Death of Lea Massari, the most French of Italian actresses
Italian actress Lea Massari, known for her roles in Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film L'avventura and Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart , has died at the age of 91, a member of the Italian government announced on Wednesday. Secretary of State for Culture Lucia Borgonzoni praised her as "an actress of irresistible magnetism and dazzling talent."
According to the Roman daily Il Messaggero , the actress, whose last appearances on the big screen date back to the last century, died on Monday in Rome and her funeral took place on Tuesday in Sutri, a town north of the Italian capital.
Italian Lea Massari, who starred in many well-known films from the 1960s and 1970s, has worked as much in her native country as in France. Comfortable in the dramatic register, she has been directed by leading directors, from Sergio Leone to Claude Sautet, from Francesco Rosi to the Spaniard Carlos Saura.
An actress with expressive and nuanced acting, she has worked with actors such as Yves Montand, Jean-Paul Belmondo , Gian Maria Volonté, Mel Ferrer and Anthony Perkins, readily accepting supporting roles if the project seemed of quality.
Anna Maria Massatani, her real name, born on June 30, 1933 in Rome, had achieved success in 1960 with L'Avventura (alongside Monica Vitti), which partly tells the story of the search for a young woman who disappeared before her marriage and which imposes an innovative vision of cinematographic art.
A year later, she starred in Sergio Leone's famous epic, The Colossus of Rhodes , and Dino Risi's A Difficult Life .
We saw her in France in 1964 in L'insoumis by Alain Cavalier, with Alain Delon, whom she would meet again in an Italian film by Valerio Zurlini, The Professor , in 1972. But it was in 1971, in Le murmur au cœur by Louis Malle, for her role as a mother having incestuous relations with her son, that she was most talked about.
Often described as "the most French of Italian stars" , Lea Massari then became very much in demand and a string of successful films followed: The Things of Life by Claude Sautet, The Hare's Race Through the Fields by René Clément, The Silent Man by Claude Pinoteau, The Son by Pierre Granier-Deferre, Allonsanfan by the Taviani brothers, Fear Over the City by Henri Verneuil, and Christ Stopped at Eboli by Francesco Rosi.
La Croıx
