Actress Claudia Cardinale and director Federico Fellini, on the set of the movie ‘8 1/2’, circa 1963. (Photo by Archive Photos/Moviepix/Getty Images)
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Scanning the photographs of renowned Italian actress Claudia Cardinale with her renowned directors and fellow actors — Frederico Fellini, Burt Lancaster, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards, Alain Delon, Marcello Mastroianni, Sergio Leone, and Visconti — to name but an illustrious few, we can fairly say that, even in her twenties and thirties, the lady was every bit the measure of her older male colleagues, on set and off. Possessed of strong character, she worked with the greatest artists, she stood up to them, and she became one of them. In the cinematic narratives that Fellini, Edwards, Leone and Visconti wove around her, most of the men in the films revolved around her, not the other way around.
Which is arguably why Emmanuel Macron was moved to apply this bit of elegaic eloquence in praise of Cardinale’s work on hearing the news of her death on September 24: “We French will always carry this Italian and global star in our hearts, in the eternity of cinema.”
Conservatively speaking, in addition to being extremely beautiful, Cardinale had something like a billion-watt smile. The smile worked because it was real: She was deeply amused at being in the fictive worlds she inhabited for the camera, just as she was amused at the aftershock effects and situations those fictive worlds then caused back in her real life, as pictured above taking direction from an extremely animated Fellini on the 8½ set, or below, with co-star Burt Lancaster in Cannes, as they took a real leopard for a publicity-stunt stroll on the sand just off the Croisette at the 1963 film festival, at which Visconti’s “The Leopard” in which she and Lancaster had starred took that year’s Palme d’Or.
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 21: Actors Burt Lancaster And Claudia Cardinale With A Real Leopard In The Croisette For the Presentation Of Luchino Visconti’s Movie ‘The Leopard’ At the XVIth Cannes Film Festival, in Cannes, France, on May 21, 1963. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
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Below, she and director Visconti are given a chance by the animal’s trainer to walk the big cat for the cameras.
(GERMANY OUT) Die italienische Schauspielerin Claudia Cardinale im weißen Kostüm und der Regisseur Luchino Visconti (li.) halten am Strand von Cannes einen Geparden an der Kette. Rechts im Bild der amerikanische Schauspieler Burt Lancaster mit Zigarette. Viscontis Film “Der Leopard” (Il Gattopardo) mit den beiden Schauspielern in den Hauptrollen gewann die “Goldene Palme” bei den Filmfestspielen. . (Photo by Lefebrve/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
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Speaking of big cats, no less a pair of brilliant cinematic big cats than Peter Sellers and his handler/scriptwriter/director/accomplice Blake Edwards sensed Cardinale’s earthy, genuine amusement at life and cast her opposite David Niven, Sellers and Robert Wagner in the original Pink Panther. In this ground-breaking comedy Cardinale was, in a word, perfect — part-ingenue, part-straight man to Sellers’ manic comedy, and every bit the measure of her other two not-lightweight leading men, pictured below with the trio on set in Rome in 1963. Daunting as the banter on an Edwards/Sellers set could be — and that is damned daunting, especially with David Niven in the mix — one thing about this shoot is certain: Cardinale gave as good as she got, and graciously so.
Left to right: Claudia Cardinale, David Niven (1910 – 1983), Peter Sellers (1925 – 1980) and Robert Wagner on the set of Blake Edward’s comedy ‘The Pink Panther’, Rome, 1963. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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That knowing, quietly determined feistiness is arguably the reason that Sergio Leone cast Cardinale in 1968 in the role of the “reformed” prostitute Jill McBain in his own sod-and-genre-busting “spaghetti” epic, Once Upon A Time In The West. Pictured below in her trademark jaunty straw boater on set, Cardinale is every inch the forward-looking pioneer, a meaty role for a hearty entrepreneur.
Italian actress Claudia Cardinale as Jill McBain in the spaghetti western ‘C’era una volta il West’ (‘Once Upon a Time in the West’), directed by Sergio Leone, 1968. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
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