Claudia Cardinale earned her first major acting award as a young woman making her way through the ruins of postwar Italy. Within the rubble of her bombed-out town, a teenage Mara (Cardinale) meets a slightly older partisan (George Chakiris, West Side Story), but their love barely blossoms before it is halted by the hate that still lingers from the war, and by a tragedy that leaves Mara on her own. Cardinale underlines Mara’s growth from rural teenager to urban woman with the mix of playfulness and steel that became her trademark. Released the same year as Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, Bebo’s Girl is arguably her strongest role.

—Jason Sanders

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