Legendary Italian film actor Claudia Cardinale has pᴀssed away at the age of 87, leaving behind a cinematic legacy spanning eight decades, and including a handful of classic films that remain essential today.

Cardinale made her debut in 1958’s Goha, leaving an impression that had major European directors lining up to cast her in their films. She went on to work with the likes of Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, and Spaghetti Western director Sergio Leone, along with scores of others.

Hollywood came calling in 1963, and Cardinale soon established herself as a star on both sides of the Atlantic, alongside fellow Italian actresses such as Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, and Gina Lollobrigida.

Her American films saw Cardinale co-starring with legendary Hollywood names like John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Rock Hudson.

The Legend Of Frenchie King

The Legend of Frenchie King co-stars Cardinale with fellow icon Brigitte Bardot, in an offbeat Spaghetti Western casting the pair as adversaries who eventually join forces to get revenge on the men who jailed them.

While Frenchie King was critically panned in its day, its Spaghetti Western trappings make it of interest to fans of that enduringly popular genre. The teaming of Bardot and Cardinale is itself historic, as it brings together two of the most famous Sєx symbols of the era.

The Legend of Frenchie King is also notable as a gender-bending film that provocatively casts Bardot as a female outlaw who dresses like a man, and Cardinale as the unlikely female leader of a rowdy frontier town.

Don’t Make Waves

Cardinale stars opposite Tony Curtis and Sharon Tate in a 1960s Sєx comedy that’s a cut above most other examples of that largely out-dated genre. The Italian star’s winning charm is on full display as she becomes romantically entangled with the bachelor Curtis, while also carrying on an affair with a married man.

Don’t Make Waves benefits greatly from the sure hand of Alexander Mackendrick, a comedy director schooled in the Ealing Studios style of subtle, satirical wit. Tate is particularly memorable as a Sєxually frustrated beach girl, who shifts her attention from her celibate bodybuilder boyfriend to the non-celibate Curtis.

Aerial cameraman Bob Buquor died off the coast of Malibu while filming skydiving footage for the film.

Don’t Make Waves made few waves with critics in its day, but it holds up much better than other Sєx comedies of its era, thanks to superlative writing and directing, and a fine cast.

Big Deal On Madonna Street

Cardinale has a small role in Big Deal on Madonna Street, but would herself become a big deal thanks to the early impression she made in films like this award-winning comedy, which was remade by Joe and Anthony Russo as Welcome to Collinwood.

Director Mario Monicelli intended Big Deal on Madonna Street as a parody of serious heist films like Rififi, setting a template for breezy caper comedies that would lead to everything from The Pink Panther to Ocean’s 11.

The film was Italy’s nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but lost out to Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle. It currently holds an 89% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sandra

Cardinale made three classic films with acclaimed Italian director Luchino Visconti. The third of them, Sandra, cast her as the lead in a modern-day retelling of the Greek myth of Electra.

The film deals with subject-matter that remains controversial, which is no surprise considering it was co-written and directed by Visconti, a filmmaker who had no trouble tackling such material. Visconti keeps intact the brother-sister incest from the Electra story, while increasing the darkness factor by tying the story in with Nazi atrocities.

Sandra’s unique blending of ancient mythology and modern-day tragedy remains powerful today, and was indeed lauded in its time, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

The Professionals

The Professionals is a Western whose cast is filled with legendary stars of the genre, including Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Woody Strode, Robert Ryan, and Jack Palance. Cardinale plays Maria, a kidnapped rancher’s wife whose rescue is undertaken by the тιтular professionals.

The Professionals reportedly grossed $19.5 million in 1966, $202 million adjusted for inflation.

The Professionals features a plot twist that changes the stakes of its story, making it stand out from other big-budget Westerns. The film is a solid example of the Western team-up movie, a sub-genre that became big in the 1960s after the success of The Magnificent Seven, and remains influential to this day through superhero team-up films like The Avengers.

The movie received three Oscar nominations, including one for its outstanding cinematography, and another for Richard Brooks’ gritty, intelligent direction.

