AGI – The world of cinema and entertainment mourns the loss of Sandra Milo, who passed away today at the age of 90. Real name Salvatrice Elena Greco, Born on March 11, 1933 in Tunis, like her most famous colleague and traveling companion Claudia Cardinale in a film that made cinema history, “8 1/2”, the image of a distracted woman remains indelibly in the collective memory. beautiful, with a slightly sullen and piercing laugh that wanders across the carpet of celluloid stills from Federico Fellini's most important, award-winning and perhaps most popular film. Perhaps the younger generation – unfortunately the generation over 35 to 40 – don't immediately associate the name Sandra Milo with the femme fatale from “8 1/2”. But she was (and always will be) Carla, the lover of the director Guido Anselmi, aka Marcello Mastroianni (on the screen), aka Federico Fellini (in reality), who, like Mary Pickford, became the “friend” of 1930s America in Hollywood Landmark and living symbol of the Italian lover of the 1960s.
A exuberant womanincreased, was the protagonist of Italian (and therefore worldwide) cinema for a decade, initially with Rossellini (“General Della Rovere” from 1959) and Antonio Pietrangeli (“Adua and her companions” from 1960 and “Ghosts in Rome” from 1961) . , then with Fellini, who wantedSandrocchia' – that's what he called her – in '8 1/2' (1963) and then in 'Giulietta degli Spiriti' (1965), where in a kind of perverse game typical of this alpha male, he sees himself as Sultan (see 'The “City of Women”) placed his wife and his lover side by side, satisfied his male ego and gave the world another masterpiece. And the image of the beautiful and seemingly lost Sandra Milo remains on everyone's lips.
An exuberant woman who played a goose and experienced many important stories beyond Fellini. His love life was actually very eventful: At 15, she was married to the Marquis Cesare Rodighiero, with whom she had a son who died at birth and from whom she divorced after 21 days (a marriage later annulled by Saint Rota); He was then linked to the Greek producer for 11 years Moris Ergas who made her debut with Rossellini and Pietrangeli, from which Deborah, a television journalist, was born; then a later association with Ottavio De Lollis with the birth of Ciro and then Azzurra.
He has also led many professional lives, a testament to thisBrilliant intelligence and great self-irony and stubbornness. His professional career was marked by turning away from the cinema at the end of the golden decade of the 1960s, only to return to the stage at the end of the following decade in a profoundly changed political and cultural context. First on radio and then on television, she managed to reassert herself as an icon (many call her “trash”) and radicalize her presence in an effective and lasting way. In fact, in 1973 she would have had the opportunity to associate her name with another cult film (and another character): Fellini would have wanted her in “Amarcord” in the role of Gradisca (later played by Valentina Cortese), but if so if her ex-partner De Lollis accepted that she would have been deprived of custody of their two children. He gave up on Fellini's film, but still got back to work, first on the radio (“Il Mattiniere” 1975) and then in 1977, with the help of his friend Maurizio Costanzo, on television, where he appeared as a guest on the first Italian talk show “Goodness them” on one of the evenings that she described as one of the most important of her life.
Then came the years in which he was with “mixer' with Gianni Minoli and hosted 'Piccoli Fans' on Rai 2, the socialist public television channel. Sandra Milo inadvertently went down in the history of Italian television, also because of a prank call (definitely in bad taste) carried out against her: on January 8, 1990, during the afternoon program “Love is a wonderful thing” that she appeared on Rai 2 moderated In the 1989/90 season, a woman's voice informed her live that her son Ciro was hospitalized in serious condition after a traffic accident. Milo couldn't hold back his tears and frantically ran out of the study, screaming his son's name. The screams of the desperate Sandra Milo were picked up on programs such as “Blob”, “Striscia la NOTEIA” and “Target”, making her so popular that she was quoted in the song “The Strange Family” by Giorgio Gaber and Enzo Jannacci, recorded 1991.
