LUCIA BOSÈ

(28 January 1931 - 23 March 2020)

The Italian actress Lucia Bosè, who has died aged 89, after contracting the Coronavirus, started her working life in a Milanese bakery before winning the Miss Italia beauty contest at the age of 16. Born Lucia Borloni to parents Domenico and Francesca, she became famous during Italy’s period of Neorealism cinema in the 1950s. Her first film was Under the Olive Tree for Giuseppe De Santis, playing opposite Raf Vallone. Then she worked for Michelangelo Antonioni in Chronicle of a Love. More films followed from Mario Soldati, Luciano Emmer and others until Antonioni cast her again in La Signore Senza Camelie. She worked constantly apart from ten years from the mid-1950s when she brought up her children. Among her films released worldwide were Juan Antonio Bardem’s Death of a Cyclist and Luis Buñuel’s That Is the Dawn. In 1960 she was uncredited in Jean Cocteau’s Le Testament d’Orphḗe and later on appeared in the Taviani Brothers’ Under the Sign of Scorpio, played La matrona in Fellini Satyricon and had another uncredited role in The Picasso Summer, a Ray Bradbury story, with Albert Finney, Yvette Mimieux and Graham Stark! She played George Sand opposite Christopher Sandford as Chopin in A Winter in Mallorca, worked with director Mauro Bolognini in Metello, appeared opposite Farley Granger in Something Creeping in the Dark, was directed by Liliana Cavani in The Guest, appeared with Jeanne Moreau in Marguerite Duras’ Nathalie Granger, and was directed by Moreau for Lumiere. She acted with Rod Steiger in The Heroes, played the vampiric Countess Bathory in The Legend of Blood Castle, and worked with Bolognini again in Down the Ancient Stairs. The best of her later films was probably Francesco Rosi’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold in 1987. She married and divorced the Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin. They have three children, Miguel, Lucia and Paola.

MICHAEL DARVELL