Monica Vitti, the Italian star of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film masterpieces, including his trilogy “L’avventura,” “La Notte” and “L’Eclisse,” has died. She was 90.
Vitti’s death was announced by Walter Veltroni, a former film critic and mayor of Rome, who said that her partner of many years Roberto Russo asked him to communicate the news.
“Roberto Russo, [her] partner of all these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no longer there. I do it with pain, affection, regret,” Veltroni wrote in a tweet.
In Antonioni’s 1960 art-house classic “L’avventura,” Vitti portrayed a woman searching for her best friend along with her friend’s lover after she goes missing on a boating trip. The film and her performance is a moody, detached masterpiece that would define art-house cinema worldwide in the ’60s and made her an international star, even landing Vitti a BAFTA nomination.
“L’avventura” was the first of a sort of trilogy of films from Antonioni that all starred Vitti and explored romantic disillusion and grief in the auteur’s distinct visual style, and all three have been championed by critics as some of the greatest films of their generation and of all time.
Vitti in her career would star alongside other titans of art house cinema including Marcello Mastroianni, Alain Delon and Richard Harris, to name a few.
Early in her career before teaming with Antonioni, Vitti had bit parts in TV movies and shows in Italy and found success at age 26 in “Le dritte” from director Mario Amendola. And after her long association with Antonioni, Vitti turned frequently to comedies and international films such as “The Flying Saucer” and “The Dolls.” Her first English-language film came in 1966 with “Modesty Blaise,” a James Bond-style spy spoof film.
She finally reunited with Antonioni in 1980 for “The Mystery of Oberwald,” about a man who breaks into a castle to kill a queen but faints before he can do so. In 1990 she directed a feature with Elliott Gould called “Secret Scandal” that she also starred in, but she would retire from cinema shortly thereafter.
Among some of Vitti’s other accolades, she was recognized with a career achievement award at the Venice Film Festival in 1995 in celebration of 100 years of cinema.