RIP Sandra Milo

 

Sandra Milo, Fellini's muse actress dies at the age of 90

The long career with the great directors, the loves (including the clandestine one with Craxi), the children and the TV. From Alberto Sordi to the series 'Gigolo by chance'

la Republica

By Chiara Ugolini

January 29, 2024

 

Sandra Milo has died, she was 90 years old. She passed away in her home and among the affection of her loved ones, as she had requested. This was announced by the family. 'Sandrocchia', as Federico Fellini had nicknamed her for whom she was a muse, was one of the most popular actresses in Italian cinema.

A very long career with great directors, - from Roberto Rossellini to Antonio Pietrangeli, from Sergio Corbucci to Federico Fellini, fromLuigi Zampa to Dino Risi, Luciano Salce, Duccio Tessari, Pupi Avati, Gabriele Salvatores up to Gabriele Muccino, loves, children and TV. From Alberto Sordi, with whom he made his debut in Antonio Pietrangeli's The Bachelor in 1955, to the series Gigolò per caso, released at Christmas on Prime Video, almost seventy years of cinema without ever stopping, without ever giving up. Like when, just three years ago, she went to chain herself in front of Palazzo Chigi for entertainment workers in difficulty after the pandemic. At the age of 87, she had tied herself in front of the Palace until Prime Minister Conte received her. At the age of 88 he received the David Lifetime Achievement Award and, as evidence that he had not lost his desire for cinema, he had told Repubblica that he dreamed of making a film with Matteo Garrone.

Born in Tunis on March 11, 1933 to a Tuscan mother and a Sicilian father, Salvatrice Elena Greco (this is her real name) grew up in the province of Pisa, and then moved to Viareggio as a teenager. Her first marriage was at the age of fifteen, but it was annulled by the Sacred Rota in 1948. The world of entertainment entered the life of the eighteen-year-old in 1955 when she made her film debut alongside Alberto Sordi.

Her first important role, however, came in 1959 with Roberto Rossellini's Il generale Della Rovere, which was followed by titles that have entered the history of cinema such as Antonio Pietrangeli's Adua and the Companions, Ghosts in Rome, Juliet of the Spirits and, above all, 81/2, which won an Oscar. After Rossellini's and Pietrangeli's films, Sandra Milo's career had come to a halt due to the panning in Venice of the film Vanina Vanini, based on Stendhal's short story of the same name and once again directed by Roberto Rossellini. The film was rejected by critics but it was above all his performance that suffered the fiercest criticism.

It was Federico Fellini who offered her a second chance, beginning with the actress a long professional but also sentimental partnership that led them to be lovers for 17 years.

"I was very much in love with Fellini – the actress told Repubblica – Marcello and Federico were very close friends, they told each other everything, their adventures and their love stories, so Marcello was perfectly aware of the story between me and Federico. Marcello was lighter, Federico had a greater depth, but somehow it's as if one had those parts that the other lacked, they complemented each other."

Beyond the love story, kept secret until the death of the director who was married to Giulietta Masina, it was above all from the artistic partnership that Milo obtained great satisfaction. For both films Juliet of the Spirits and 81/2 – in which she was a femme fatale – she won the Silver Ribbon for Best Supporting Actress. The films with Fellini were followed by others in the intense sixties with Luigi Zampa in Frenesia dell'estate (1963), again with Antonio Pietrangeli in La visita (1963), Pasquale Festa Campanile and Massimo Franciosa in Le voci bianche (1964), Dino Risi in L'ombrellone (1965). She appeared in French cinema alongside Fernandel and Jean-Pierre Cassel in Jean Boyer's I Have a Crazy, Crazy, Crazy Wife and ... then I'll marry you by Philippe de Broca.

The other great clandestine love story was the one with Bettino Craxi. Politically, Sandra Milo had grown up in a fascist family, "when the war was over, everyone cried, the dead, the goods lost. But I was little, I wanted to understand what they had done wrong. In Viareggio I met a group of anarchists and I listened to them. They were talking about Marx, about socialism, I started reading Marx, Engels, Proudhon, Lenin and discovering that it was important to have a social ideal," he said. In the 1960s she became close to the Socialist Party and was very close to Pietro Nenni ("a wonderful person, a man of extraordinary humanity that today's politicians no longer have"), in the 1980s she became Craxi's lover, a secret affair that lasted a couple of years and ended for fear that her husband, Ottavio De Lollis, discover them. When Gianni Amelio Hammamet's film was released, Milo said that he didn't want to see it: "I want to remember him when he was strong and fought for his idea of Italy. I didn't want to see its decline. I want to remember him when he fought for Sigonella."

In the 1980s, the actress devoted herself more to television than to cinema, helped by her closeness to Craxi. In the 1982-1983 television season she conducted a column on costume within the in-depth program Mixer by Giovanni Minoli, but it is above all the years of Piccoli fans, an afternoon program for children that left a mark in the history of Italian television in which children sang the songs of their favorites, in the mid-eighties to make it known in many homes. But one of the most traumatic episodes of Sandra Milo's life also took place on TV when during the broadcast Love is a wonderful thing, a woman called live saying that her son, Ciro De Lollis, was seriously ill in the hospital due to a car accident, it turned out to be an atrocious prank call.

In the latter part of his career he continued to attend everything: television, cinema and theater. Among her last engagements, Pupi Avati wanted her in 2003 in his film Il cuore altrove and in 2010 Salvatores in his Happy Family, this year she participated in the documentary Roma, bella e damnata by Roberto D'Agostino. On the other hand, 8 Women and a Mystery, The Oval Bed, Steel Flowers, The Widows' Club and A Girlfriend for Daddy had arrived at the theater. In 2023 the last TV program, the second season of Quelle brave ragazze on Sky with Orietta Berti and Mara Maionchi. At Christmas she played a woman suffering from Alzheimer's who dreams of a wedding with bells in old age next to Marco Messeri, in the comedy series with Pietro Sermonti and Christian De Sica Gigolò per caso. Proving until the last that the world of entertainment was his home.

MILO, Sandra (Salvatrice Elena Greco)

Born: 3/11/1933, Tunis, French Protectorate

Died: 1/29/2024, Rome, Lazio, Italy

 

Sandra Milo’s westerns – actress:

The Bang-Bang Kid – 1967 (Gwenda Skaggel)

Dead for a Dollar – 1968 (Liz)