Any young actress hoping for success in movies should study the career of Claudia Cardinale.
Blessed with exceptional good looks and agreeable acting talent, Claudia has avoided the usual
mistakes of movie queens and has maintained her career for over forty years.
Today, a much admired veteran, she makes personal appearances to discuss her
career, and provides interviews for DVDs of her films. Claudia's reputation
has been enhanced by DVDs. Previously - at least, in the
eyes of the critical establishment - she had always been overshadowed by Sophia
Loren, but now, with DVDs facilitating a reassessment of her beauty and
her work, Claudia is emerging as one of the most substantial film stars
of the post World War Two era.
Claudia Cardinale was born in Tunisia of
Italian parents, but received a French education and grew up speaking French,
not Italian. At the age of nineteen, having just won a beauty contest, she found
herself in Italy where she received offers of work in films. Hesitant at first because she
spoke almost no Italian, Claudia eventually accepted and was immediately kept
busy in a variety of films. (Claudia was dubbed in all her early Italian movies,
and made several films in France. "8½" was the first Italian film where her own
voice was used.)
Within two years Claudia appeared in a minor classic - "I Solti
Ignoti" (a.k.a "Big Deal On Madonna Street"). At this point, the press, noting
her initials, announced that C. C. was the natural successor to B. B. (Brigitte
Bardot), and began beating the drum on her behalf.
Claudia and her advisers recognised that
to build her career, it would be essential to supply the press with alluring
photographs. However, they decided the pictures
should promote an image of a shy family girl
who just happened to have a beautiful face
and a sexy body. From 1958 onwards,
photographs of Claudia Cardinale rolled off
the production line and were displayed in newspapers and
magazines throughout the world. Yet in none of them did Claudia
attempt any of the conventional postures of aspiring Love
Goddesses. She was never presented as sullen, cockettish, petulant,
exhausted or lecherous. The contrast between Claudia's facial
expressions and those of Jane Russell or Marilyn Monroe, Mylene
Demongeot or Ann-Margret is striking. In one picture after another,
Claudia was photographed at an angle that revealed the opulence of
her figure while highlighting the purity of her face, that
emphasised the elegance of her shoulders and limbs while suggesting an innocent personality.
Frequently she was shown in girlish activities like riding on a swing or playing table tennis. She never
posed for magazines like "Playboy".
At the same time she managed to keep her love life private. Not once was she involved in a scandal,
not once drunk and disorderly in public, not even - as far as the press and the public was concerned
- involved in a romance. Indeed her occasional co-star, Marcello Mastroianni, joked that Claudia was in
danger of giving the movie industry a good name. (In a public interview at London's National Film Theatre
in May 2003, Claudia said that her policy throughout her career was always
to keep her private life separate from her work, and never to become romantically
involved with her leading men.)
Claudia also picked her
films wisely and, in contrast
to her public image,
frequently played fallen
women. As Aida in "La Ragazza Con La Valigia" (a.k.a. "Girl
With A Suitcase") she was used and dumped by a succession of men, while
in
"La Viaccia" - a master-work that deserves to be better known -
she played a girl in a bordello. She appeared with
top European co-stars like
Jean-Paul Belmondo and
Marcello Mastroianni in
superior popular films such as "Cartouche", while
also working for directors like Fellini, Bolognini and
Visconti in prestigious
movies like "Il Gattopardo"
(a.k.a. "The Leopard") and
"8½". The result
is an unusually high
proportion of films that stand the test of time.
In these movies Claudia showed more than adequate acting skills and
always brought her characters to life. However, she was not a strong
screen presence like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck and was never
able to dominate a film by the force of her screen personality. (On the other hand, she
was always
far better looking than Davis or Stanwyck, neither of whom would, when young,
have been persuasive playing the kind of roles Claudia played.) Because Claudia
was not a dominating screen presence and was willing to hide her own personality
within a role, she was consistently underrated by a minority of critics who
did not know the difference between acting talent and charisma.
In 1963 Claudia played the princess in "The Pink Panther"
which was filmed in Italy. The film
was an enormous success and brought her to English speaking audiences. (She had earlier, in 1959,
a tiny part in the British comedy "Upstairs And Downstairs", playing an au-pair girl who causes
chaos by her enthusiasm for sailors.)
The following year Claudia appeared opposite John Wayne and
Rita Hayworth in "Circus World" (a.k.a. "The Magnificent Showman")
which was also a box-office success.
Hollywood was now interested
in Claudia, and offered long term exclusive contracts. Claudia
declined, feeling that her roots were in Europe, but for the next few years
she made several English language movies for Hollywood studios. As with her
European films, Claudia played a wide variety of characters. In "The
Professionals", her favourite of her Hollywood films, she played
a gutsy Mexican woman married against her will to a rich American. In "Blindfold",
opposite Rock Hudson she played a high-spirited Italian-American. In "The
Hell With Heroes", a much underrated movie, she played a soiled heroine,
emotionally dead, who has used her body to survive, while in "Lost Command"
she played an Algerian Muslim using terrorist tactics to drive out the French.
No Hollywood actress played such
a variety of parts.
Many of these films also stand the test of time, and some have been re-issued on DVD, but
with one exception, Claudia was not lit and photographed as lovingly as in her Italian
films. Compare how Armando Nannuzzi lights her in "Vaghe Stelle Dell'Orsa" (a.k.a. "Sandra,
a.k.a. "Of A Thousand Delights") to any of her American films. Only Philip Lathrop in "Don't Make
Waves" did justice to her beauty.
Throughout this period, Claudia continued to pose for publicity
photographs but remained aloof
from the growing trend to appear topless in movies and magazines. She
did, however, have a fairly
candid love scene with Rod Taylor in "The Hell With Heroes" and
a bedroom sequence with Henry Fonda in "Once Upon A Time In The West".
Towards the end of the 1960s,
when Hollywood's power structure was undergoing a major shake-up, Claudia's knack of choosing good
films deserted her. She appeared in
several weak, silly movies like "The Adventures Of Gerard" -
Claudia is the only good thing in this dreadful film - and "A Fine Pair", again
opposite Rock Hudson, which
damaged her box office. Her Hollywood
career ended abruptly, and from then on she worked
exclusively in European productions.
Details of Claudia's private life became
available for the first time. It turned out
that the boy who had always been
presented as her brother was her son
from a brief relationship in London -
presumably from the time of "Upstairs
And Downstairs". It was also revealed
that she was married to Italian producer
Franco Cristaldi.
Also at this time a change was made to her publicity pictures. For the
first time she was photographed wearing glasses and no longer was she
captured in swimming suits or nightgowns. Now the public image was of
an elegant, good-natured woman who modestly enjoyed a glamorous
career. Claudia's ability to sell cinema tickets might have declined but not her power to sell
magazines. Well into the 1970s, her face adorned publications the world over.
As Claudia moved into middle-age, her movies became fewer and
she occasionally worked in television. In recent years she has also worked
in the theatre. She has managed to combine
this with a role of goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, and
advocate for the work of Luchino Visconti with whom she made four
films.
The longevity of Claudia Cardinale's career provides lessons to
other actresses. Appearing naked on the screen or in magazines is
clearly not necessary, nor is making silly faces in photographs in an
attempt to be 'provocative'. Claudia has demonstrated that the
best career strategy is to make a large number of good films that
do not date, to appear in photographs that highlight femininity
discreetly, and to continue posing for publicity photographs even
when established as a major star.
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