Clara Calamai - actress

Star remembered for groundbreaking moments in Italian cinema history

Clara Calamai enjoyed huge popularity with
Italian cinema audiences in the '30s and '40s

The actress Clara Calamai, best known for two Italian cinema classics of the 1940s and for a cult 1970s horror film, died in the Adriatic resort of Rimini on this day in 1998, at the age of 89.

Calamai’s career is generally seen to have peaked with her appearances in Luchino Visconti’s 1943 crime drama Ossessione and, three years later, in Duilio Coletti’s melodrama L’adultera, for which she won a Nastro d’Argento award as best actress.

She scaled down her career drastically after marriage but won fresh acclaim three decades later for her role as Marta, a murderous ageing actress in ‘Master of Horror’ Dario Argento’s box office smash Profondo Rosso.

For many years, Calamai was also known as the first woman to bare her breasts in Italian cinema - in a 1942 movie that not surprisingly caused scandal at the time - although it was later accepted that another actress, Vittoria Carpi, had beaten her to that claim to fame. 

Calamai, sometimes known as Clara Mais, was born in the Tuscany city of Prato, about 25km (16 miles) northwest of Florence, in 1909. She had two sisters, Vittorina and Paola, yet little is known about her early life before her big screen debut in Aldo Vergano’s 1938 historical epic, Pietro Micca.

She made a good living by accepting multiple parts in what then was a somewhat sanitised Italian film industry, which was regulated so tightly within the guidelines set by the Fascist authorities that approved film-makers were limited mainly to lightweight comedies and heroic costume dramas. 

Calamai in La Cena delle Beffe, a film
largely remembered for her 'nude' scene

Her ‘nude’ scene came relatively early in her career, although it scarcely constituted a scene, occupying just 18 frames of Alessandro Blasetti’s La Cena delle Beffe, a drama set in Renaissance Florence starring Amedeo Nazzari. Although it was so brief that an audience member could literally blink and miss it, the outrage provoked was such that minors under the age of 16 were not permitted to watch.

Despite the furore, the episode did no harm to Calamai’s career and her popularity maintained its upwards trajectory, putting her on a par with actresses such as Alida Valli and Valentina Cortese. It later transpired that Blasetti had already shown Vittoria Carpi's naked breast the previous year in La corona di ferro, although because Carpi was a young comparatively unknown actress, it attracted much less attention.

Indeed, the publicity generated may have helped Calamai land her most famous role, in 1943, when Visconti chose her to replace Anna Magnani, who was pregnant, in Ossessione, his debut film.

Co-written as well as directed by Visconti, the film was an adaptation of the 1934 novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, by the American author, James M Cain. It was the second of seven adaptations of Cain’s novel, although Visconti’s - controversially - was not authorised or even credited.

The film was condemned by the Fascist regime for its unvarnished depictions of Italy’s working class population. But Calamai’s performance as Giovanna, who embarks on an affair with a young hobo and is eventually persuaded to murder her husband, was outstanding and the film is regarded today as a pioneering work of Italian cinema, perhaps the first neorealist film.

Calamai and co-star Massimo Girotti in a scene
from Luchino Visconti's 1943 drama Ossessione

Three years later, in Coletti’s L'adultera, her performance as Velca, a peasant woman who marries a wealthy but elderly landowner and goes on to be the adulteress of the title, resulted in Calamai winning a Nastro d’Argento - silver ribbon - award from Italian film critics as best actress of 1946.

The year before L’adultera’s success, Calamai had married Leonardo Bonzi, a former Italian tennis champion who also competed in bobsleigh at the Olympics. A qualified pilot, Bonzi was from noble stock and could call himself a count, if he so wished. They met when he embarked on a career in film directing and producing.

With the arrival of the first of their two children, Calamai severely limited her acting commitments, taking  parts only sporadically. She and Bonzi divorced in 1961, after which she began to accept invitations from directors she favoured. Her playing of a prostitute in Visconti’s Le notti bianchi reminded cinemagoers of her acting ability. She appeared on television, too, in a Rai adaptation of Henry Fielding’s 18th century novel, Tom Jones.

