The Irresistible Glamour of Monica Vitti
It's one of the most indelible scenes in all of Italian cinema. In Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960), the actress Monica Vitti walks pensively down the streets of Noto, Sicily, as more and more men gaze in her direction. Like much of the rest of the film—about a woman who goes missing on a remote Italian island—the moment has been endlessly scrutinized for its striking imagery and subtext. The White Lotus even replicated it, shot for shot, during Season 2, with Aubrey Plaza standing in for Vitti—a performer widely regarded in her native country as the 'Queen of Italian Cinema.'
'She was the type of artist and icon that comes once in a lifetime,' her nephew Giorgio Ceciarelli tells Vogue of Vitti, who died at the age of 90 in 2022. 'It's a proud legacy we always took for granted, but as we grew up, we realized she's a national treasure.'
Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960.
Throughout her multi-decade career, Vitti staked a claim as one of Italy's most luminous and beloved cinematic exports, alongside the likes of Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Antonioni, and Federico Fellini—all of whom shot to global prominence in the 1950s. Born in Rome in 1931, Vitti was both a striking beauty and a true artist. She became Antonioni's muse (and, for a time, his lover), also working with him on such atmospheric classics as 1961's La Notte, with Mastroianni and the French actress Jeanne Moreau, and 1964's Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert).
The range of her talent is currently on display in Monica Vitti: La Modernista (June 6–19), a 14-film series at Film at Lincoln Center co-organized with the storied Italian film house Cinecittà. It marks Vitti's first-ever American retrospective.
'She transcends time,' says Manuela Cacciamani, CEO of Cinecittà. 'She is truly modern because you can't pin her down to a fixed, predictable—even if beautiful—type; Vitti instead represents change. And this applies not just to her films, but to her way of being a woman. In this sense, she embodied the changes of an entire country and remains relevant across genres and decades.'
Vitti's legacy as a fashion icon may be just as robust as her impact on cinema. A 1966 profile in American Vogue described her much-mimicked, intriguingly 'international' mien, characterized by a 'definite, wiry quality which could be American, but a pink-and-white complexion and clear amber eyes which look as though English mists and Devonshire cream have been at work. On the other hand, that artfully disarranged hair'—a point of reference even now—'and a smart Italian cachet could only come out of post–World War II Rome.'
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Fox News
35 minutes ago
- Fox News
Inside Lauren Sánchez's A-list female circle as she prepares to wed billionaire Jeff Bezos
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New York Times
5 hours ago
- New York Times
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With or without a heartbreaking personal story, football's capacity to stir the emotions is extraordinary. Carrying our hopes and fears, the game plays with our feelings in a way that few things in life can and, at the same time, provides a form of sanctuary. The video features crying. A lot of crying. It lasts for one minute and 24 seconds and was filmed at Wembley Stadium on the day of the FA Cup final. The referee's whistle had just blown after 10 minutes of stoppage time and Crystal Palace, after 164 years of waiting, had beaten Manchester City 1-0 to finally win the first major trophy in their history. Joao Castelo-Branco, ESPN Brazil's correspondent in the UK, had decided to leave his seat in the press box moments earlier to try to get some footage of the Palace supporters. To describe what follows as scenes of celebration doesn't come close. It's so much more than that. It's raw. It's magical. It's moving. It's genuinely heart-warming. 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'That couple' feature at the start of the footage, when a woman overcome with emotion falls into the arms of a man who looks like he has been following Palace for more years than he cares to remember. His eyes are filled with tears. Behind them, another supporter of a similar age stands alone with his arms aloft, totally overwhelmed by the moment. Some fans have their hands over their mouths in disbelief, almost frozen. Others are wiping away tears with their scarves. One man is hunched over, face down and sobbing. Another supporter — his father, perhaps — wraps his arms around him and the two of them end up singing together. People of all ages are crying everywhere you look — crying and smiling. 'It's beautiful,' Castelo-Branco adds. 'And a really special thing about it is that not many fans were filming (on their phones). People were really living that moment.' True raw emotion, fans really living the moment. As I joined in the stands to film this video, there were hardly any fans with their phones out. Grown men and women hugging and crying. Amazing atmosphere. #CrystalPalace beautiful ⚽️#Wembley #FACup — Joao Castelo-Branco (@j_castelobranco) May 18, 2025 Following Palace's triumph at Wembley, there were similar scenes a few days later in Bilbao, where Tottenham Hotspur beat Manchester United to win the Europa League. A couple of months earlier, it was Newcastle United's turn after they defeated Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final. But it doesn't have to be a long wait for a trophy that tips people over the edge at a football match. Gary Pickles remembers being in the away end at Brighton in 2019, when Manchester City were on the verge of winning their fourth Premier League title in eight seasons, holding up his phone, filming the fans all around him, and suddenly being stopped in his tracks. 