fiction.wikisort.org - Actor

Alida Maria Laura, Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg (31 May 1921 – 22 April 2006), better known by her stage name Alida Valli (or simply Valli), was an Italian actress who appeared in more than 100 films in a 70-year career, spanning from the 1930s to the early 2000s. She was one of the biggest stars of Italian film during the Fascist era, once being coined "the most beautiful woman in the world" by Benito Mussolini, but managed to find continued international success post-World War II.[1][2] According to Frédéric Mitterrand, Valli was the only actress in Europe to equal Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo.

Alida Valli
Valli in 1947
Born	Alida Maria Laura, Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg (1921-05-31)31 May 1921 Pola, Italy (now Croatia)
Died	22 April 2006(2006-04-22) (aged 84) Rome, Italy
Other names	Valli
Occupation	Actress, Singer
Years active	1936–2002
Spouse(s)	Oscar de Mejo ​ ​ (m. 1944; div. 1952)​ Giancarlo Zagni (m. 196?; div. 1970)
Children	2, including Carlo De Mejo
Signature

Valli worked with many significant directors both in Italy and abroad, including Alfred Hitchcock (The Paradine Case; 1947), Carol Reed (The Third Man; 1949), Luchino Visconti (Senso; 1954), Michelangelo Antonioni (Il Grido; 1957), Georges Franju (Eyes Without a Face; 1960), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Oedipus Rex; 1967), Mario Bava (Lisa and the Devil; 1972), Bernardo Bertolucci (1900, 1976; La Luna; 1979), and Dario Argento (Suspiria; 1977). Within her lifetime, Valli was invested a Knight of the Italian Republic, and received the Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Film Festival for her contributions to cinema.

Early life

Valli was born in Pola, Istria, Italy (today Pula, Croatia; until 1918 it had formed part of Austria-Hungary). She was of Austrian, Slovenian and Italian descent, although "she was never considered to be anything other than Italian."[3] Her paternal grandfather was the Baron Luigi Altenburger (also: Altempurger), an Austrian-Italian from Trento, a descendant of the Counts d'Arco; her paternal grandmother was Elisa Tomasi from Trento, a cousin of the Roman senator Ettore Tolomei. Valli's mother, Silvia Oberecker Della Martina, born in Pola, was a "culturally sophisticated" housewife of half Slovene and half Italian descent.[4][3] Valli's mother was the daughter of Felix Oberecker (also: Obrekar) from Laibach, Austria (now Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Virginia Della Martina from Pola, Istria (then part of Austria). Valli's maternal granduncle, Rodolfo, was a close friend of Gabriele D'Annunzio. Valli was multi-lingual. She grew up speaking Slovene, Italian, and German and was fluent as well in Serbo-Croatian, French, and English. In European films with international casts she would routinely film her dialogue in the language of the actors opposite her and dub herself (usually in Italian) for the soundtrack.

Valli was christened Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg. During her lifetime she also gained the titles Dr.h.c. of the III. University of Rome, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of France and Knight of the Italian Republic.

Career

Intellectually gifted, at fifteen Valli travelled to Rome, where she attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the oldest school for film actors and directors in Western Europe and still one of the most prestigious. At that time, she lived with her uncle Ettore Tolomei. Valli started her movie career in 1934, in Il cappello a tre punte (The Three Cornered Hat) during the so-called Telefoni Bianchi cinema era. Her first big success came with the movie Mille lire al mese (1939). After many roles in a large number of comedies, she earned her success as a dramatic actress in Piccolo mondo antico (1941), directed by Mario Soldati, for which she won a special Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival. During the Second World War, she starred in many movies, including Stasera niente di nuovo (1942) (whose song "Ma l'amore no" became the leitmotif of the Italian forties) and the diptych Noi Vivi / Addio Kira! (1943) (based on Ayn Rand's novel We the Living). These latter two movies were nearly censored by the Italian government under Benito Mussolini, but they were finally permitted because the novel upon which they were based was anti-Soviet. The films were successful, and the public easily realized that they were as much against fascism as communism. After several weeks, however, the films were pulled from theaters as the German and Italian governments, which abhorred communism, found out the story also carried an anti-fascist message.

