Antonietta Beluzzi

Publish date: 2024-08-17

Italian actress Antonietta Beluzzi, who, despite making only three films, left an indelible impression on international audiences and remains one of the most enduring emblems of director Federico Fellini’s trademark vision of the grotesquely abundant female form, died Aug. 6 of a heart attack in her hometown of Bologna. She was 67.

Beluzzi first encountered Fellini, who rechristened her Beluzzona, when she traveled to Rome in response to an advertisement seeking a Juno-esque woman for the cast of “8-1/2.”

While the audition was unsuccessful, the director remembered her 10 years later when he was casting “Amarcord,” his love-hate reminiscence of his childhood on the Emilia Romagna coast.

Beluzzi played the town tobacconist, whose mountainous breasts, barely contained in a skimpy angora sweater, enveloped Titta, the tale’s youthful protagonist in what was part dream and part nightmare. “Amarcord” won the 1974 Academy Award for best foreign-language film.

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The remainder of Beluzzi’s film work was undistinguished. In the years following “Amarcord,” she was featured in Marco Vicario’s sex comedy “L’Erotomane” and in Paolo Nuzzi’s “Piatto piange.”

After her brief taste of celebrity, Beluzzi returned to her previous existence, running a dressmaker’s shop in Bologna with her sister, Maria, by whom she is survived.

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