'I noticed my son, Niall, had his hands on his head and tears were streaming down his face. We were winning the league. But he's really sobbing. I was like, 'What's up?' Whatever it was just triggered him. He was about 25 — it's not like a young kid doing it.' Pickles, who has been following Manchester City since the 1970s, makes an interesting point when we discuss whether his son's behaviour at Brighton is not as unusual as it would have been in the past. 'That video was just before Covid,' he says. 'But I think certainly since Covid, when there was a lot of talk about mental health issues, it's helped men to speak about that and maybe show their emotions.' Looking back provides a bit of context. In an article on the BBC website in 2004, under an image of the former England international Paul Gascoigne crying at the 1990 World Cup, a clinical psychologist talked about how 'a lot of men know more about how a car works than their own emotions'. Reading that quote again now, a couple of decades later, makes you realise how much life has changed – and in a relatively short space of time too (either that or all my mates are especially useless when it comes to knowing how to change a tyre). 'I think men have moved on hugely,' Baker, the senior therapist, says. 'I guess the old stereotype is that if men and sports were going to exhibit any emotions, it was normally anger. And there were apocryphal stories of women living in dread of their menfolk coming back if their team had lost. But men are more willing, and able, to express a fuller range of emotions than just anger. Advertisement 'I think they've changed a lot in the last 20 years. And I know that by the number of men I see. It used to be one man for every nine women I saw. And now it's much more like I'll see two men for every three women, so it's coming up to parity. There's a willingness to explore their own sense of self, what drives them and who they are.' That's not to say that men never cried at football in years gone by. When this topic of conversation came up in the office, my colleague Amy Lawrence told a story about being in the away end at Anfield in 1989, when Michael Thomas scored a dramatic late goal to clinch the league title for Arsenal against Liverpool on the final day, and how she was nowhere near her friends when she eventually came up for air amid the chaotic celebrations that followed. 'I found myself next to a guy who looked like your absolute classic 1980s football hooligan,' she said. 'He was massive. He was a skinhead. He was covered in tattoos. He looked terrifying. But he had tears rolling down his cheeks and he was blubbing like a baby. I can still see his face today. It was beautiful because he was the last type of person that you would ever expect to break down emotionally at a match.' The same can't be said for young Ricky Allman, who was only 11 years old when Leeds United were on their way to being relegated from the Premier League in 2004. With his shirt off and 'Leeds Til I Die' written across his chest, Allman was heartbroken as the television cameras homed in on him in the away end at Bolton Wanderers. Leeds were losing 4-1 and it was all too much for him. 'My bottom lip came out. A full-on, uncontrollable lip,' Allman told The Athletic in 2020. His mother, Beverley, was watching at home. 'She rang me in tears, 'Are you alright?' she said. You've been on telly. They panned on the crowd and you were crying — I haven't stopped crying since.'' Plenty of Palace fans were saying the same thing for a week or more after beating Manchester City. In Kevin Day's case, the initial sense of shock eventually gave way to tears in, of all places, his local supermarket. Advertisement 'For the first minute (after the final whistle) I couldn't speak,' the writer, comedian and lifelong Palace fan says. 'Then I looked around me and I was the only one not in tears. It was incredible. Mates of mine who I've known for so long, stoic people, who normally wouldn't cry… they were just broken. 'I've never felt elation like it. My son came round at 9am the next morning. He's 29. He threw himself into my arms like he hasn't done since he was a five-year-old. He was sobbing. 'And then, Monday morning, I was in the Co-op buying a pint of milk and I just suddenly burst into tears. I just thought to myself, 'The last time I was in here we hadn't won the FA Cup'.' Thinking about those who are no longer with us and unable to share a landmark moment can often trigger our emotions at football, as was almost certainly the case with the PSG coach Rafel Pol Cabanellas in Munich. It could be the memories of a grandparent who introduced someone to a club in the first place or, for Day, of his late father, who was always at the end of the phone to discuss the Palace match afterwards. 'Everyone I spoke to on that Saturday evening had someone they wished they could have called,' he says. 'There must have been about three million Palace fans looking down from heaven. 'On a serious note, though, I do wonder whether all the posters put up in pubs in south London over the last five years, about how it's alright to talk, have actually had a positive impact and that this generation of men do think it's alright to show their emotions. Maybe that message is finally getting through. 'Or maybe it's just any group of men where something happens that they've waited 120 years for, finally happens. I don't know. 'But I'm starting to get goosebumps thinking about it all again now.' (Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Manan Vatsyayana/AFP, Odd Andersen, Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
