From Monica to Anita

PostED ON 22.10.2022

Anita Ekberg had had enough of the paparazzi.

One evening as she returned to her villa outside Rome, she greeted them with a bow and arrow, wounding a photographer in the wrist. The archival material in Antongiulio Panizzi's documentary does justice to the star of ‘La Dolce Vita’ and her extravagant career. Aspiring to work in Hollywood after her victory in the Miss Sweden pageant, Anita Ekberg (1931-2015) was considered primarily for her advantageous physique: she was a starlet in the making to whom American movies offered only small parts as secondary characters, as in this unlikely film (William Wellman's 'Blood Alley’) where her interpretation of a courageous ‘Chinese’ mother earned her an unexpected Golden Globe for Best Actress.

Monica Bellucci in The Girl in the Foutain

When Hollywood set up shop in Rome, where co-productions were financially advantageous, Anita Ekberg followed suit and flourished in the local dolce vita, although she failed to find the roles ‘of a lifetime’. Federico Fellini, who hired her for the 1960 Palme d'Or winner featuring its legendary scene at the Trevi Fountain, increased her notoriety, but froze her forever as a sculptural diva, unable to play any other character than herself. And the tabloid press in a country still dominated by religion, where the Swedish actress' sensuality made the male population go wild, followed too closely the ups and downs of two successive failed marriages, one to an alcoholic, the other to a man who had robbed her of her property.

The singular concept imagined by the director Antongiulio Panizzi confronts yesterday's diva with today's diva: he imagines the (not actual) project of a movie in which Monica Bellucci would play Anita Ekberg. The viewpoint of today's woman is vital to understanding yesterday's career woman, and the great misunderstanding she was subjected to. For, in the course of Ekberg's interviews, there emerges the portrait of a woman who always sought her freedom, despite unfair judgement and shortcuts. Monica Bellucci, with exemplary insight, pays a belated tribute to the woman who once dipped her toes in one of the most beautiful fountains in Rome, yet remained its prisoner...

Aurélien Ferenczi

Screening:
The Girl in the Fountain by Antongiulio Panizzi (2021, 1h20)
Pathé Bellecour Sat. 22 5pm