Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1942. Photo: Bragaglia. Adriana Benetti in Teresa Venerdi (Vittorio De Sica, 1941).
Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 4377. Photo: Bragaglia. Adriana Benetti and Andrea Checchi in Avanti c'è posto/There's Room Up Ahead (Mario Bonnard, 1942).
A career catapulted
Adriana Benetti was born in Quacchio, a town east of Ferrara, in 1919.
She graduated from the Istituto Magistrale at Ferrara, after which she moved to Rome where she was admitted to the film academy Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. While attending her courses she was discovered by Vittorio De Sica, who directed her film debut in 1941.
She played the role of protagonist in Teresa Venerdí/Doctor Beware (Vittorio De Sica, 1941). This White Telephone drama was a remake of the Hungarian comedy Péntek Rézi/Rézi Friday (Ladislao Vajda, 1938). Benetti showed her talent in a scene in which she tries to separate her favourite man, dr. Pietro Vignali (De Sica himself) from his spendthrift Vaudeville girlfriend Loletta Prima (Anna Magnani), by giving it all the melodrama needed to chase the girlfriend.
Benetti's film career then catapulted. She peaked in the 1940s and early 1950s. Alessandro Blasetti directed her in his famous Quattro passi fra le nuvole/Four Steps in the Clouds (1942). It tells the story of a married man who agrees to act as the husband of a young pregnant woman who has been abandoned by her boyfriend. Aesthetically, it is close to Italian neorealism. In this film, she was first paired with Gino Cervi.
Luigi Zampa directed her in the White Telephone drama C'è sempre un ma!/There's Always a But! (Luigi Zampa, 1942) starring Carla Del Poggio. Then she starred opposite Andrea Checchi and Aldo Fabrizi in the comedy Avanti c'è posto/Before the Postman (Mario Bonnard, 1942). It was Fabrizi's first starring film. Alongside Massimo Serato and Vittorio Sanipoli, Benedetti acted in Quartieri alti/In High Places (Mario Soldati, 1943).
Italian postcard by A. Terzoli, Roma / Stabilimenti Angeli, Terni, no. 263. Photo: Bragaglia.
Italian postcard by B.F.F. (Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze) Editori, no. 43710. Photo: Bragaglia.
Italy's little fiancée
After the war, Adriana Benetti took part in two musical films in 1945. First, she was the partner of Gino Bechi in Torna ... a Sorrento (C.L. Bragaglia, 1945), then of Opera star Tito Gobbi in the war drama O sole mio/My Sun (Giacomo Gentilomo, 1945). Later she acted with Fosco Giachetti in Il sole di Montecassino/Fear No Evil (G.M. Scotese, 1946), and with Eduardo and Titina De Filippo in Uno tra la folla (Ennio Cerlesi, 1946).
Goffredo Alessandrini directed her in Furia/Fury (1947), a film in which she once again starred alongside Gino Cervi and as well with Rossano Brazzi. After that, she returned to the set with Fabrizi in Tombolo, paradiso nero (Giorgio Ferroni, 1947). In 1950 she was a partner of Toto in the comedy 47 morto che parla/47 Dead Men Speaking (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950). Benetti specialised in roles characterised by simplicity or naivety. She was called the 'fidanzatina d'Italia' (Italy's little fiancée), a term that was coined to distinguish her from Assia Noris who was called 'Italy's fiancée'.
French director André Cayatte wrote the script for the Italian film Manù il contrabbandiere/Under the Cards (Lucio De Caro, 1947). Marcel L'Herbier and Paolo Moffa directed her in French-Italian historical drama, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (1950), in which she played Nidia. Unfortunately, in the original novel on which the film is based, Nidia is one of the central characters, but in this film, she is killed off early in the film by the evil priest Arbax (Marcel Herrand).
Benetti also acted in some Spanish and Argentinian films, such as Hugo del Carril's Argentinian film Las aguas bajan turbias)/Dark River (1952). In the 1950s, she gradually lost popularity, with the fading of the characteristics that distinguished her so much. She played the music teacher in the comedy Le diciottenni/Eighteen Year Olds (Mario Mattoli, 1955), starring Marisa Allasio.
Benetti played the mature girlfriend in A vent'anni è sempre festa/In Your Twenties It's Always a Party (Vittorio Duse, 1957), the film with which she closed her film career. Precisely because of that aura of the eternal naive one, that so distinguished her and that had made her famous, in 1947 she scandalised Italy at the time by posing in a bikini for the illustrated weekly Tempo. Adriana Benetti died in Rome in 2016, at the high age of 96 years.
Italian modern postcard by Ed. Gel. Photo: Rol Film. Aldo Fabrizi and Adriana Benetti in the Italian film comedy Avanti c'é posto/Come in, There is Place Enough... (Mario Bonnard, 1942). The plot deals with a bus attendant (Fabrizi) who helps a poor young girl (Benetti). He falls in love with her, but she prefers his younger colleague (Andrea Checchi).
Spanish leaflet by Cifesa Produccion, using the Spanish poster for the Italian film Quattro passi fra le nuvole/Four Steps in the Clouds (Alessandro Blasetti, 1942), starring Gino Cervi and Adriana Benetti. Caption: The adventure of a man who lived the life of another. Publicity for the showing of this film alternated with the American film Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding, 1939) at the Madrid-based Cine Victoria, which opened in 1940.
Sources: Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.
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