What turned out to be her final film was hailed as one of her finest. Cast as Marta, an eccentric multiple killer, Calamai’s performance in Dario Argento’s 1975 hit Profondo Rosso - Deep Red - turned her into something of a cult figure among fans of the director’s work. Argento would later describe the film, which starred David Hemmings as the musician who ultimately identified Marta as the murderer, as his greatest work.

Profondo Rosso kept Calamai in the public eye for a number of years but eventually she disappeared from view. After living alone in her home in Rome not far from Termini station, she spent her final years in Rimini, where her sister, Vittorina, had lived since starting a family.

She died there at the age of 89, reportedly following a heart attack. She is buried at the Cimitero Monumentale di Rimini, where the Emilia-Romagna resort’s greatest cinema icon, Federico Fellini, was laid to rest alongside his wife, the actress Giulietta Masina.

The Palazzo Pretorio is one
of Prato's notable buildings

Travel tip:

Prato, a city of just under 200,000 inhabitants, is less than 20 minutes by train from Florence, yet Clara Calamain’s home city is something of an overlooked gem among Tuscany's many attractions. Prato is the home of the Datini archives, a significant collection of late mediaeval documents concerning economic and trade history, produced between 1363 and 1410, as well as many artistic treasures, including frescoes by Filippo Lippi, Paolo Uccello and Agnolo Gaddi inside its Duomo, which has an external pulpit by built by Michelozzo and decorated by Donatello. The Palazzo Pretorio is a building of great beauty, situated in the pretty Piazza del Comune, and there are the ruins of the castle built for the mediaeval emperor and King of Sicily Frederick II.  Prato’s commercial heritage is founded on the textile industry and its growth in the 19th century earned it the nickname the "Manchester of Tuscany".

Rimini's Tempio Malatestiano has frescoes by
Piero della Francesca and paintings by Giotto

Travel tip:

Rimini has become one of the most popular seaside resorts in Europe, with wide sandy beaches and plenty of hotels and restaurants. But it is also a historic town with many interesting things to see. One of Rimini’s most famous sights is the Tempio Malatestiano, a 13th century Gothic church originally built for the Franciscans but which was transformed on the outside in the 15th century and decorated inside with frescoes by Piero della Francesca and works by Giotto and many other artists. Rimini had a role in the unification of Italy in the 19th century. It was there that Joachim Murat, the brother-in-law of Napoleon and King of Naples, issued his Proclamation in 1815, calling for all Italians to unite into a single people and drive out foreigners, namely the Austrians, who occupied large parts of northern Italy at the time. Although Murat was almost certainly acting out of self-interest at the time - he had just declared war on Austria and desperately needed support - the Proclamation is often seen as the opening statement of the Risorgimento.

Also on this day:

1559: The birth of painter and architect Cigoli

1744: The birth of architect Giacamo Quarenghi

1960: The birth of controversial conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan

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Asia Argento - actress and director

Twice winner of Italian ‘Oscar’ with turbulent private life

Asia Argento pictured with her father, the celebrated
horror film director, Dario Argento, at Cannes in 2012

The actress and director Asia Argento, whose father is the influential horror movie director Dario Argento, was born on this day in 1975 in Rome.

Argento’s mother was the actress Daria Nicolodi, granddaughter of the composer Alfredo Casella. She appeared in her first movie at the age of nine and turned out to have such a talent for acting she had won two David di Donatello best actress awards - the Italian equivalent of an Oscar - by the time she was 21.

As well as appearing in around 50 movies, some of which she also wrote and directed, and a number of television productions, Argento’s artistic talents have ranged to writing short stories and novels and recording solo albums as a singer.

Her private life has been somewhat turbulent. Married for five years to the director Michele Civetta, she was previously in a long-term relationship with the Italian rock musician Morgan, and later became romantically involved with the celebrity chef and documentary maker Anthony Bourdain, who took his own life at the age of 61.

Argento was a key figure in the
film industry's #MeToo movement

After alleging in 2017 that she had been raped by the since-jailed producer Harvey Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival at the age of 21, Argento became a central figure in the #MeToo movement.

In 2018 she found herself at the heart of another sexual scandal, this time as the alleged perpetrator, when the New York Times reported claims from Jimmy Bennett, who had worked with Argento as a child actor, that he had been assaulted by her in a hotel room in California at the age of 17, below that state’s age of consent. Argento denied the allegation, although later reached a financial settlement with Bennett.

