Carla Gravina
Gravina worked straight through the most productive stretch the Italian film industry ever had, from the late 1950s into the 1990s, and the striking thing about her filmography is how little it settles. She is Nicoletta in Big Deal on Madonna Street, still the defining Italian comedy about incompetence. She is Mira in Five Branded Women, a war picture assembled with an international cast. She is Rosario in A Bullet for the General, one of the political Westerns that gave the genre a conscience. She is Sandra in Tony Arzenta, from the years when Italy produced crime thrillers by the dozen. And she is the afflicted woman at the centre of The Antichrist, made directly in the wake of a far more famous American horror film.
The recognition arrived late. She won the best actress award at Cannes for La Terrazza, listed in this catalogue as The Terrace, holding her own inside a very crowded ensemble.
She was also, through the 1980s, a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Italian Communist Party, which is not the ceremonial version of political involvement.
Movies (7)
Where to start with Carla Gravina
Big Deal on Madonna Street is where to start, though not really for her: it is a great film with Gravina in support, and the easiest way into the era she came up in.
For her own work, The Terrace is the one, the performance that took the best actress prize at Cannes. A Bullet for the General is the best of the genre pictures, a Western with actual politics inside it, and Tony Arzenta is the crime entry, brutal and efficient. The Antichrist should be approached with expectations set low; it is a knock-off, but a stylish and committed one, and she gives it considerably more than it deserves. Five Branded Women and Mother's Heart are for people working through the whole filmography rather than sampling it.