Giulietta Masina

Born in San Giorgio di Piano, in Bologna, Giulia Anna Masina (born on February 22, 1921), was the daughter of the violinist Gaetano Masina and the teacher Angela Flavia. As a child she received a religious education at the Ursuline Sisters Lyceum and spent long periods of time in Rome with her widowed aunt. She studied at the illustrious La Sapienza University, in the Italian capital, where she graduated in Philosophy and Letters. Her acting vocation was born on her campus, which is why she joined various companies with which she performed dance and theater shows.

In 1943, she made the theater compatible with her participation as the leading actress in the radio serial “Terziglio”. At the station, Giulietta found her Romeo, as she was curiously captivated with the show’s scriptwriter, a young man who at that time was mainly dedicated to writing for the satirical magazine Marc’Aurelio, and whose name was Federico Fellini . Giulietta and Federico were married on October 30, 1943, a date in the history of Italian cinema.

Despite the love they felt for each other, the first years of marriage were quite a challenge, since times were very hard due to the hardships derived from World War II. To make matters worse, Masina suffered a miscarriage after an unfortunate fall down the stairs. On March 22, 1945, she gave birth to the couple’s only son, Pier Federico, but he died with a month of life, due to respiratory failure.

At the end of the conflict, Giulietta starred in the play “Angelica”, by Leo Ferrero, together with the immense Marcello Mastroianni . Around that time, she began to take an interest in cinema, making her debut as an extra in the Florentine part of Comarada , by Roberto Rossellini , for which she had her husband on the writing team.

He played his first role with text in another interesting neorealist film, Without Mercy (1948) , by Alberto Lattuada , with a libretto in which Fellini had also collaborated. Masina played Marcella, a willful girl with a good heart who became an inseparable friend of the protagonist after escaping with her from a boarding school.

Soon, Federico Fellini decided to make his debut as a director, first directing together with Lattuada the notable Variety Lights , where Masina stood out as the kind and adorable girlfriend of the director of a small company, who leaves her abandoned, dazzled by an ambitious and attractive aspiring actress. Giulietta Masina was soon asked by various filmmakers to give life to very similar characters, in titles such as A Maid in Distress , The Event of Via Padova or Europa ’51 , where she had a small role, once again under Rossellini’s orders.

But it was with her husband that she would achieve glory. She first appeared briefly, as Cabiria, a prostitute of noble sentiments, in the exceptional The White Sheikh , Fellini’s solo debut. Later, the director was wise enough to give Masina a character that made the most of her potential, the naive Gelsomina, from La Strada . The script was inspired by the true story of a mentally handicapped woman who got pregnant by a rude street vendor. In the film, the protagonist was a strong choleric, Zampanó ( Anthony Quinnin the best role of his extensive career), who buys his extremely poor family from Gelsomina. She ends up acting in her show as a clown, and she will stoically endure her continuous humiliation. “I think I made the film because I fell in love with the character, that little old girl, a little crazy, a little holy, with that messy, funny, unfortunate and very tender clown that I called Gelsomina and who still manages to make me cry with melancholy when I hear his trumpet sound”, recalled Fellini. The inimitable Nino Rota provided the tune of circus tones. The film won the Oscar for best foreign film, made Fellini a reference point in world cinema, and Masina an internationally recognizable star.Charles Chaplin , with some reason.

She was also the innocent in a world of miserable Iris, wife of Picasso ( Richard Basehart ), a middling painter who is forced to collaborate with an unscrupulous con man ( Broderick Crawford ) in Souls Without a Conscience . Masina’s contribution on this occasion is brief, but she is capable of expressing with her gaze like no one else that she is in love with her husband, even though he has become a criminal.

Next, Masina and Fellini shot one of the pinnacles of 1950s European cinema, Las noches de Cabiria , where the actress reprises the prostitute who had appeared briefly in The White Sheikh . She surpasses herself as an innocent prostitute who, despite the fact that she does not stop taking sticks, she keeps the smile and the dream of finding the love of her life. She has rarely seen an interpreter on screen capable of expressing the entire complex background of her character with a simple look. Once again Fellini won the Oscar for the foreign-language film.

Giulietta also did memorable work in 1965 ‘s Giulietta of Spirits , where she was a housewife jaded by her husband’s lack of interest. As she suspects that he has a lover, she will look for answers in spiritualist meetings.

Twenty years later, in the mid-’80s, Fellini returned to his muse for the last time in the melancholic, nostalgic, and endearing Ginger and Fred . Marcello Mastroianni and the actress play a couple of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers impersonators , who many years after they achieved popularity, reunite for a television special.

Without her husband as a director, although she did as a scriptwriter, Giulietta also shone as the protagonist of Fortunella , by Eduardo De Filippo , where her character goes to jail for the man she loves, a garbage collector played by Alberto Sordi , but he leaves with other woman. She also has an interest in her Inferno en la ciudad , by Roberto Castellani, where she plays a servant turned criminal, along with Anna Magnani . She even dabbled in Hollywood, as one of Countess Aurelia’s (Katharine Hepburn) anachronistic friends in La Madre de Chaillot , by John Huston and Bryan Forbes .

There are not a few filmmakers who would have wanted to work with her, but she used to turn down the roles for fear of failing. “I regret not having chosen some projects,” recalled the actress. “After La strada , Michelangelo Antonioni offered me a film with a completely different character, that of La noche , made by Monica Vitti . After the success I had with Gelsomina in La strada , so ‘clownesque’, facing a completely different one –because it was about a marital crisis– it gave me a certain fear. I said no and I think I was wrong. I also really regret not having filmed Divorce Italian Style , by Pietro Germi “.

Even the Spanish Luis García Berlanga caressed a project with her. “It also hurts me to have rejected a role when I traveled to Spain for the first time, for the premiere of Las noches de Cabiria . Federico and I met Berlanga, who we liked very much. Later, I had an interview with a journalist who asked me which one He was the character in Spanish literature that I would have liked to play. Trying to be witty, I said that he was the protagonist of “El lazarillo de Tormes”. Three days later Berlanga phoned me, offering me to play Lazarillo and I, seized with enthusiasm, said that Very good. The day before the contract was signed, I panicked so much that I resigned. It was a big mistake.”

Giulietta also had great success on television, with the series Eleonora and Camilla , which were a hit especially in Italy. And she had her own sentimental consultation on the radio, entitled “Letters to Giulietta Masina”, which gave rise to a compilation book of the listeners’ missives. The last work of hers in her cinema was the correct Today, perhaps… , by Jean-Louis Bertuccelli , where she was a grandmother who reunited her family for the last time in a property that she had just sold.

Just one day after her golden wedding anniversary, Giulietta had to say goodbye to her dear husband, Federico Fellini, who passed away on October 31, 1993. She only survived him for five months, as she left this world as a result of cancer on March 23, 1994. Both were buried together, also with the remains of their deceased baby, in Rimini, the director’s hometown. Today, a bronze monument next to the grave commemorates how much Italian cinema owes to the exceptional couple.