«Ma l’amore no, l’amore mio non può...» («But love, no. My love cannot…»)

It was the most played song on EIAR (the Italian radio broadcasting public service of that time, precursor of RAI) from 1942 to 1945, sung by young Italian women while doing their household chores. It was released by none other than the beautiful, then little-known Alida Valli, whose smiling, innocent face starred in Mario Mattioli’s film Stasera niente di nuovo (Nothing New Tonight). Yet, while the song melody echoed throughout Italy, Alida was hiding in Rome to avoid fascist reprisals. In 1942, reportedly under direct pressure from Mussolini, the regime censored both parts of the film Noi Vivi – Addio Kira (We the Living – Goodbye Kira) directed by Goffredo Alessandrini.

Alida was born in Pola on May 31, 1921, into an aristocratic family (the Von Altenburgers) in which music and culture were deeply ingrained – her mother was a pianist, and her father was a philosophy professor and music critic. Alida’s culture mixed with her unique beauty and intelligence as well as her remarkable versatility set up an extraordinary artistic foundation for her future career as an actress.

Valli debuted in 1935 in Mario Camerini’s film Il cappello a tre punte (The Three-Cornered Hat) and from there on she never stopped – she starred in fifteen films between 1935 and 1940. In 1941 Mario Soldati cast her for Luisa, an intense and dramatic role in the film Piccolo mondo antico (Old-Fashioned World) based on Antonio Fogazzaro’s novel. Thanks to her performance she won a special award at the Venice Film Festival. However, that was a sad year for Alida: right after, her boyfriend, the pilot Carlo Cugnasca, died in Libya. In 1947, again directed by Soldati, she won the Nastro d’Argento Award for the film Eugenia Grandet. At that point, Hollywood came calling, hoping to launch her as “the Italian Ingrid Bergman” – she left with her young son Carlo, born in 1945 from her marriage with composer Oscar De Mejo, cousin of her friend Leonor Fini.

Yet, Alida is not Ingrid – every comparison between the two doesn’t make any sense.

In Alida, there was something more profound, something that never failed to “captivate” the actors and directors who worked with her and for her. Something that was renewed every time she played a new character, that stood out with a fundamental distinction – like an interface, a curtain-veil between fiction and reality. Co-stars and directors immediately felt this presence, and were affected by it – yet without sacrificing even a bit of their interpretive and leadership skills. Alida was always there, even when the script didn’t involve her – fully aware of her femininity, from which she drew the strength to mentor other actors; fully aware of the importance of every role. If necessary, she was even willing to sacrifice her character in order to highlight her colleagues. And there she was, towering over the cast in such a way that when the audience, directors and even critics saw The Paradine Case they would think about her, rather than Alfred Hitchcock – as in The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed, starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles… It’s worth noting these names, Hitchcock and Welles, two cornerstones of the growing temple of the cult of cinema. Alida was a gorgeous, ubiquitous woman capable of silently taking over films, theatre stages, and TV screens – beautiful, yet mysterious and anguished. Her worn-out and suffering face perfectly fitted the role of Contessa Serpieri, the unhappy lover in Senso, by Luchino Visconti. In this film we can almost perceive an early, poignant farewell to youth: the hair, loose only during the hours of love – in the arms of Farley Granger – and then tightly tied in an austere bun; the deep wrinkle between her clear and extraordinary eyes; the bitter furrows in the corners of her mouth and the painful inner concern, visible in the set of her shoulders and in her quick stride. It was the year 1954, when the “Montesi scandal” broke. The young Wilma Montesi was found dead on the beach of Torvaianica – among the accused was Valli’s lover, the musician Piero Piccioni, son of the Italian Foreign Minister Attilio Piccioni. Alida had to stop acting for three years because the press and public opinion wouldn’t leave her alone. In 1957, Michelangelo Antonioni called her back on the screen for the film Il Grido (The Outcry) and, later that same year she starred in La grande strada azzurra (The Wide Blue Road), by Gillo Pontecorvo.

In 1961, she starred alongside Georges Wilson in Une aussi longue absence (The Long Absence) by Henri Colpi. In the Sixties, she worked for two great Italian directors: Franco Busati in Il disordine (Disorder, 1962) and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Edipo re (Oedipus Rex, 1967). She was later cast by Bernardo Bertolucci in La strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem, 1970) and Novecento (“1900”, 1976). In 1972 she appeared alongside Alain Delon in Valerio Zurlini’s La prima notte di quiete (Indian Summer, 1972). In 1977, together with Roberto Benigni, she took part in Berlinguer ti voglio bene (Berlinguer, I love you, 1977), directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. The same year Dario Argento cast her for two disquieting roles in Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980).

In 1991 she won the David Career Award for the second time – she had received her first David di Donatello Award nine years before for best supporting actress in La caduta degli angeli ribelli (The Fall of the Rebel Angels) – and in 1997 she obtained the Golden Lion Award for Career Achievement in Venice.

She had been drawn to theatre early in her life: in January 1946 she debuted at Teatro Biondo in Palermo along with Raoul Grassilli, Tino Buazzelli, Andrea Bosic in Ibsen’s play Rosmersholm.

In 1967 she acted in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, with Raf Vallone, Massimo Foschi and Lino Capolicchio, directed by Raf Vallone. In 1969 she was cast for Il Dio Kurt by Alberto Moravia, with Luigi Proietti and directed by Antonio Calenda. In 1973 she played in The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, with Carlo Simoni, Roldano Lupi and Ernesto Calindri, directed by Fantasio Piccoli.

Her last appearance on stage was in 1988 in La Città Morta by Gabriele D’Annunzio, directed by Aldo Trionfo.

Among her last movies: Il lungo silenzio (The Long Silence) in 1993 by Margarethe von Trotta and, six years later, Il dolce rumore della vita (The Sweet Sounds of Life) by Giuseppe Bertolucci.

She also often performed for television – see her unforgettable performance in Piccolo Mondo Antico, directed by Salvatore Nocita in 1989, and in 1980 L’eredità della Priora by Anton Giulio Majano.

Alida passed in Rome in 2006, in complete poverty, only supported by the Bacchelli Law pension. Bernardo Bertolucci remembered her as «a myth, a goddess».


Translated by Cecilia Chiarelli.