The Pink Panther

Peter Sellers created one of his most iconic characters in The Pink Panther, starring as the bungling Inspector Clouseau in an all-star heist comedy that includes Cardinale as the beautiful Princess Dala, the owner of the тιтular Pink Panther diamond, whose notoriety makes it a sought-after target for would-be thieves.

The Pink Panther is widely regarded as less funny than its sequel A SH๏τ in the Dark, but it is still an unmissable comedy thanks to Blake Edwards’ co-writing and direction, its cast of famous actors all behaving shadily, its hilarious Sellers performance, and its iconic тιтle sequence.

Unusually for a film released in 1963, The Pink Panther spawned a whole franchise, one that was revived by Steve Martin in 2006’s reboot.

The Leopard

Burt Lancaster plays a Sicilian prince, but such bizarre casting does nothing to diminish The Leopard, a cinema classic. Cardinale plays Angelica, the daughter of a wealthy Don, who becomes a chess piece in a game of politics.

The Leopard features spectacular art direction and costumes, true to its reputation as one of the most lavish historical epics of its era. The film’s reputation has indeed only grown over the years, as restoration work has repaired the editing and dubbing issues that plagued its initial release.

Visconti’s epic historical film, now available in all its 70mm Technicolor glory, won the Palme d’Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and is now regarded as arguably the director’s masterpiece. Martin Scorsese has named The Leopard his favorite movie of all-time.

8 ½

Cardinale plays an idealized version of herself in Federico Fellini’s legendary autobiographical film, starring Marcello Mastroianni as Guido, a creatively blocked film director. Fellini’s dream-like experiment in cinematic self-portraiture won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and ranked 6th on the 2022 Sight & Sound survey directors’ list.

8 1/2 is so-named because it was, by Fellini’s reckoning, his 8th film plus two shorts, which he counted together as a half.

Many a filmmaker has drawn inspiration from Fellini’s masterpiece, including Woody Allen, David Lynch, Bob Fosse and Charlie Kaufman. 8 ½ may be the most narcissistic movie ever made, but it’s also one of the most dazzling displays of cinematic style ever committed to celluloid.

Filmmaker and Italian movie historian Martin Scorsese ranks Fellini’s challenging and beautiful 8 ½ as one of his favorite all-time films.

Fitzcarraldo/Burden of Dreams

Werner Herzog’s notorious jungle epic Fitzcarraldo is perhaps less famous than Les Blank’s documentary about its insane production, which saw Herzog clashing with infamous star Klaus Kinski, while undertaking the completely lunatic quest to drag a ship over a mountain.

Both the real movie and the making-of documentary are indispensable documents of artistic obsession, with Herzog emerging as one of cinema’s great originals. No fan of the iconic German filmmaker can truly appreciate his mad genius without making a double-feature of Fitzcarraldo and Burden of Dreams.

Herzog’s grand folly of a movie sees Cardinale playing the key role of Molly, the brothel-keeper who finances Fitzcarraldo’s dream of bringing Caruso to the jungle. Fitzcarraldo may benefit from having a crazy backstory, but it can be appreciated on its own merits, as a hallucinatory, flawed, at times confounding near-masterpiece.

Once Upon A Time In The West

Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy was only the prologue to his ultimate Western masterpiece, the sweeping, majestic Once Upon a Time in the West. Cardinale stars as Jill McBain, a former Sєx worker who arrives in the town of Flagstone seeking to start a new life with the man she recently married, who has just been murdered by a notorious outlaw.

Leone invented the Spaghetti Western with his trio of Clint Eastwood films, but perfected the genre with a movie that does not miss the absent Eastwood, because it has Charles Bronson, Jason Robards and, in one of movie history’s great playing-against-type casting moments, Henry Fonda.

Ennio Morricone’s classic score helps elevate Leone’s epic Western to iconic status. Roger Ebert originally denigrated the film for its length and convoluted plot, but even he eventually came around, and belatedly declared it a masterpiece.