Iconic Italian star Monica Vitti is a stateside tribute with the posthumous festival “Monica Vitti: La Modernista,” presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà. The actress, who died in 2022, was immortalized onscreen with her famed collaborations with auteurs Michelangelo Antonioni and Luis Buñuel. Now, the 14-film series at FLC will be the first North American retrospective dedicated to Vitti’s career. The series will feature new restorations of her classic films including “Red Desert” and “La supertestimone.”
“We are pleased to partner with Cinecittà to celebrate one of Italy’s most revered actresses,” Florence Almozini, Vice President of Programming at Film at Lincoln Center, said in a press statement. “It is a privilege to have the opportunity to present decades worth of films from Monica Vitti’s illustrious and prolific career, especially with many restored versions of her legendary work.”
Vitti most famously starred in Antonioni’s “L’avventura,” which became her breakout turn in 1960. She went on to lead “The Girl with the Pistol” (which is getting a 4K re-release), “Flirt,” and more. Vitti won five David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress, three Nastro d’Argento awards, and eight Globi d’Oros (Italian Golden Globe), as well as the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Concha de Plata for Best Actress, and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 1995. In total, Vitti starred in 55 films across 35 years for her career.
“When we began discussing the idea of a retrospective dedicated to Monica Vitti — together with our Department for the Promotion of Classic Cinema and our longtime partner, Film at Lincoln Center — the first question we asked ourselves was which films to present to the American audience,” Chiara Sbarigia, President of Cinecittà, said. “So we put together what I believe is a very original selection — one that will showcase the remarkable and versatile talent of Monica Vitti, who moved effortlessly between sparkling comedies and auteur cinema, such as the celebrated trilogy by Michelangelo Antonioni that established her on the international stage. In New York, we’ll also present the world premieres of three gems: the 4K digital restorations of ‘I Married You for Fun’ by Luciano Salce, ‘I Know That You Know That I Know’ by Alberto Sordi, and ‘The Girl with a Pistol’ by Mario Monicelli.”
Manuela Cacciamani, CEO of Cinecittà, added, “It is both an honor and a deeply moving moment for Cinecittà to contribute to this tribute at Film at Lincoln Center, which celebrates an extraordinary figure like Monica Vitti. The restored prints of her films, produced in our laboratories, are a passport to the greatness of Italian cinema. Actors are the voices of films — and in this case, of an entire culture. Vitti is a symbol of the style, creativity, and freedom of Italian cinema. With this tribute, we are certain that not only Cinecittà, but the image of Italian film itself, has found an unparalleled ambassador, in Monica Vitti, in America.”
“Monica Vitti: La Modernista” runs from June 6-19. Check out the full list of films below, with language provided by Film at Lincoln Center.
“L’avventura”
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960, Italy/France, 143m
Italian with English subtitles
Arguably one of the most significant provocations in film history, Antonioni’s sixth feature and existentialist masterwork helped to launch modern art cinema as we know it. Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), his girlfriend Anna (Lea Massari) and their friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) set out on a Mediterranean yacht trip to celebrate Sandro’s return from working abroad; Sandro and Anna’s relationship, meanwhile, has grown distant and tense for mysterious reasons. But when Anna goes missing on the trip, Sandro and Claudia search (however half-heartedly) for her, though a surfacing attraction between them threatens to overshadow Anna’s disappearance. An immaculate work of pacing and visual composition, L’avventura is rightly regarded as an epochal example of cinematic modernism. DCP courtesy of Cinecittà.
Friday, June 6 at 8:30pm
Sunday, June 8 at 3:15pm
Saturday, June 14 at 3:15pm
Wednesday, June 18 at 6:00pm
“La notte”
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961, Italy, 122m
Italian with English subtitles
In this beguiling second entry in Antonioni’s celebrated trilogy that also includes L’avventura and L’eclisse, Marcello Mastroianni radiates brooding energy as Giovanni Pontano, a successful novelist who spends a day and a night drifting through the starkly beautiful built and natural environments—and the unsettlingly superficial social settings—of 1960s Milan. Drifting alongside him, on a path that alternately intersects with and diverges from his own, is his wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau); the fate of their imperiled marriage supplies the film’s emotional focal point. Meanwhile, husband and wife encounter tragedy and temptation in equal measure—the latter partly in the form of a watchful, seductive Monica Vitti. Shot in lusciously textured black-and-white, the film offers a melancholic, unblinking portrait of a time and place, a social class, and a relationship.
Saturday, June 7 at 5:45pm
Saturday, June 14 at 6:15pm
Wednesday, June 18 at 9:00pm
“L’eclisse”
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962, Italy/France, 126m
Italian with English subtitles
The culminating installment of the trilogy begun by L’avventura and La notte, L’eclisse finds Monica Vitti once again teaming up with Antonioni for arguably his most audacious film to date. Vitti stars as a translator named Vittoria who, following an apparently sleepless night, breaks up with her boyfriend and begins wandering the streets of Rome; she’ll soon make her way over to the Roman Stock Exchange, where she meets her mother’s broker, Piero (Alain Delon), inaugurating an eminently modern, curiously cool courtship that culminates in one of cinema’s all-time great endings. L’eclisse endures as one of Antonioni’s most open and slipperiest works, a film that speaks cryptically yet unforgettably about love amid modernity.
