Paraphrasing the title of a famous Hitchcock film, it could be defined Alida Valli as “the actress who lived four times” (Cinema and Hitchcock, among other things, are perfect for introducing any speech on the Italian actress, born in Pula in 1921, with childhood spent in Como, and died in Rome in 2006). Federico Vitella notes him very well in the dense introduction to his new book «Letters to Alida Valli. The cult of a diva in fascist Italy “ (Marsilio).
The author, historian of cinema and professor at the University of Messina (to remember his recent volume “increased”), explains how Alida Maria Altenburger Freiin, Baroness von Markentein und Frauenberg, aka Alida Valli, born from Mother Pianist Istrian and from Father Trentino (professor of philosophy and music critic), lived at least four seasons of interpreter, all important. The first went from the debut in 1936 to 1944, when, despite having been an icon (in part involuntary) of the fascist cinema, she refused to move to Venice to work in the social republic of Mussolini, hiding in Rome in the house of a friend. The second, the period of Hollywood, has been going since 1947, when he turned with Gregory Peck “The Passion case” (here is Hitchcock) and then in 1949 “The third man” with Orson Welles, without ever being able to conform to the rigidity of American cinema, so much so that he will resurge the contract, with relative criminal, to the 1950s. Then the third period began, with the return to Italy and the great success in the film by Luchino Visconti “Senso” (1954), however touched by the “Montesi scandal” which forced her a little on the sidelines, and then the work with great Italian and French directors (Pontecorvo, Antonioni, Clément, Vadim etc.). Vitella then started the fourth season since 1967, with the participation in Pasolini’s film “Oedipus Re”, divided between secondary roles and camses with famous directors (also in Rai fiction) and an intense activity in the theater, until he obtained in 1997 – after many other prizes – the golden lion at the career of the Venice Film Festival.
Here I give space to a small personal memory, when I saw her in December 1994 (in Vittorio Emanuele di Messina) in “So it is (if you like)” by Pirandello, directed by Mauro Bolognini, another famous ex filmmaker. I went to the dressing room because (after noting his skill on the stage, which rare for those who have almost always done cinema) I wanted to know her: I have the indelible memory of a altered and friendly woman at the same time, even with some trace of shyness. I wrote about her on the scene, among other things: “Alida Valli presents a lady Frola discharged and shy, but at the same time she almost sports the pride of pain”. She was her person, even before the Pirandellian character, forced to work also because of economic problems that then led her to ask for the annuity of the Bacchelli law, obtained in 2003.
Vitella chooses eighty unpublished letters of admirers between 1937 and the immediate post -war period, when the freshness of Alida Valli, in some way “guided” by the regime in search of autarchic iconsexploded in films such as “a thousand lire per month”, “9 am: chemistry lesson” or other tearful as “the two orphans”, up to films declaredly used for the rhetoric of fascism as “Giarabub”. All made it very popular, in a period a period of which was born the phenomenon of divism, albeit “controlled” (well reconstructed by the author).
Alida Valli has never gladly remembered those years of his career, both for the quality of the films and for exposure in some way linked to fascism, however then he received hundreds of letters a day, of which about two thousand, referring to the entire career, have reached us, collected in the Valley fund of the Experimental Center of Cinematography, from which Vitlla has drawn. Published as they are, including errors, with the only precaution to erase surnames and addresses, the letters tell all of Italy of that time, made of hopes and fears, poverty and dignity, great dreams and mediocre realities. In the midst of so much naivety, however, a female consciousness stands out, all the more interesting if you think that then women had no right to vote, even with unthinkable saffic declarations.
All of them, from all over Italy, always ask for the autographed photo of the ordinance, but often we turn to the diva for economic help or for a recommendation, all the more if you have artistic ambitions; Some more daring (or perhaps more ridiculous) is proposed with sensual advances; There are those who dream of it often and cannot help but tell it. There are still those who affect the letter of errors and those who, on the other hand, builds accurate speeches. Oberdan from Ortona to Mare writes: “Alida Valli sweet visitors of my rosy dreams, a woman of unparalleled photogenic and artistic qualities, I must ask you a great and unforgettable courtesy: a photograph”. And the following is no different. Salvatore, from Messina, also dreams of the actress several times and adds: “How happy I would be if one day, happened to Rome by chance I could know you in person”.
Alida Valli then, as she said herself, changed “skin too many times”, but has always put a firm point. When he was offered by Pola in 2004, the “honorary citizenship of Croatian artist”, refused: “I was born and died Italian. Write it on my tomb ».