By her early 20s, already widely regarded as the "most beautiful woman in the World", Valli had a career in English-language films through David Selznick, who signed her to a contract, thinking that he had found a second Ingrid Bergman. In Hollywood, she performed in great successes and memorable movies, in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947) with Gregory Peck; with Fred MacMurray and Frank Sinatra (in his first non-musical performance), in The Miracle of the Bells (1948); alongside Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), regarded as one of the best movies ever made worldwide and the British Film Institute selection as the greatest British film of all time; and again with Cotten in Walk Softly, Stranger (1950). Through these and other movies she gained international renown, often credited with the cursive word Valli, which would become her characteristic 'wordmark' in America "to make her sound even more exotic."[5] In 1951, she complained that she disliked the single-name reference. "I feel silly going around with only one name," she said. "People get me mixed up with Rudy Vallée."[5] The actress could not tolerate the strict rules of Selznick, who imposed total control on his actors, and managed to gain her contract's rescission, though with the payment of a high penalty.[6]

She returned to Europe in the early 1950s and starred in many French and Italian films. In 1954, she had great success in the melodrama Senso, directed by Luchino Visconti. In that film, set in mid-19th-century Venice during the Risorgimento, she played a Venetian countess torn between patriotic ideals and an adulterous love for an officer (played by Farley Granger) of the occupying Austrian forces.

In 1956, Valli decided to stop making movies, concentrating instead on the stage. She was in charge of a company that produced Broadway plays in Italy.[7]

She appeared in Georges Franju's horror film Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans visage, 1959) (Eyes Without a Face, 1959) with Pierre Brasseur. From the 1960s, she worked in several pictures with prominent directors, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini's Edipo re (Oedipus Rex), 1967; Bernardo Bertolucci's La strategia del ragno, 1972; Novecento, 1976, and Dario Argento's Suspiria, 1977. Her final movie role was in Semana Santa (2002), with Mira Sorvino. In Italy, she was also well known for her stage appearances in such plays as Ibsen's Rosmersholm; Pirandello's Henry IV; John Osborne's Epitaph for George Dillon; and Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. At the 54th Venice International Film Festival in 1997 Alida Valli obtained the Golden Lion award for her career.

Personal life

Her teenage love, Carlo Cugnasca, was a famous Italian acrobatic pilot. He served as a fighter pilot with the Regia Aeronautica and was killed during a mission over British-held Tobruk on 14 April 1941.[8][9]

Valli married Oscar de Mejo in 1943 and filed for divorce from him in 1949, but they reconciled.[10] They had two sons together before their marriage ended in divorce in 1952 and she returned to Italy.[11][12] She married Italian film director Giancarlo Zagni in the early 1960s, divorcing in 1970.[12]

Valli's movie career suffered in 1953 from a scandal surrounding the death of Wilma Montesi, whose body was found on a public beach near Ostia. Prolonged investigations resulted, involving allegations of drug and sex orgies in Roman society. Among the accused – all of whom were acquitted, leaving the case unsolved – was Valli's lover, jazz musician Piero Piccioni (son of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs).[13]

Death

Valli's death at her home on 22 April 2006 was announced by the office of the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni.

The critic David Shipman wrote in his book The Great Movie Stars: The International Years, that on the basis of her best-known films before 1950, she might seem to be "one of Hollywood's least successful continental imports", but a viewer of "any two or three of the films she has made since then ... will probably regard her as one of the half-dozen best actresses in the world".[14] The French critic Frédéric Mitterrand wrote: "[She] was the only actress in Europe to equal Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo".

