Monica Vitti, Star of Antonioni Masterpieces, Dies at 90

variety.com:

Carmel Dagan Staff WriterItalian actress Monica Vitti, best known internationally for starring in Michelangelo Antonioni’s breakthrough cinematic trilogy “L’Avventura,” “La Notte” and “L’Eclisse,” as well as in the director’s “Red Desert,” has died.

She was 90. The news of her death was tweeted by former Rome mayor and film critic Walter Veltroni on Wednesday.Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più.

Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022(Roberto Russo, her companion in these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more.

I do so with great grief, affection, and nostalgia)Vitti, known for her enigmatic, distant beauty — the All Movie Guide termed her the “high priestess of frosty sensuality” — had been retired for more than a decade due to Alzheimer’s.Vitti and Antonioni had certainly enjoyed a fruitful collaboration, but in an essay for the Criterion Collection, Gilberto Perez argued that it was fundamentally different from most such relationships: “In her films with him, Vitti is as much beholding as beheld, identified with the director, whose gaze she doubles.