Gina Lollobrigida and the Changing Face of Fame

Gina Lollobrigida, who died this week at the age of 95, was known in the 1950s and thereafter for the kind of beauty which drove Italian men to self-destruction; and for performances in films which seemed to define a scrappy, energetic, self-possessed Italian womanhood.   

Here’s to Crime

Actors, like artists, often reveal themselves in the jobs they take for the money – and in the projects that get away from them. Orson Welles is one of them. Enough has been written and said about a series of adverts he made in the latter half of his life already – enough to paint him forever as a drunken failure taking jobs cash in hand, drinking – a little too greedily – the free wine. An enemy of promise.