Qhis evening on Rai 3 at around 21.20 will be broadcast the beautiful documentary on Laura Antonelli Without malice. Passionately directed by Bernard Bédarida and Nello Correale and which he retraces the life and career of the unforgettable actress.
Without Malice: the doc on Laura Antonelli is on Rai 3
Before becoming the diva known and desired by all, Laura Antonelli was born in 1941 in Istria into a modest family who moved to Naples when she was little. Ambitious, enterprising and of indisputable beauty, arrives in Rome in the early 1960s to teach physical education and thanks to his extremely photogenic appearance, the first carousels, some photo novels and small film roles arrived. In a succession of auteur films and slightly slapdash comedies.
In 1969 the big break came with the film Venus in fur which, however, remains blocked for four years and delays the explosion of his career. Which will happen instead in 1973 thanks to a role that will mark her forever: that of Angela La Barbera in the film Malice by Salvatore Samperi. Strongly desired by the director, Laura Antonelli, who had just filmed The male blackbird together with Lando Buzzanca, with Malice breaks the box office and becomes the most sensual and desired woman in Italian cinema.
Laura Antonelli in a scene from the film “Malice”. (IPA)
The golden years and love with Jean-Paul Belmondo
After the triumph of Samperi’s film, everything changes with shocking rapidity for Laura. Years of social life, successes, magazine covers and many real and presumed flirtations. In the same year of Maliceon the set of the film by Claude Chabrol Trap for a wolfknows what it will be the great love of her life: the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. A burning and troubled passion, straddling Italy and France, which will last until 1980 and for which the French actor will ruin an already fixed marriage with the beautiful Ursula Andress. Meanwhile, Laura plays for Dino Risi, Luigi Comencini and Luchino Visconti which, in 1976, gave her perhaps the most beautiful role of her filmography in The innocent together with Giancarlo Giannini. But the career of the actress soon slips towards a slow and inexorable decline.
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Laura Antonelli. (RCS archive)
Personal crises and legal affairs
After the end of her love affair with Belmondo, the eighties for the actress will only be the sad prelude to what will happen next. “Forced” to accept roles in b-films, her career suffers a resounding setback. Despite the good success of titles such as Department stores and some television drama. Then, in 1991, the first troubles with justice followed the discovery in his villa in Cerveteri of several grams of cocaine and the sentence, later canceled on appeal, to 3 years in prison. In the same year, agree to turn Malice 2 thousanddisastrous sequel to the 1973 cult and, during filming, he decides to entrust himself to the care of a cosmetic surgeon who will forever disfigure her beautiful face.
Laura Antonelli on the set of “Malizia 2mila”. (Rai Documentaries Press Office)
After these two tragic experiences, it will begin for the diva a slow descent made of depression and psychiatric hospitalizations then at the beginning of 2000 his physical and psychological conditions worsened further. Now unrecognizable and almost forgotten by everyone, Laura begins to refuse even the help of lifelong friends. As Lino Banfi who, in 2010, launched an appeal to Silvio Berlusconi on the pages of Corriere della Sera to get them financial aid. Meanwhile, the actress finds some solace in religion but she is forbidden by her adopted son Germano Randi who will be denounced by Laura in the following years for circumvention of an incompetent. Until the tragic epilogue, in 2015 at the age of 73, when dies of a heart attack at his home in Ladispoli.
An intense and troubled life that the two directors reconstruct also thanks to the participation of Laura’s friends and colleagues. Like Jean-Paul Belmondo, Giancarlo Giannini, Michele Placido, Claudia Gerini and Marco Risi. Their voices – alternating with photographs, film excerpts and the analysis of the film critic Valerio Caprara – have allowed us to tell the different aspects of the actress. And to evoke, with grace and respect, the last years of an artist’s life that the public has never forgotten. Nor stopped loving.
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