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1935	The Three-Cornered Hat		Uncredited
1936	The Two Sergeants	Una commessa dell'emporio 'Au Bon Marché'	as Alida Altenburger
1937	It Was I!	Lauretta
	The Ferocious Saladin	Dora Florida / La bella Sulamita
1938	A Lady Did It	Maria Sardo
	L'amor mio non muore!	Maria D'Alba
	The House of Shame	La ragazza
1939	A Thousand Lire a Month	Magda
	Unjustified Absence	Vera Fabbri
	The Castle Ball	Greta Larsen
1940	Manon Lescaut	Manon Lescaut
	Red Tavern	Susanna Sormani
	The Last Enemy	A friend of Anna
	Beyond Love	Vanina Vanini
	The First Woman Who Passes	Gabrielle de Vervins
1941	Piccolo mondo antico	Luisa Rigey Maironi
	Light in the Darkness	Marina Ferri
	Schoolgirl Diary	Anna Campolmi
	The Secret Lover	Renata Croci
1942	We the Living	Kira Argounova
	Invisible Chains	Elena Silvagni
	The Two Orphans	Enrichetta
	Addio Kira	Kira Argounova
	Stasera niente di nuovo	Maria
1943	I pagliacci	Giulia
	T'amerò sempre	Adriana
	Apparizione	Andreina
1944	The Za-Bum Circus		segments "Gelosia", "Il postino" and "Galop finale al circo"
1945	Il canto della vita	Patrizia Martini
	Life Begins Anew	Giovanna
1946	Eugenia Grandet	Eugenia Grandet
1947	The Paradine Case	Maddalena Anna Paradine
1948	The Miracle of the Bells	Olga
1949	The Third Man	Anna Schmidt
1950	The White Tower	Carla Alton
	Walk Softly, Stranger	Elaine Corelli
1951	Les Miracles n'ont lieu qu'une fois	Claudia
	Last Meeting	Lina Castelli
1953	Lovers of Toledo	Doña Inés de Arévalo Blas
	The World Condemns Them	Renata Giustini
	We, the Women	Alida	Segment: "Alida Valli"
1954	The Stranger's Hand	Roberta Gleukovitch
	Senso	La contessa Livia Serpieri
1957	Il Grido	Irma
	This Angry Age	Claude
	The Wide Blue Road	Rosetta
1958	The Night Heaven Fell	Florentine
	L'amore più bello	Carolina
1959	Signé Arsène Lupin	Aurélia Valéano
1960	Treno di Natale
	Eyes Without a Face	Louise
	Dialogue with the Carmelites	Mère Thérèse de Saint-Augustin
	The Gigolo	Agathe
	Il peccato degli anni verdi	Elena's mother
1961	The Long Absence	Thérèse Langlois
	The Happy Thieves	Duchess Blanca
	La fille du torrent	Livia Boissière
1962	Disorder	Carlo's Mother
	Al otro lado de la ciudad
	Homage at Siesta Time	Constance Fischer
1963	A la salida
	Ophelia	Claudia Lesurf
	The Castilian	Reina Teresa
	The Paper Man	La Italiana
	Una cara para escapar
1964	L'Autre Femme	Annabel
1965	Black Humor	The Widow	segment: "La vedova"
1967	Edipo re	Merope
1970	The Mushroom	Linda Benson
	La strategia del ragno	Draifa
1972	Eye in the Labyrinth	Gerda
	La prima notte di quiete	Marcella Abati - Vanina's mother
1973	Lisa and the Devil	Countess
	Diario di un italiano	Olga
1974	Lola	Louise
	Tender Dracula	Héloïse
	The Antichrist	Irene
1975	La Chair de l'orchidée	La folle de la gare
	Cher Victor	Anne
	Il caso Raoul	Elsa
1976	Novecento	Signora Pioppi
	Le jeu du solitaire	Germaine
	The Cassandra Crossing	Nanny
1977	Suspiria	Miss Tanner
	Un cuore semplice	Mrs. Obin
	Berlinguer, I Love You	Mrs. Cioni
1978	Porco mondo	Teresina
	The Perfect Crime	Lady Clementine De Revere
1979	Zoo zéro	Yvonne, la mère
	Killer Nun	Mother Superior
	La luna	Giuseppe's Mother
	Licanthropus, il figlio della notte
1980	Inferno	Carol, the caretaker
	Aquella casa en las afueras	Isabel
	Puppenspiel mit toten Augen
1981	Peacetime in Paris
	The Fall of the Rebel Angels	Bettina
1982	Aspern	Juliana Bartes
	Sogni mostruosamente proibiti	Marina's mother
1985	Secrets Secrets	Gina
1987	Le jupon rouge	Bacha
1988	À notre regrettable époux	Catarina
1991	La bocca	Countess Bianca Rospigliosi
	The Party's Over	Clara
1993	The Long Silence	Carla's Mother
	Bugie rosse	Caterina, Andrea's mother
1995	A Month by the Lake	Signora Fascioli
1996	Fotogrammi mortali	Countess Alessandra Mirafiori
1999	Il dolce rumore della vita	Sofia's grandmother
2000	Vino santo	Sveva
2001	Probably Love	Alida Valli
2002	Semana santa	Doña Catalina	Final film role

Television

• I Figli di Medea (1959) as Medea / Alida Valli
• Il caso Mauritius (1961)
• Doughboy (episode of Combat!, 1963) as Marie
• Desencuentro (series, 1964)
• Rome Will Never Leave You, three episodes of Dr. Kildare (1964) as Luisa Brabante
• Il consigliere imperiale (1974)
• Les grandes conjurations: Le tumulte d'Amboise (1978)
• L'altro Simenon (series, 1979)
• L'eredità della priora (serial, 1980) as Priora
• Dramma d'amore (serial, 1983)
• Piccolo mondo antico (serial, 1989) as La marchesa Maironi
• Una vita in gioco 2 (serial, 1992)
• Delitti privati (1992) as Matilde Pierboni

