Elisa Cegani

Elisa Cegani (1911–1996) was one of the most representative actresses of Italian cinema of the 1930s and 1940s. She was the muse of director Alessandro Blasetti and appeared in almost all his films. Cegani appeared in 60 films between 1935 and 1983.


Italian postcard ny Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1936.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1937. Photo: I.C.I.

Lover or sister?

Elisa Cegani was born in 1911 in Turin. She was accredited at the beginning of her career also with the pseudonym of Elisa Sandri.

She made her debut on the screen in the Italian navy drama Aldebaran (1935), directed by Alessandro Blasetti. Actress and director would remain forever linked, sentimentally, as well as working together on almost all his films and television works, up to the 1979 RAI miniseries Racconti di Fantascienza.

Thus she was e.g. a mannequin pretending to be a countess in the comedy Contessa di Parma/The Countess of Parma (Alessandro Blasetti, 1937), Gino Cervi's love interest in the historical film Ettore Fieramosca (Alessandro Blasetti, 1938), and Massimo Girotti's lover (but as later comes out his sister) in the Medieval fantasy La corona di ferro/The Iron Crown (Alessandro Blasetti, 1941), also with Cervi and Luisa Ferida.

In the 1930s Cegani would also work with other directors and played in the romantic comedy Ma non è una cosa seria/But It's Nothing Serious (Mario Camerini, 1936) opposite Vittorio De Sica, and Cavalleria/Cavalry (Goffredo Alessandrini, 1936).

In Cavalleria, she is the delicate aristocratic Speranza who renounces her love for the handsome cavalryman Umberto Solaro (Amedeo Nazzari), marrying an Austrian baron to save her family. After his racehorse has died he becomes a WWI pilot.


Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 43.


Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit (Balleri & Fratini, Firenze), no. 2153. Photo: Pesce / E.N.I.C. Elisa Cegani in La corona di ferro/The Iron Crown (Alessandro Blasetti, 1941).

Nietzsche's mother

In the postwar years, Elisa Cegani would continue to act in Alessandro Blasetti's films, e.g. in the war film Un giorno nella vita/A Day in Life (Alessandro Blasetti, 1946), the historical drama Fabiola (Alessandro Blasetti, 1949), starring Michèle Morgan and Henri Vidal, Altri tempi/In Olden Days (Alessandro Blasetti, 1952), and Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954).

Despite some important roles such as the title role in Eleonora Duse (Filippo Walter Ratti, 1947) and Giuseppina Strepponi in Casa Ricordi/House of Ricordi(Carmine Gallone, 1954), her activity became more limited to less important films or secondary parts.

In the late 1960s, she was recalled by great authors. She participated in Le clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil, 1969), while in Liliana Cavani's Al di là del bene e del male/Beyond Good and Evil (1977), she played Nietzsche's mother.

Cegani was also a theatre and television actress, for which she played e.g. in 1966 the television drama Luisa Sanfelice, directed by Leonardo Cortese. Her last film part Cegani had in Domani si balla!/Tomorrow We Dance (Maurizio Nichetti, 1982), a comedy about aliens sending signals through television.

Elisa Cegani died in Rome in 1996. She was 84.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1938 XVI. Photo: Max.


German postcard for Das Programm von Heute, Berlin, by Ross Verlag. Photo: Difu

Sources: Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 12 September 2023.