost sixty years, it has been a reminder of the end of this extraordinary relationship.
Antonio was still writing the screenplay for »Zabriskie Point« there, and a short time later he was drawn abroad for »Blow Up«.
Vitti's departure was even more radical.
After a trip to Hollywood that proved to be a flop, she worked with Ettore Scola and Luis Buñuel before turning to comedy and winning a new audience back home with entertainment films.
She was honored five times with the David di Donatello prize for best actress, and at the age of almost 60 she made her directorial debut in 1990 with »Scandalo segreto«.
An appearance in the television film "Ma tu mi voi biene?" concluded her career as an actress. In 1995 she was honored at the Venice Film Festival for her life's work.
"I have dedicated my life, my mind, my eyes, simply everything to my work," she said on the occasion of a large photo exhibition in her honor in Rome.
»I learned a lot from cinema and I think I gave everything I could.«
From 2003, Vitti withdrew from the public eye, suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
She passed away on February 2, 2022 at the age of 90.