Although she was often described, perhaps with a touch of irony, as the “muse of incommunicability” for her dramatic roles in several of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, Monica Vitti, who has died aged 90, always aspired to be a comic actor. In 1962, she had an offer to do a film for Agnès Varda, but turned it down; as she explained in an interview, “I want to remain loyal to Michelangelo, who has promised to make me the Carole Lombard of the second half of the century.” Though Vitti certainly had comparable looks and verve, and did eventually succeed in becoming a popular comedic star, she will probably remain in most film buffs’ minds as Giuliana, the complicated young blond woman in Antonioni’s Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert, 1964), his first colour feature.
Giuliana was perhaps Vitti’s most credible and identifiable characterisation. Her main concern is for her child’s neurosis, but she is not helped by her anguished attempt at a romantic relationship with an engineer, played by Richard Harris. The film contains one of world cinema’s most bizarre lines: “My hair hurts”, but it probably aroused merriment only when seen translated in a subtitle – Tonino Guerra, the film’s co-writer, pointed out that in Italian it sounds better.