UPI
14 hours ago
- UPI
Benicio Del Toro: Imagination runs amok in 'Phoenician Scheme'
1 of 5 | Benicio Del Toro attends the photo call for "The Phoenician Scheme" at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19. Photo by Rune Hellestad/UPI | License Photo NEW YORK, June 6 (UPI) -- Oscar-winning actor Benicio del Toro says writer-director Wes Anderson meticulously plans every scene in his movies, but still welcomes input from his cast. "The approach is the same approach that I do on any movie I do. Just, I think, Wes wants you to be in the moment. He wants you to tell the truth, whatever that means," Del Toro, 58, said in a recent virtual press conference to promote his second collaboration with Anderson, The Phoenician Scheme, in theaters nationwide on Friday. "You have all this dialogue," Del Toro said, "but you can still bring a piece of yourself into it. And there's room for the imagination, too, to run amok. And you've got to have fun. Even if you're drowning, you've got to have fun." Co-starring Scarlett Johannson, Michael Cera, Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray and Tom Hanks, the espionage comedy is set in 1950 and follows Zsa-zsa Korda (Del Toro), an industrialist and arms dealer who wants to bring his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) -- a Catholic nun -- into his dangerous, top-secret business. It's Wes Anderson's world, we're just scheming in it. Focus Features (@FocusFeatures) June 6, 2025 "It's layered. It's full of contradictions, which makes it really yummy for an actor to try to bring to life," Del Toro said. "There is an element of my character wanting a second chance at mending a broken relationship. And I think that in the process in order to achieve that, he has to change and he does change. And I like to think that people can change. Not everyone changes, but I think some people can, and for the better." After previously working with Anderson on the 2021 hit The French Dispatch, Del Toro is used to the filmmaker's dense, quirky language. But, this time around, he has a larger role and a lot more to say. "There were a couple of moments where I went up to Wes and I said: 'Well, maybe we can take this dialogue out.' And, then, I went back to it and it wasn't as good," Del Toro recalled. "I had to go up to him and go like, 'I think you need to put it back because we're passing information that I think you need.' But that's why I couldn't join these people [in the cast] every day for dinner. I had to go up into my room and talk to myself." "You had a lot to say," Anderson agreed. "You took the time to absorb everything." Del Toro said another contribution he made to the project concerned Michael Cera's character Professor Bjorn, the tutor of Zsa-zsa's nine sons, who has a habit of sticking around when sensitive information is being shared. "I remember telling Wes, 'Well, I'm giving a lot of private information to my daughter and there is this stranger sitting right there. I feel uncomfortable as the character, giving all this information in front of a stranger. I'm telling her about my bank accounts and my everything, deals, with secrecy,'" Del Toro said. "Wes said to me, 'Well, we'll polygraph him.' And I went, 'Well, OK.' And, very quickly, he came up with this idea of a lie detector, which is a portable pocket polygraph," he added. "In 1950, it was probably the size of this building, but he made it into the pocket version." Despite the heightened reality, Anderson said this is essentially a father-daughter tale. "His whole business plan is really a mechanism for him to get back together with her," Anderson said of Zsa-zsa and Liesl. "He's acting like he's making her his successor and, really, it's more about what's going to happen between the two of them right now," Anderson added. "The business plan almost becomes like a ritual for him to be reunited with his daughter. ... In that sense, his plan goes great." Anderson first approached Del Toro about starring in this film after they wrapped up The French Dispatch. "I had a sort of the idea of a Euro tycoon, somebody who would've been in a [Michelangelo] Antonioni movie or something, that visual," Anderson said. "I did have this idea that he was probably hurting, that he was going to be in physical distress. Somehow, that was the image of this guy who you sort of can't kill." Over the course of time, however, this fictional man with a plan in a suit started mixing with Anderson's father-in-law Fouad Malouf, who, the filmmaker described as "an engineer and a businessman and he had all these different projects and different places." "He was a kind, warm person, but very intimidating," Anderson said. "He had all his business in these shoe-boxes. He walked [Anderson's wife] through his work at a certain point, because he thought if he is not able to see everything through, she needs to know what he's got. "And her reaction was what you say in the movie," Anderson turned to Threapleton, who immediately chimed in, "This is just crazy." "So, yeah, it was a mixture of those two things," Anderson quipped. "Fouad and whatever the first thing I said was."
