RIP Micaela Pignatelli

 

Dagospia

By Marco Giusti

11/6/2023

Beautiful, haughty, unscrupulous, divided between the craziest genre cinema in the '60s, auteur cinema in the '70s, committed theater, TV, but also every possible extravagance, Princess Micaela Cendali Pignatelli, 78 years old, actress and voice actress, active until a few years ago, as well as wife, or rather ex-wife of Flavio Bucci, is leaving. with whom he shared films and plays, and had two children.

With a high-sounding name, born in Naples in 1945, daughter of Prince Pignatelli-Cerchiara, a doctor, she entered the cinema in the early 60s together with other noble young ladies, from Ira von Furstenberg to Soraya to Esmeralda Ruspoli, accepting just about everything, from "The Dynamite Scented Tiger" by Claude Chabrol, her first film, to "God, How I love You", musical directed by Manuel Iglesias with Gigliola Cinquetti and Mark Damon, from "The Scandal" by Anna Gobbi to two follies such as "Flashman" by Mino Loy with Paolo Gozlino and "Goldface, the fantastic superman" by Bitto Albertini with Espartaco Santoni.

She was hardly noticed in the spaghetti western, she only shot the modest "Piluk the Timid One" by Guido Celano with Edmund Purdom, but she made her figure next to the statuesque Kitty Swan in the erotic Tarzanoid "Gungala, the virgin of the jungle" by Ruggero Deodato, where she was the beautiful explorer. I must say that it was thanks to Gungala that many young spectators noticed her, a very modern and particular beauty, a bit like Jane Birkin. We find her in the detective story "The Law of Gangsters" by Siro Marcellini alongside Klaus Kinski and Franco Citti, as the woman by Max Delys and then in the erotic/political "Amarsi male" by Fernando Di Leo with Franco Citti and Nieves Navarro, which did not have the expected success.

One of her major roles was in the wildest, at least in my memory, "Pagan Dawn – Crime at Oxford" by Ugo Liberatore, filmed in London with the working title "May Morning", together with Jane Birkin, Alessio Orano and John Steiner. We find it immediately afterwards in the war "Order from the SS: eliminate Borman!" by the Spaniard Juan Antonio Bardem, in the little-seen and little-known "Checkmate to the Mafia" by Warren Kiefer with Victor Spinetti and Luciano Pigozzi. In the early '70s we find her in even more daring films such as the lesbian-movie "The Girl with Coral Hands" by Luigi Petrini with Susanna Levi or "The Night of Flowers" by Gian Vittorio Baldi with Macha Meril, Hiram Keller and Dominique Sanda, a sort of Italian reconstruction of the night of the murder of Sharon Tate by the Manson gang.

In the '70s she shot everything, a poliziottesco by Massimo Dallamano, "La polizia chiede aiuto" with Claudio Cassinelli and Mario Adorf, "Farfallon" by Riccardo Pazzaglia with Franco and Ciccio, but also experimental films without a penny such as "La vita nova" by and with Edoardo Torricella, "I giorni della chimera" by Franco Corona with Renato Scarpa and Flavio Bucci, Her husband is also often a partner in the theatre. In the 1970s, she was actually more active in theatre and TV than in the cinema. We find her in Schiller's "I masnadieri" directed by Giancarlo Nanni, in Spoleto in the version directed by Vittorio Caprioli of "La conversazione continually interrupted" with Cochi and Renato and Paolo Bonacelli. She is famous for her "Othello" where she acts nude at the Venice Biennale directed by Gianni Serra. Together with Flavio Bucci we find her both in the theater, "The King is Naked" by Ionesco, and in the cinema with the first film by Marco Tullio Giordana, "Maledetti vi amerò", a generational but strongly self-critical film on the post-77 crisis of the young people of the movement. But immediately afterwards we find her with James Franciscus in "The Last Shark" by Enzo G. Castellari and on TV in the famous "Anna's Story" with Laura Lattuada and Flavio Bucci.

In the '80s she made a lot of TV, even good ones, such as "Delitto di stato", "La sconosciuta", "Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana" directed by Piero Schivazappa with Bucci, an episode of "Turno di notte" by Lamberto Bava and Luigi Cozzi, but also some good films, such as Francesco Massaro's comedy "Ti presento un'amica" with Giuliana De Sio, Michele Placido and Kate Capeshaw, "La chiesa" by Michele Soavi and "Il cartaio" by Dario Argento. She will always work, she will even dub Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween", Ornella Muti in "The Last Woman". We find her in different television productions, "Rita da Cascia" by Giorgio Capitani, "Provaci ancora prof" in 2008.

CENDALI, Micaela Pignatelli

Born: 3/11/1945, Naples, Campania, Italy

Died: 10/30/2023, Rome, Lazio, Italy

 

Micaela Pignatelli Cendali’s western – actress:

 

Gun Shy Piluk – 1968 (Margaret Amelia Moorehead)