Beauty in the cinema - Claudia Cardinale

My Claudia Cardinale interview and career profile, published in yesterday's arts section of The Australian, makes an appropriate companion piece to my thoughts on beauty in cinema a couple of posts below.

Extract:

"GAZING on the young Claudia Cardinale, with that gracefully swan-like neck, hypnotisingly dark eyes and curvaceous figure, it's not hard to see why she was dubbed Italy's brunette answer to Brigitte Bardot's blonde bombshell in the early 1960s. Bardot herself was once quoted as saying Cardinale was destined to take her place ("After BB comes CC, no?").

"I hesitate to bring this up when talking to the Tunisian-born Cardinale ahead of an upcoming Melbourne retrospective devoted to her work, thinking she may be long over it.

"I needn't have worried. Not only does she not mind but Cardinale, who at 71 is still making films and appearing in theatre, finds the comparison "fantastic". For her, Bardot "was the most beautiful actress", the male equivalent, she adds, being Marlon Brando..."

The feature is hooked on an upcoming retrospective screening season devoted to Cardinale at Melbourne's ACMI. Hmm. Yet again I think I may be living in the wrong city...