Goodbye, Gina

When the Hollywood Studios were at their peak, MGM claimed to have more stars on its payroll than in the firmament. His cast of actors and actresses was, indeed, dazzling. Today, many years later, it is the celestial dome that has been calling most of those stars to its presence. Now it is the firmament that is disputing itself to have almost more stars of a cinematographic category than planets, comets, galaxies and other celestial bodies that are its own. The latest to join the list of “stars” that populate the universe -and beyond- is Gina Lollobrigida. She has left, leaving us with that aftertaste of “maggiorata” (sorry to Sophia Loren) that she has always accompanied her since Vittorio de Sica applied it to her with singular success in view of her well-shaped features. Curiously, when I found the news of her death, those films of the type “The most beautiful woman in the world” that she used to star in, well wrapped in “peplum” clothing (Solomon and the Queen of Sheba), circus (Trapeze ), swordsmen (Fanfan la Tulipe) or as one of the classic characters: the Esmeralda from “Notre Dame de Paris” often under the orders of directors who are not too sought after. On the contrary, my clearest memory is seeing her one Sunday afternoon dressed as a blue Fairy telling a wooden doll that it could be a real boy. It was the miniseries “Pinocchio” directed by Luigi Comencini. At that time, our virgin adolescence in cinephilia did not yet know that Geppetto was also that José Luis, the son-in-law of Amadeo (Pepe Isbert) in “El verdugo” although this, of course, mattered little to us when it came to entering that transformed Tuscany. in a magical setting with that touch of dirty and stark hyperrealism that made our hearts shrink when Pinocchio suffered the vicissitudes of the story over and over again. And there, with her “capelli turchini”, Gina appeared in a dreamlike interpretation of “Fata” that we have not forgotten despite the fifty years that have elapsed. If at the beginning we talked about the stars of the Hollywood studio system, we cannot forget the couples with whom Gina navigated the screens: Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Anthony Quinn, Yul Brynner, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Alec Guinness , Yves Montand, Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson, Sean Connery, David Niven, Vittorio Gassman, Stephen Boyd and even our Paco Rabal and Fernando Rey in the movie “Cervantes”. Now, Gina, perhaps you have come face to face with Billy Wilder, to whom you gave the Oscar in 1961. Let’s not forget that for Garci and Trueba, the director of “The Apartment” is… God.