Saturday, June 7 at 8:15pm
Saturday, June 14 at 8:45pm
Thursday, June 19 at 8:45pm
“Red Desert” 4K Restoration
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964, Italy/France, 120m
Italian with English subtitles
A seminal eco-psychological nightmare, Red Desert stars Monica Vitti as Giuliana, an industrialist’s wife who stumbles through the toxic wasteland in which she lives under the influence of an obscure, debilitating anxiety. When an old friend of her husband’s, Corrado (Richard Harris), comes to town on a business trip, she finds a man more sensitive to her condition, and an affair between them ensues. But Corrado can do little to slow the onset of Giuliana’s psychic collapse. Antonioni’s first color film is an audiovisual tour de force, with Carlo Di Palma’s stark images conjuring a world whose external ravages reflect and reinforce the soul-sickness of modern man, masterfully embodied by Vitti’s lead performance. 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà and CSC – Cineteca Nazionale.
Sunday, June 8 at 6:15pm
Sunday, June 15 at 8:30pm
Thursday, June 19 at 6:15pm
“I Married You for Fun” World Premiere of 4K Restoration
Luciano Salce, 1969, Italy, 100m
Italian with English subtitles
A delightful diversion after her string of weighty collaborations with Antonioni, this late-’60s romantic comedy presents another side of Monica Vitti. She stars here as Giuliana, the slightly whacky girl with whom bourgeois lawyer Pietro (Giorgio Albertazzi) meets cute at a bohemian bacchanal. Just as quickly, the two get married, setting the stage for a humorous study of then-contemporary romance and the state of sexual politics in Italy. Something of a time capsule, I Married You for Fun contributed significantly to Vitti branching out from the inscrutable Antonioni talisman to becoming more synonymous with Italian cinema in the 1960s. New 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà.
Saturday, June 7 at 1:00pm
Wednesday, June 11 at 6:00pm
Tuesday, June 17 at 8:45pm
“The Girl with a Pistol” World Premiere of 4K Restoration
Mario Monicelli, 1968, Italy, 102m
English and Italian with English subtitles
A fascinating, genre-inflected tale of revenge inspired by Sicilian traditions, Monicelli’s drama stars Monica Vitti as Assunta, a young woman who falls for Vincenzo (Carlo Giuffrè), only for Vincenzo to unsuccessfully attempt to kidnap and forcibly marry Assunta’s sister. Local customs dictate that Assunta and her sisters cannot marry until the family has taken revenge against Vincenzo and restored their honor. When Vincenzo flees to the U.K., Assunta sets out after him, setting an enthralling cat-and-mouse game into motion across Edinburgh, Sheffield, and Bath. New 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà.
Friday, June 6 at 6:00pm
Friday, June 13 at 4:00pm
Thursday, June 19 at 4:00pm
“Help Me My Love”
Alberto Sordi, 1969, Italy, 35mm, 124m
Italian with English subtitles
Another charming romantic comedy anchored by Monica Vitti’s presence, this team-up with director/costar Alberto Sordi casts the two as a couple who are married happily—in no small part due to their open relationship. But cracks in their blissful arrangement form when Vitti meets a fortysomething professor at a chamber music concert and becomes infatuated with him. Sordi and Vitti—the box office king and queen of Italian cinema at the time—are magnetic and hilarious as a couple whose abrupt crisis comically sends up the era’s sexual mores, and Sordi is especially touching as a man who, by way of his contradictions, finds himself falling in love with his wife anew. Print courtesy of Cinecittà.
Sunday, June 15 at 3:30pm
Monday, June 16 at 4:00pm
“Jealousy, Italian Style”
Ettore Scola, 1970, Italy/Spain, 35mm, 99m
Italian with English subtitles
Also known as The Pizza Triangle, Ettore Scola’s comic tale of three-way love injected a dose of irony and modernism to the commedia all’italiana tradition. Monica Vitti stars as the fiancée to Marcello Mastroianni’s Communist construction worker, but their relationship becomes complicated with the introduction of Giancarlo Giannini’s hunky pizza chef. Following an amorous kerfuffle, the three wind up moving in together—but can they manage to make their unusual arrangement work, or will it be bickering and dramatics till death do they part? Carlo Di Palma’s affectionate camera captures a different side of Vitti—here, she’s both a troublemaker and the pillar holding up the roof over Mastroianni and Giannini’s heads. Print courtesy of Cinecittà.
