Shirley MacLaine

Writing on Nights of Cabiria for the BFI, Geoffrey Macnab compares Shirley MacLaine with Giulietta Masina and gives the ground for it: the character she plays in Sweet Charity rests on Cabiria. Masina has the lead in Nights of Cabiria, directed by Federico Fellini, and MacLaine has it in Sweet Charity. Awards from the Berlinale spread across three separate decades: the acting Silver Bear of 1959, for Ask Any Girl; the same award shared with Simone Signoret in 1971 for Desperate Characters; and in 1999 an honorary Golden Bear. At the Italian David awards she won the foreign actress category twice, with Irma la Douce in 1964 and Terms of Endearment in 1984. Madame Sousatzka stayed a nomination in 1989. One more thing is worth marking: this fact reaches us not from a review of her own film but from a review of the film her character was derived from. The piece writes the Italian actor's name as Massina; ours writes Masina, and it dates Sweet Charity to 1968 where our catalogue says 1969.