BELLADONNA

Of course, there’s Marilyn, Rita, Audrey, and perhaps a few others I’ve forgotten in my internal cine-reel hall of fame. But of all the screen goddesses of the 20th century, I firmly believe none was quite so inherently cinematic as Claudia Cardinale, who appeared like an immaculate conception of celluloid—as if she had always existed in 20-foot close-ups solely on film and never in reality. Not so much The Purple Rose of Cairo, more The Jasmine Flower of Tunisia.

Naturally, there was the woman in real life too, but for most cineastes it is her ageless image we remember, preserved in films such as Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, The Leopard, Fellini’s 8½, and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, where she was both earthy and regal in equal measure. She could play a peasant girl, a princess, and everything in between, yet she always retained the quintessence of her own innate Claudia in every role she portrayed, with a rebellious, untameable fire burning behind those intense, dark brown eyes.

Perhaps the real woman off-screen was always present in the characters she played on-screen, an inseparable fusion of life and art.

For me, it will always be as Jill in Sergio Leone’s western magnum opus Once Upon a Time in the West that the actress was immortalised most indelibly—where she embodies both the muse of parched power brokers in the Old West and the civilising dream of a better America, rising out of bloodshed and brutality.

Cardinale’s beauty in the epic film was matched by her sublime character theme, composed by Ennio Morricone, which captured both her grace and her determined spirit, and will forever evoke her image whenever and wherever it is played, like a musical incantation.

Rest in peace, Claudia Cardinale (15 April 1938 – 23 September 2025)