Saturday, June 7 at 3:30pm
Monday, June 16 at 6:30pm
“La supertestimone” 4K Restoration
Franco Giraldi, 1971, Italy, 104m
Italian with English subtitles
A darkly comic portrait of the heart’s irrationality, Franco Giraldi’s seventh feature stars Monica Vitti as Isolina, a woman who falls in love with a pimp (Ugo Tognazzi) who has been convicted of murdering the girlfriend whose body he profited from—following eye-witness testimony from Isolina, who finds herself second-guessing what she thought she saw at the scene of the crime. A beguiling exploration of memory, passion, and relations between the sexes, La supertestimone melds the courtroom drama with a blackly satirical depiction of prison life to yield a wholly original cinematic experience. 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà.
Friday, June 13 at 6:15pm
Wednesday, June 18 at 3:45pm
“Stardust”
Alberto Sordi, 1973, Italy, 35mm, 142m
Italian with English subtitles
Alberto Sordi and Monica Vitti renewed their irresistible partnership for this humorous and charming WWII-set love letter to Italian theater. Mimmo (Sordi) and Dea (Vitti) are down-on-their-luck professional dancers trying to get by in an Italy ravaged by the war. An influx of American soldiers suggests the possibility of making some money—after all, soldiers need to be entertained—but Mimmo and Dea’s typical, somewhat provincial approach isn’t exactly the Broadway spectacle that the occupying forces are expecting. The show, however, must go on, and Mimmo and Dea must find a way to give their new audience what they want…. Print courtesy of Cinecittà.
Wednesday, June 11 at 8:30pm
Sunday, June 15 at 12:30pm
“Teresa the Thief” 4K Restoration
Carlo Di Palma, 1973, Italy, 125m
Italian with English subtitles
Legendary cinematographer Carlo Di Palma made his directorial debut with this fascinating cross between melodrama and comic picaresque. Monica Vitti stars as the titular protagonist, a war widow and single mother leading a harsh life in Rome. Hungry and miserable, she is caught red-handed robbing someone’s apartment, sparking a taste for kleptomania. She ineptly tries her luck with a succession of schemes, but it increasingly seems that she is destined for jail…. As always, Vitti is captivating, managing to project profound cool while portraying utter desperation. 4K digital restoration by CSC – Cineteca Nazionale and Minerva Pictures.
Saturday, June 14 at 12:30pm
“The Phantom of Liberty”
Luis Buñuel, 1974, France/Italy, 104m
French with English subtitles
One of Luis Buñuel’s most celebrated late-career films, his penultimate feature, The Phantom of Liberty, endures as a deliriously provocative, audaciously subversive all-star ensemble piece and a landmark work of cinematic surrealism. Across a succession of non sequitur episodes (both historic and contemporary), Buñuel and his star-studded cast enact a kind of automatic writing using the apparatus of cinema. These episodes are drawn from Buñuel’s life (both waking and not), and through a logic most dreamlike, they explore the illusory nature of freedom, the hypocrisies of various social institutions, and much, much more. Monica Vitti appears as a Parisian parent whose daughters unwittingly set in motion an inexplicable chain of events.
Sunday, June 8 at 1:00pm
Tuesday, June 17 at 6:30pm
“Mystery of Oberwald”
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1980, Italy/Germany, 129m
Italian and German with English subtitles
One of the few television films that Antonioni directed, this rare Italian/German coproduction (his third-to-final feature) finds the modernist master adapting none other than Jean Cocteau (his 1943 play The Eagle with Two Heads). Monica Vitti stars as the reclusive queen of an anonymous European country in the mid-19th century who has been mourning the assassination of her regal husband 10 years prior. A radical young poet (Franco Branciaroli) attempts to kill her during a clandestine stopover at a castle called Oberwald, and while the attempt on her life fails, it strangely sets the stage for a deeply, fatally romantic connection between the two. Something of a curiosity within Antonioni’s oeuvre, the shot-on-video Mystery of Oberwald marked the final collaboration between Vitti and the director who anointed her his muse. DCP courtesy of Cinecittà.
Sunday, June 8 at 8:45pm
Friday, June 13 at 8:30pm
“I Know That You Know That I Know” World Premiere of 4K Restoration
Alberto Sordi, 1982, Italy, 118m
Italian with English subtitles
Alberto Sordi and Monica Vitti’s final collaboration is yet another charming comedy of remarriage, Italian style. Sordi stars as Fabio, a bank clerk who has an utterly complacent attitude about the bourgeois comforts of his life. But when a private investigator accidentally records Fabio’s wife of more than 20 years, Livia (Vitti), Fabio learns how little he actually knows about what Livia and his daughter do when he’s not around. This simple enough setup proves to be a delightful pretext for one final team-up between Sordi and Vitti, whose chemistry is delightful as they conjure a couple that knows everything about one another—except for everything they don’t know, that is. New 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà.
Sunday, June 15 at 6:00pm
Monday, June 16 at 8:45pm
Tuesday, June 17 at 4:00pm
