Otto e mezzo (8½). 1963. Italy. Directed by Federico Fellini. Screenplay by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, Brunello Rondi. With Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Claudia Cardinale. Restored by Cinecittà, Cineteca di Bologna and Cineteca Nazionale - CSC in collaboration with Mediaset RTI . In Italian; English subtitles. Restored by Cinecittà, Cineteca di Bologna and Cineteca Nazionale - CSC in collaboration with Mediaset RTI. Courtesy Janus Films. 138 min.
Claudia Cardinale secured her place in movie history by starring in two of the greatest films of all time, The Leopard and 8½, filming both in the same year with directors who could not have been more temperamentally or stylistically different. Such was her virtuosity as she moved between Luchino Visconti’s set (serious, precise, reverential) and Fellini’s (clamorous, carnivalesque, oneiric) that, in the end, she gave unforgettable yet utterly distinct performances on each. Recalling her collaboration with Fellini, and with Marcello Mastroianni in his imaginatively disguised role as Fellini’s surrogate—a filmmaker confronting his own mortality after a lifetime of women and art—Cardinale would observe that “Fellini told me I was his muse, that I gave him inspiration. What I say in the movie, it’s all improvisation. And it was Federico who was talking to me in those scenes. Marcello was sitting next to him, repeating what he said.”
Un Cardinale donna. 2023. France. Directed by Manuel Maria Perrone. In Italian; English subtitles. 10 min.
Produced on the occasion of Claudia Cardinale's career retrospective, co-organized by MoMA and Cinecittà, this episodic short film by Manuel Maria Perrone celebrates the legendary actress by interweaving images past and present.