It later inspired the title of a satirical program on Italia 1: “Ciro, the son of Target”. Since the 1960s she was close to the Italian Socialist Party (she was very close to Pietro Nenni), in the 1980s she also had a very strong sentimental attachment to Bettino Craxi, then leader of the PSI. He wrote about his life in contact with the political world, in the system that was to be swept away by Tangentopoli, in a partly autobiographical book published in 1993 by the Neapolitan Pironti publishing house “Amanti”, in which he clearly explains the background and staged by several decades of Italian public life and reconstructs the map of the places and situations in which the protagonists of the First Republic moved, from political leaders to courtiers, from diggers and compliant secretaries to starlets and pimps.
“I wanted to talk about an Italy of corruption, of corrupt people and the corrupt, precisely because I too played the double role, so to speak,” admits the actress in the book, in which she claims that seduction is a double-edged sword, because by taking his Expressing strength, he actually brought charges against her. Always a woman who goes against the grain, in one of the last editions of the Rome Film Festival before the pandemic, in conversation with AGI, she expressed her opinion on the #MeToo movement and the fight against harassment in the world of entertainment. “It's certainly nothing new for men to harass women,” he said, “it happens in the movie theater as in any other work environment. But a woman can always say no. If she doesn't do it often, it's because she likes it, there's a little vanity. Then, in a controversial remark, she added: “I don't understand those who say they were harassed by a producer and then make three films about it: they should have reported him immediately and never looked at him again, stopped working with him .” ”
Special programming
The cinema and television series directorate of Rai pays homage to her with a packed program that begins this afternoon at 3.25 p.m. on Rai 3 with “Frenesia dell'estate”, a comedy by Luigi Zampa from 1964 in which the actress plays the female lead Vittorio Gassmann and Amedeo Nazzari. At 7 p.m. on Rai 2 will be broadcast “Free – Liberi” from 2020 by Fabrizio Maria Cortese, one of the most recent works in which Milo was the protagonist. At 9.10 p.m. in the Rai film “Il Generale Della Rovere” by Roberto Rossellini, Golden Lion in Venice in 1959, and at 11.35 p.m. on the same channel “Salvatrice – Sandra Milo tells her story”, a documentary from 2019 in which Giorgia Wurth draws a portrait of the actress based on a long interview and many moments between actuality and memory. At the end of the memorial day, Rai 2 will broadcast “Grog” from 1982 by Francesco Laudadio, who won the David di Donatello for his directorial debut in 1983 with this film.
The condolences
Since the news of his death, many personalities and institutions have dedicated a thought to “Sandrocchia”.
“Hello Sandra, you will forever remain an icon of our cinema and one of the most beloved Italian artists.” Said the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, is a tribute on X to Sandra Milo, who died at the age of 90. A black and white photo of the actress is attached to the post.
The Ministry of Culture in a post on
Hello Sandra, beloved actress, diva of cinema and television. As a muse and inspiration for great artists and directors, she has forever shaped the history of the seventh art. pic.twitter.com/2DN2RaJGd8
— Ministry of Culture (@MiC_Italia) January 29, 2024
“Sandra Milo: vital energy and a living monument to the glory years of Italian cinema, from Sordi to the long history with Fellini. A woman who never gave up on life and the relationship with the audience in front of the screens. This is what it says in the documentary by D'Agostino and Giusti. We will remember her with joy when she accepts the David for Lifetime Achievement that we awarded her two years ago.” Said the President of Anica (National Association of Audiovisual and Digital Cinematographic Industries) Francesco Rutelli.
“Today's cinema mourns the loss of an unforgettable protagonist of cinema, non-conformist and icon of Italian comedy. Directed by masters such as Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Gabriele Salvatores and Pupi Avati, she marked a long era of Italian cinema with her liveliness and originality Sandra Milo told us about the thousand worlds of femininity and there is still a part of her in it today the women of Italian cinema. Cinecitta I will remember her as one of the faces that brought Italian cinema to the world,” said Chiara Sbarigia, President of Cinecittà.