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Alida Valli (31 May, 1921 – 22 April, 2006), sometimes simply credited as Valli, was an Italian actress.

Biography

Alida Valli was born in Pola, Istria, then in Italy (now called Pula, Croatia), of Austrian and Italian extraction on her father's side and Slovenian and Istrian on her mother's side. She was christened Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger, Baroness of Marckenstein and Freuenberg.

At 15 years old she went to Rome, where she attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a school for film actors and directors. Beautiful, elegant and talented (with a sensual and melancholic glance), Alida Valli started her movie career in 1934, in Il cappello a tre punte (The Three Cornered Hat). After many roles in a large number of comedies, she could prove her dramatic talent in Piccolo mondo antico (1941), directed by Mario Soldati. During the War Years she starred in many movies, like Stasera niente di nuovo (1942) and Noi Vivi - Addio Kira! (1943), and became a movie star.

Alida Valli had a career in English language films through David Selznick, who signed her to a contract, thinking that he had found a second Ingrid Bergman. In Hollywood she played in many great movies: she was the murder suspect Maddalena Paradine in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947), and the mysterious Czech refugee wanted by the Russians in post-war Vienna in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949). But her foreign experience was not a great success.

In the early 1950s she came back to Europe, and starred in many French and Italian movies. In 1954 she had a great success in the melodramatic Senso, directed by Luchino Visconti. In that movie, set in mid-1800s Venice during the Risorgimento, she was a Venetian countess torn between nationalistic feelings and an adulterous love for an officer (played by Farley Granger) of the occupying Austrian forces. Her performance was vivid and passionate.

In 1959, she appeared in Georges Franju's horror masterpiece Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face).

From the 1960s she worked in several pictures with great directors, like Pier Paolo Pasolini (Edipo re, Oedipus Rex, 1967), Bernardo Bertolucci (La strategia del ragno, 1972; Novecento, 1976) and Dario Argento (Suspiria, 1977). Her last movie appearance was in Semana Santa (2002), with Mira Sorvino. In Italy, she was also well-known for her stage appearances in such plays as Ibsen's Rosmersholm; Pirandello's Henry IV; John Osborne's Epitaph for George Dillon; and Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge.

She died on 22 April, 2006 in Rome.

External links

• [1] Obituary in The Daily Telegraph (London), April 24, 2006
• [2] Obituary in The Guardian (London), April 24, 2006

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