Silvana Mangano

Silvana Mangano (Rome, April 21, 1930 - Madrid, December 16, 1989) was an Italian film actress. She was part of a generation of actors who grew out of the neorealist movement to become a female star, cataloged as a sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s. She won the David di Donatello three times for The Verona Trial (1963), The Witches (1967) and The Scientific Cardplayer (1973)-and the Nastro d'Argento for best actress twice.

He grew up poor during World War II. Mangano practiced as a dancer and worked as a model winning the Miss Rome beauty pageant in 1946. This prompted her to work in movies. She succeeded in Bitter Rice (1949) and made a success of her filmmaking career, working with many notable directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Alberto Lattuada and Vittorio De Sica. Her career continued to be successful in the ar0's years, appearing in supporting roles such as David Lynch's Dune (1984) and Nikita Mikhalkov in Dark Eyes (1987). Silvana Mangano was the wife of international film producer Dino De Laurentiis having 4 children including Veronica de Laurentis and Raffaella de Laurentiis.

Professional career

She trained as a dancer and helped herself financially as a model. In 1946, at the age of 16, she won the Miss Rome beauty pageant. A year later, she was one of the girls in the Miss Italia contest, a contest won by the future actress Lucia Bosè. In addition to Mangano, some other future stars of Italian cinema such as Gina Lollobrigida, Gianna Maria Canale and Eleonora Rossi Drago participated, although the latter was disqualified because she was married and a mother, which violated the rules of the contest.

Mangano's first contact with cinema occurred through her romantic relationship with actor Marcello Mastroianni. This led to a contract, though she would spend some time rising to international stardom with her impressive performance in Arroz amargo (Riso Amaro, 1949, directed by Giuseppe De Santis)., where he had Vittorio Gassman as a partner. Mangano and Gassman would work together again in Il lupo della Sila (Sila's Wolf).

At that time, she also played a small role in Cagliostro (Black Magic, 1949), a film starring Orson Welles.

In 1950 Silvana Mangano worked with Amedeo Nazzari in El bandolero Musolino (Il brigante Musolino, by Mario Camerini). This film made her famous internationally: she Mangano was compared to Rita Hayworth and she received offers to move to Hollywood. Producer Alexander Korda was interested in signing her, but she refused to embark on a career in America and soon after married producer Dino de Laurentiis.

Although she never reached the level of her contemporaries Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, Mangano was one of the favorite stars between the 1950s and 1970s. She appeared in Italian films such as: Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), The Gold of Naples (L'oro di Napoli, Vittorio De Sica, 1954), Mambo (Robert Rossen, 1954), Il disco volante (Tinto Brass, 1964), Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968), and Death in Venice ( Morte a Venezia, Luchino Visconti, 1971).

He worked more with Pasolini and Visconti: with the former, in Oedipus Rex and The Decameron, and with the latter, in Ludwig and Confidences. Already in 1967 both directors had collaborated with Silvana Mangano on The Witches, a collective film made up of five short films that producer De Laurentiis had thought up expressly for her. The remaining directors were Vittorio de Sica, Mauro Bolognini and Franco Rossi.

Mangano also participated in international productions such as: Ulysses (1954), with Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn; the blockbuster Barabbas (1962) by Richard Fleischer, with a cast of stars from Hollywood and Italy (Anthony Quinn, Katy Jurado, Vittorio Gassman, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Palance...); La diga sul Pacifico by René Clement, with Anthony Perkins; Martin Ritt's Five Branded Women, with Jeanne Moreau and Vera Miles; The Cardplayer Scientist, with Joseph Cotten and Bette Davis, and Black Eyes (1987) by Nikita Mijalkov, with Marcello Mastroianni. One of her daughters, Raffaella, co-produced with her father one of Mangano's last films, Dune (David Lynch, 1984).

Private life

In contrast to her successful career, Silvana Mangano experienced difficulties in her private life. She married the producer of Sour Rice, Dino De Laurentiis, with whom she had four children. Her only son died in 1981, at the age of twenty-five, in an accident in Alaska.

Mangano suffered depressive periods; he suffered from insomnia, lamented his aged appearance and had to deal with a digestive tumor. She divorced Dino de Laurentiis in 1988 but, after a bitter breakup, she made peace with him when she sensed that she had a short time to live. She died of lung cancer at the age of 59, in Madrid, where one of her daughters lived.

Filmography

• Le jugement dernier (1945)
• L'elisir d'amore (1946)
• The Crime of Giovanni Episcopo (Il delitto di Giovanni Episcopo), by Alberto Lattuada (1947)
• Gli uomini sono nemici (1948)
• bitter rice (Lovely laugh1949)
• Il lupo della Sila (1949)
• Gli spadaccini della serenissima (Blc(1949)
• Il brigante Musolino (1950)
• Anna (1951)
• Il più comico spettacolo del mondo (1953)
• Mambo (1954)
• L'oro di Napoli (1954)
• Ulysses (Ulisse1954)
• Uomini and lupi (1956)
• The storm (1958)
• Say sul Pacifico. (This Angry Age(1958)
• The Great War (1959)
• Crime grands of algemesi (1960)
• Jovanka and le altre (5 Branded Women(1960)
• Il giudizio universale (1961)
• Barrabás (Barabba(1962)
• Il processo di Verona (1963)
• My sign (1964)
• Il disco steering (1964)
• Scusi, lei è favorevole o opposite? (1966)
• Le streghe (1967)
• Edipo re (1967)
• Capriccio all'italiana (1968)
• Theorem (1968)
• Scipione detto anche l'africano (1971)
• Death in Venice (Die to Venezia1971)
• Il Decameron (1971)
• D'amore if I die nops (1972)
• He scopone scientific. (1972)
• Ludwig (1972) - Cosima Wagner
• Gruppo di famiglia in an intern (1974) - Marquesa Bianca Brumonti
• Dune (1984) - Reverend Mother Ramallo
• Oci ciornie (1987)