Argento’s first name appears in the records of the Rome register office as Aria after “Asia” was deemed inappropriate by officials at the time, although she has never been known as anything else. She claimed she took up acting in an attempt to grab her father’s attention during a childhood in which she said he was often absent because of work.

It worked. Two of her first three parts were in films produced by her father, who then directed her in a starring role in his 1993 horror-mystery Trauma.

Within a year, Argento had landed the first of her David di Donatello awards as best actress for her portrayal of a paraplegic in Perdiamoci di vista - roughly translated as 'Let’s Not Keep in Touch' - a bittersweet comedy directed by Carlo Verdone, who also co-stars.

Three years later, a second David di Donatello for best actress came her way after she starred in American director Peter del Monte’s drama Compagna di Viaggio - Travelling Companion - as a waitress who is asked by a friend to shadow her father, who has memory problems.

Argento has combined her 
acting career with music

In 2000, Argento moved into directing with Scarlet Diva, which she also wrote and her father co-produced. The film was well received by the critics. She directed Bennett, who was seven at the time, in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things four years later, herself playing a drug-addicted prostitute single mother, with Bennett cast as her son.

She won a Nastro d’Argento award - the prestigious award made by Italian film journalists - for the 2014 production, Incompresa - Misunderstood - which she directed and co-wrote.

A fluent English speaker, she became known to wider cinema audiences through starring in the 2002 Hollywood blockbuster, xXx, directed by Rob Cohen, in which she played an undercover spy, appearing alongside Vin Diesel and Samuel L Jackson, and landed a number of Hollywood roles as a consequence, before returning to the European cinema scene.

Alongside her film career, she is heavily involved with music. A singer with a deep, intense voice, she collaborated with a number of musicians in different genres, from traditional ballads to experimental new wave and techno rock. So far, she has released eight singles and two studio albums as well as appearing as a guest performer with other artists.

Her many TV appearances include participation in the 11th edition of Ballando con le Stelle - the Italian equivalent of America’s Dancing with the Stars and the UK’s Strictly Come Dancing - in which she was eliminated in week eight.

Argento published an autobiography, Anatomia di un cuore selvaggio (Anatomy of a Wild Heart), in 2021. She has two children, a daughter from her relationship with Morgan and a son by Michele Civetta, with whom she reportedly lives in the Vigna Clara neighbourhood to the north of Rome’s city centre.

In 2022, after taking a step back from films for a number of years, Argento made a comeback, again directed by her father, in Dark Glasses, a dark thriller in which she plays the guardian of a blind woman being hunted by a psychotic killer.

Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso store in Rome
also houses his Museum of Horror

Travel tip:

Dario Argento’s standing among horror movie fans is such that, in 1989, he opened a memorabilia shop in Via dei Gracchi, a short distance from the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo in the heart of Rome. Named Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) after the title of one of Argento’s most popular films, which starred David Hemmings and Argento’s wife, Daria Nicolodi, it is a small premises crammed to the rafters with rubber masks, costumes, props, posters and model figures. It is also the home of Argento’s Museum of Horror, a red-painted basement accessed via a door next to the till, containing model reconstructions of famously gory scenes from his extensive back catalogue.

The historic Ponte Milvio is one of the Rome
attractions accessible on foot from Vigna Clara

Travel tip:

Vigna Clara, where Asia Argento has a home, is a pleasant neighbourhood to the north of the historical centre of Rome, reached by crossing the Tiber via the Ponte Flaminio and proceeding north about 1.5km (1 mile). It has a lively commercial centre with good amenities and several public parks, while the residential streets comprise elegant buildings and upmarket villas. It offers access on foot to tourist attractions such as the historic Ponte Milvio, the Stadio Olimpico and the Auditorium Parco della Musica.  It is a 15-minute train ride from the Vatican, while the main city centre attractions are about 40 minutes away by train and metro.  The neighbourhood's church of Santa Chiara a Vigna Clara, designed by Alberto Ressa and opened in 1962, is unusual for having a circular layout.

Also on this day:

1378: Election of Pope Clement VII

1870: Rome’s walls breached in final act of unification

1934: The birth of actress Sophia Loren

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