
Vintage Italian postcard, late 1930s/ early 1940s. ASER (A. Scarmiglia Editori, Roma), Nr. 74. Scalera. Photo by Pesce, Rome. Possibly a card for the period piece La compagnia della teppa (Corrado D'Errico, Scalera 1941), set in Napoleonic times.
Clelia Matania (1918–1981) was an Italian film and voice actress. Born in London from Neapolitan parents - her father was the painter and illustrator Fortunino Matania - she did drama school in London and started to act in her first films by the mid-1930s. When the family moved back to Italy around 1937, she started a rich career in Italian cinema in the late 1930s and the war years, starting with Partire/Departure (Amleto Palermi, 1938) with Vittorio De Sica. Several films with Palermi followed. In 1939 she had her first lead in Father for a Night/ Papà per una notte by Mario Bonnard and starring Sergio Tofano. She would often act with the De Filippo's, such as A che servono questi quattrini? (1942) and After Casanova's Fashion (/ Casanova farebbe così! (1942) , and with Totò, such as Romulus and the Sabines/ Il ratto delle sabine, Sette ore di guai (1951), Totò e le donne (1952), and L'uomo, la bestia e la virtù (1953). In the postwar era, Matania, now often acting as mother of one of the leading characters, had also major parts in Farewell, My Beautiful Naples/Addio, mia bella Napoli! (1946), Eleven Men and a Ball/ 11 uomini e un pallone (1948), La bisarca (1950), Stasera sciopero (1951), Luigi Zampa's Easy Years/ Anni facili (1953), etc. In later years she acted in Italo-American films (The Seven Hills of Rome, 1957; Anna of Brooklyn, 1958) and Italo-French and Italo-British coproductions filmed in Italy. She was also active as voice actress. An important late supporting part she had in the thriller Don't Look Now (Nichoals Roeg 1973) with Donald Sutherland.