more beautiful than Loren, she rebelled against Hollywood-Corriere.it

The Bersagliera is gone. At the age of 95 (she was born in Subiaco, near Rome, on 4 July 1927) she died «the most beautiful woman in the world», as one of her famous successes of the 1950s was called.

In the immediate post-war period and throughout the 1950s, if there was a face that represented Italian beauty in the eyes of the world, it was precisely that of Gina Lollobrigida. More than Loren but also more than Bosè and Canale (who had preceded her in the 1947 Miss Italy contest) and more than Mangano or Pampanini. It is no coincidence that Orson Welles chose her to shoot the pilot of a series of reports from Europe for the American television chain ABC, that Portrait of Gina
(1958) which beyond the rather cumbersome presence of the director-narrator already contained a curious reflection on the fact that Italian actresses, and Lollobrigida in particular, were more loved and appreciated abroad than in Italy.

In fact, after the exploit at Miss Italy and the debut in the photo novel under the name of Diana Loris, the

Italian cinema struggles to appreciate its qualities. He makes his debut in an anonymous bit part in the film Black Eagle (1946) by Riccardo Freda (she is the “brown girl” at the party in the palace of the usurper Gino Cervi) and up to
Hammer bells
(1949) by Zampa, where she plays a prostitute who entrusts her savings to a priest, is never the protagonist. She starts getting noticed with Hearts without borders (1950, by Zampa), with Monicelli who wants it in Dog’s life (1950), semi-serious chronicle of a vaudeville troupe grappling more with hunger than with success and with Lizzani who puts her among the partisans who rebel against the Nazis with weapons in Achtung! Bandits!.

But its qualities do not escape the American Howard Hughes who calls it a Hollywood to make her sign a contract that Lollobrigida will break (she had discovered that she had to be locked up in a gilded cage), giving up a perhaps very successful career. Luckily she opens the doors for her to France where Christian-Jaque wants her for Fanfan La Tulipe (1952), in the role (pleasantly low-cut) of the gypsy Adeline who conquers Gérard Philippe with her false predictions, unable to resist her charm. Charm that is at the heart of the episode The beauty of Phryne (from Other times by Alessandro Blasetti, also ’52), where the lawyer De Sica gets her acquitted of the charge of having poisoned her husband by convincing an all-male jury that «if the law requires acquitting mentally handicapped women» why shouldn’t she do the same with an “extraordinary example of increased physique” as Lollobrigida is?

Carried in triumph by that cheering jury (and by an audience ever more captivated by her beauty but also by her contagious sympathy) and finally also appreciated for her interpretative skills, thanks to a series of dramatic and decidedly demanding roles (after The infidels by Monicelli, is the absolute protagonist in The provincial of Soldiersboth from 1953) the Lollo — as everyone calls it by now — also becomes one money star with the role of Maria called «la bersagliera» in Bread love and fantasy by Luigi Comencini (1953).

Appreciated abroad, applauded in Italy, the Lollobrigida
becomes the protagonist of numerous international productions: The treasure of Africa by John Huston (1954) opposite Humphrey Bogart (who stated that compared to Lollobrigida, Marilyn Monroe looked like Shirley Temple), The most beautiful woman in the world (’54) by Robert Z. Leonard, Trapeze (’56) by Carol Reed, The hunchback of Notre Dame
(’56) by Jean Delannoy, The law
(1959) by Jules Dassin e Solomon and the queen of Sheba (’59) by King Vidor. Without forgetting the Italian cinema where she returns in the role of the «bersagliera» in Bread love and jealousy (’54) also by Comencini (however avoiding interpreting the third episode, Bread love and…replaced by the “enemy” Loren) and above all in The Roman (also ’54) where she finds Luigi Zampa who directs her in the complex and dramatic character created by Alberto Moravia, a choice that certainly goes against the tide, even risky towards the tastes of the public, but which the actress claims with pride, demonstrating her abilities dramatic and of an artistic ambition certainly not widespread at the time. And in the meantime Time on 16 August 1954 he dedicated the cover to her while the French baptized a new brand of bras with her name (“le Lollò”).

Also in the fifties was born a son, Andrea Milko, from the Slovenian doctor Milko Skofic whom she had married in 1949 and from whom she will separate in 1971, without remarrying, while many flirtations have been attributed to her, from heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard to Fidel Castro. And as her beauty brand begins to fade, her career begins to slow down: a few major titles still in the early 1960s — Come back in September (’61) by Robert Mulligan, The beauty
of Hippolyta by Giancarlo Zagni (’62), Imperial Venus by Delannoy (’62), The Straw Woman (’64) by Basil Dearden, A beautiful November (’68) by Mauro Bolognini — and a few too many roles to exploit the popularity of yesteryear. It will still be Comencini who wants her as the Blue Fairy in his television version of Pinocchio (’72) probably the last true test of an authentic star as an actress, who built her entire career on the determination and courage of even counter-current choices – how many roles as a “lost”, exploited and defeated woman – without ever being able (or wanting) to lean on someone who could help her.

In the seventies the name of Lollobrigida
returns to occupy the chronicles for the alleged marriage with the much younger Spanish entrepreneur Javier Rigau and more recently for his son’s (failed) attempt to make it interdict. But they are “falls” – real or invented, it doesn’t matter – that it doesn’t even count to remember and that they won’t be able to obscure the proud and luminous beauty of the unforgettable “bersagliera” in everyone’s heart.