Calamai, Clara

(1915-1998)

   Actress. One of the major Italian female film stars of the interwar period, Calamai first appeared (as Clara Mais) in Aldo Vergano's historical costume drama Pietro Micca (1938). Her first major role was in Ferdinando Maria Poggioli's elegiac melodrama about student life in turn-of-the-century Turin, Addio giovinezza (Goodbye Youth, 1940), where she played the part of the seductive older woman. She was again the temptress in Raffaele Matarazzoi's white telephone comedy L'avventuriera del piano di sopra (The Adventuress from the Floor Above, 1941) but achieved national notoriety for a scene in Alessandro Blasetti's La cena delle beffe (The Jester's Supper, 1941) in which she appeared, for a moment, bare breasted. While this undoubtedly contributed to her erotic pinup image at the time, her real place in Italian film history was earned by her much more nuanced interpretation of the character of the adulteress wife, Giovanna, in Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (Obsession, 1943), a role that had been marked originally for Anna Magnani.

   Although slightly compromised by association with the previous regime, Calamai's career continued into the immediate postwar period with very creditable performances in Mario Camerini's Resistance drama Due letter anonime (Two Anonymous Letters, 1945) and Duillio Coletti's L'adultera (The Adulteress, 1945), for which she received the Nastro d'argento for Best Actress. From this point, however, her career quickly declined and she subsequently only appeared in a handful of minor films. Perhaps in homage to her brilliant work in Ossessione, Visconti gave her cameo roles in Le notti bianche (White Nights, 1957), where she played the part of a passing prostitute, and as an ex-starlet in La strega bruciata viva (The Witch Burned Alive), an episode Visconti made for the compilation film Le streghe (The Witches, 1967). Ironically, for someone who had been regarded as one of the foremost beauties of the Italian screen, her very last appearance on film was as the old and crazed murderess in Dario Argento's horror film classic, Profondo rosso (Deep Red, 1975).