Claudia Cardinale was often cast as an ideal of beauty. We value the temperament she brings to those parts, especially in 8½, where she helps us look past a man’s flattering account of himself.
Fi1m perspective
In 8½ (1963), Claudia Cardinale gives us a reason to stop attending quite so closely to Guido. Marcello Mastroianni makes the director’s self-absorption funny, but Fellini is sometimes too indulgent of him. Cardinale’s Claudia, alongside Anouk Aimée’s Luisa and Sandra Milo’s Carla, brings another temperament into view. We felt relieved by these women because their performances made us wonder how much Guido had failed to notice about them.
Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) helped establish her as a star, and Rocco and His Brothers (1960) brought an early collaboration with Luchino Visconti. The decisive year was 1963, when she appeared in both Visconti’s The Leopard and Fellini’s 8½. Visconti’s precision and Fellini’s improvisation asked different things of an actor. We would not mistake her recognisable appearance across those films for an unchanging approach to the work.
The voice deserves attention, too. After earlier dubbing, 8½ was the first film to make prominent use of Cardinale’s own husky, throaty voice. The roughness of that sound makes Fellini’s idealised muse seem less remote, and gives us something to attend to beyond her appearance. We need not pretend that she displaces Mastroianni at the centre of the film to value what she adds: she makes his account of the women around him harder to accept without question.
Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) offers another way into her work, with Cardinale as the independent Jill McBain. The later international films include Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), in which she plays Molly, while the acting continued into the 2020s. Not every assignment served her equally well. Blindfold (1966) and Don’t Make Waves (1967) belong to the less rewarding Hollywood stretch. Try the western next, for Cardinale as a landowner with decisions of her own to make.
Biography
Claudia Cardinale was an Italian actress born on 15 April 1938 in La Goulette, in the French protectorate of Tunisia. She entered the film industry after winning a beauty contest in Tunisia in 1957, which led to a trip to Italy and her first screen roles.
She appeared in more than 150 films over six decades. Her notable credits include Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1963), 8½ (1963) as Claudia, The Pink Panther (1963), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Rogue City (2020). She worked with directors including Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone and Werner Herzog.
Cardinale died on 23 September 2025 in Nemours, France.