Theatre

• La casa dei Rosmer (1956) Henrik Ibsen (aka Rosmersholm)
• L'uomo, la bestia e la virtù (1956), Luigi Pirandello
• Gli innocenti (1956), William Archibald
• Enrico IV (1958), Luigi Pirandello
• Il sole e la luna (1965), Guglielmo Biraghi
• Epitaffo per George Dillon (1966), John Osborne and Anthony Creighton (Epitaph for George Dillon)
• Uno sguardo dal ponte (1967), Arthur Miller (A View from the Bridge)
• La bambolona (1968), Raf Vallone
• Il dio Kurt (1969), Alberto Moravia
• I parenti terribili (1969), Jean Cocteau (Les parents terribles)
• LSD-Lei, scusi, divorzierebbe? (1970), Carlo Maria Pensa
• Uno sporco egoista (1971), Francois Dorin
• Lulu (Lo spirito della terra – Il vaso di Pandora) (1972), Frank Wedekind (Lulu [Erdgeist-Die Büchse der Pandora])
• Le massacre à Paris (1972), Christopher Marlowe (The Massacre at Paris)
• Il Gabbiano (1973), Anton Cechov
• L'uomo che incontrò de stesso (1981), Luigi Antonelli
• La Venexiana (1981), Anonimo del Cinquecento
• La fiaccola sotto il moggio (1981), Gabriele d'Annunzio
• Ekaterina Ivanovna (1983), Leonid Andreev
• Il malinteso (1984), Albert Camus (Le malentendu)
• Romeo e Giulietta (1985), William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
• A porte chiuse, da Sartre a Mishima (1986), di Jean-Paul Sartre e Yukio Mishima (Huis clos – Aoi – Hanjo)
• La città morta (1988), Gabriele D'Annunzio
• La nave (1988), Gabriele D'Annunzio
• I paraventi (1990), Jean Genet (Les paravents)
• Improvvisamente l'estate scorsa (1991), Tennessee Williams (Suddenly Last Summer)
• Più grandiose dimore (1993), Eugene O'Neill
• Così è (se vi pare) (1994), Luigi Pirandello
• Questa sera si recita a soggetto (1995), Luigi Pirandello

Radio appearances

Year	Program	Episode/source
1948	Lux Radio Theatre	The Miracle of the Bells[15]

Lux Radio Theatre broadcast "The Paradine Case" in a radio adaptation of the film on 9 May 1949, starring Joseph Cotten, with Alida Valli and Louis Jourdan reprising their roles.

References

This article needs additional citations for verification. (March 2015)

External links

• Alida Valli webpage
• film noir
• Istria on the Internet, Prominent Istrians
• Alida Valli at IMDb
• Alida Valli at the TCM Movie Database
• Alida Valli at Reel Classics
• Obituary in The Telegraph. April 24, 2006.
• Obituary in New York Times. April 25, 2006.
• André Soares (7 June 2006). "Alida Valli (1921–2006)". Alternative Film Guide. Retrieved 2007-03-09.
• "Alida Valli". filmreference.com. Archived from the original on 9 May 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
• Photographs of Alida Valli
• Alida Valli at Find a Grave

На других языках

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[de] Alida Valli

Alida Valli, eigentlich Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein und Frauenberg (* 31. Mai 1921 in Pola, Istrien, damals Italien; † 22. April 2006 in Rom), war eine italienische Schauspielerin altösterreichischer Herkunft. Sie war in den 1940er und 1950er Jahren mit ihren Rollen in Der Fall Paradin (1947), Der dritte Mann (1949), Sehnsucht (1954) und Augen ohne Gesicht (1960) ein internationaler Filmstar.

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- [en] Alida Valli

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[es] Alida Valli

Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger, más conocida como Alida Valli (Pula, Reino de Italia, hoy Croacia, 31 de mayo de 1921 - Roma, Italia, 22 de abril de 2006) fue una actriz de cine italiana. Conocida por su participación en la película El tercer hombre (1949), de Carol Reed, fue condecorada con los títulos de Doctora Honoris Causa por la Universidad de Roma La Sapienza, Caballero de las Artes de Francia y Caballero (Cavaliere) de la República Italiana.

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[ru] Валли, Алида

Алида Валли (итал. Alida Valli, наст. имя баронесса Алида Мария Лаура Альтенбургер фон Маркенштайн-Фрауэнберг, нем. Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein u. Frauenberg; 31 мая 1921 (1921-05-31) — 22 апреля 2006) — итальянская актриса.

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