The Irresistible Glamour of Monica Vitti
It’s one of the most indelible scenes in all of Italian cinema. In Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960), the actor Monica Vitti walks pensively down the streets of Noto, Sicily, as more and more men gaze in her direction. Like much of the rest of the film—about a woman who goes missing on a remote Italian island—the moment has been endlessly scrutinized for its striking imagery and subtext. The White Lotus even replicated it, shot for shot, during season two, with Aubrey Plaza standing in for Vitti—a performer widely regarded in her native country as the queen of Italian cinema.