Stefania Sandrelli

In The Conformist (1970), Stefania Sandrelli’s Giulia seems comfortable in herself beside a man painfully concerned with how he is seen. Sandrelli does not make that ease look like an achievement. We warmed to Giulia because her lack of self-consciousness offered relief from the film’s scrutiny of Marcello. She gives us someone to be interested in beyond his fears and desires.

Her early work in Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style (1961) established her in Italian comedy alongside Marcello Mastroianni. In I Knew Her Well (1965), she took the lead as Adriana Astarelli, a starlet making her way in Rome. Her earliest performances also attracted criticism for inexpressivity, a reservation worth keeping in mind when praising her restraint. Small gestures and slight changes of expression are central to her acting, but they still need to tell us something.

The 1970s brought work with Bernardo Bertolucci and Ettore Scola, including Scola’s We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974). In Bertolucci’s The Conformist, Sandrelli’s ease is particularly useful amid Vittorio Storaro’s seductive images and the attention paid to Marcello’s inner troubles. Beside her, Dominique Sanda makes Anna Quadri harder to read. Both give us reasons to care about women whom the writing too often treats as explanations for Marcello’s sexuality.

The erotic roles of the 1980s, including The Key (1983), made the danger of typecasting more evident. What interests us less is casting that assumes her sensuality will be enough. Later supporting work included The Last Kiss (2001), while Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope (2024) cast her as the older Parthenope. Those changes in the size and nature of her parts matter when considering an actor so readily associated with youthful sensuality. For a first encounter, we would choose The Conformist, with the caveat that its interest in Giulia falls short of ours.