CARDINALE, Claudia

(1938– )

    The former beauty queen has been a legend in Italian cinema for decades. Her roles in cinema Westerns began as the kidnapped Mexican of an American landowner in The Professionals(1966). The professionals hired to recapture her, played by Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode, discover a very different young wife than what they expected. The beautiful young woman wins the men over and gains her freedom from a tyrannical husband. Her most famous role, however, was in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West(1968) in which she played Jill McBain, a prostitute turned wife and mother, whose family is brutally murdered by the deadly gunfighter Frank (Henry Fonda). Cardinale provides much of the focus in the film as her character goes about recovering from her loss and finding the right men (Charles Bronson and Jason Robards) to destroy Frank. Ennio Morricone’s haunting “Jill’s Theme” plays as Jill searches through the ruined homestead for reasons why her family was murdered, and it then becomes the theme of the film. Cardinale is still a force in Italian cinema.