Bose, Lucia

(1931-)

(Born Lucia Borloni.) Actress. Bose entered films after winning the Miss Italia title in 1947, playing a young peasant girl in Giuseppe De Santis's Non c'e pace tra gli ulivi (Under the Olive Tree, 1950). Cast more appropriately, she was able to give much more convincing performances in Michelangelo Antonioni's Cronaca d'un amore (Story of a Love Affair, 1950) and La signora senza camelie (The Lady without Camelias, 1953), and in two charming comedies directed by Luciano Emmer, Parigi e sempre Parigi (Paris Is Always Paris, 1951) and Le ragazze di Piazza di Spagna (Three Girls from Rome, 1952). Much in demand, she reached an early peak in her career in 1955 when she appeared in Francesco Maselli's Gli sbandati (Abandoned, 1955), Luis Bunuel's Cela s'appelle l'aurore (This Is the Dawn, 1955), and Juan Antonio Bardem's La muerte de un ciclista (The Death of a Cyclist, 1955), on the set of which she met the flamboyant Spanish bullfighter Luis Dominguin. A year later, having married Dominguin, she announced her retirement from the cinema.

   She returned to the silver screen in the late 1960s in a number of Spanish films, beginning with Nocturno 29 (Nocturne 29, 1968), directed by Catalan director Pedro Portabella, and in Italy where she appeared in Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Sotto il segno dello scorpione (Under the Sign of Scorpio, 1969), Federico Fellini's Satyricon (Fellini Satyricon, 1969), and Mauro Bolognini's Metello (1970). She also appeared in a number of French films, notably as the mother in Marguerite Duras's Nathalie Granger (1972).

   After playing Donna Violanta in Donald Schmid's Violanta (1976), she again retired from the screen until the late 1980s, when she returned to play the mother in Francesco Rosi's adaptation of the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cronaca di una morte annunciate (Chronicle of a Death Foretold, 1987) and Dona Elvira in Tonino Cervi's Moliere adaptation L'avaro (The Miser, 1990). After appearing in the television miniseries Alta societa (Surviving at the Top, 1994), she rather appropriately played the role of Old Safiye in Ferzan Ozpetek's Harem suare (1999).