RIP Marina Cicogna

 

Marina Cicogna, the Lady of Italian cinema, died at the age of 89

Marina Cicogna died in her home in Rome: "They put labels on me but my life and my choices speak for me"

Corriere Del Veneto

By Sara D’Ascenzo

November 4, 2023

 

She lived as she wanted and died as she had decided, in the wooden bed that belonged to her mother Annamaria, with carved lion's paws, sent from the house in Venice to the one in Via di Porta Pinciana 34 in Rome. To watch over a sleep that had become tormented in recent weeks, a painting inlaid with eight scenes from the Buddhist tradition: "That is very important," he liked to say. But above all, she died with her lifelong companion, Benedetta, by her side, who watched over her constantly, taking her last breath. Marina Cicogna Mozzoni, 89 years old and a dream life told in the film "Marina Cicogna. Life and everything else" by Andrea Bettinetti in 2021 and in the book "Ancora spero" (Marsilio, 2023), she died on November 4, 2023 in her home near Via Veneto, around the corner of Largo Federico Fellini, in the toponymy of the end the summary of her existence devoted to the Dolce Vita and cinema.

Career

Born on 29 May 1934 to Count Cesare Cicogna Mozzoni and Countess Annamaria Volpi di Misurata, granddaughter of Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, a Venetian, who in 32 invented the Venice Film Festival, Countess Marina Cicogna has breathed cinema since she was a young girl, when she slipped into one of the rooms of the Venice Film Festival on the Lido to see how many as many movies as possible. A friend of a beautiful world that disappears with her for good, from Luchino Visconti to Gianni Agnelli, from Maria Callas to Aristotle Onassis, Cicogna loved men and women, had a flirtation with Alain Delon and a long affair with the Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan, whom she met when she was little more than a young girl at a party at Elsa Martinelli's house and launched into the cinema, where she – it was the end of the 60s – had begun to take her steps, the first woman in Europe and perhaps in the world, as a producer. She has written on important films of Italian cinema such as "Teorema" by Pier Paolo Pasolini, "Metti, una sera a cena" by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi and "Indagine su un cittadino al sopra di ogni suspicious" by Elio Petri, which in 71 earned her an Oscar that she did not go to collect in Los Angeles due to an insurmountable fear of flying. A fierce opponent of conventions but also of movements, she lived her sexuality without ever wanting to be pigeonholed.

Labels

"People have often put labels on me," he said in his autobiography. But my life and my choices speak for me. I lived for twenty years with Florinda, for almost forty years I have lived with Benedetta. Yet I have never liked the blatant manifestations of one's sexuality. I consider parades, and in general the ostentation of one's orientations, as something redundant." Her beloved dogs, Minnie and Gipsy, two Pomeranian foxes from Korea and Russia, surrounded her with their raids until the very end. When she could, she looked out of the window of her room, which she didn't want to leave for a hospital bed: "Do you see how his eyes run free? – he told me a few days before he died -. Nothing is like the freedom that one has with this view that runs from St. Peter's to Parioli." The beauty of his Rome, the light he never wanted to abandon.

CICOGNA, Marina

Born: 5/29/1934, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Died: 11/4/2023, Rome, Lazio, Italy

 

Marina Cicogna’s western – producer:

Ace High – 1967 [San Marco Productions]

Once Upon a Time in the West – 1968 [San Marco Productions]

Boot Hill – 1969 [San Marco Productions]