Franca Maria Norsa was born into bourgeois Milan in 1920. Her childhood was marked by a conflicted relationship with her parents and a consuming passion for reading, theatre, and opera. Then came the racial laws of 1938: the family was “of mixed race,” and her Jewish father and brother were forced to flee to Switzerland. Franca stayed in Milan with her mother, survived the Nazi brutality, and from that suffering irony was born.

She began as a mimic in the drawing rooms of the Milanese upper bourgeoisie. After the war, she created a puppet theatre with Giorgio Strehler, then made her radio debut with the character that would make her famous: the Signorina Snob. In Paris she founded the company “I Gobbi” with Vittorio Caprioli and Alberto Bonucci, revolutionising Italian cabaret.

Cinema came calling: she worked with Totò, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Sordi, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, and Vittorio Gassman. She wrote Il segno di Venere and appeared in Steno’s Piccola posta, where the hilarious Eva Bolasky was born. Directors competed for her talent: Fellini, Lattuada, Dino Risi, Monicelli, Zampa, Bolognini. She married Vittorio Caprioli, and together they made Parigi o cara.

But her heart remained in the theatre. She invented the Sora Cecioni, a Roman working-class woman always on the phone with her mamma. She co-founded the Concorso Mattia Battistini with Maurizio Rinaldi, directed over twenty opera productions, and gave young artists the chance to make their debut.

“I am perfectly capable of playing dramatic roles, like any actor. But I love to be called a comedian.”

In this documentary, Franca Valeri entrusts to Donatella Baglivo the memories of a lifetime: love, femininity, the craft of acting, the future. And at the end, at the director’s request, she improvises a few lines as the Sora Cecioni — the character she loved most.

She passed away in August 2020, just days after turning one hundred. A century of Franca Valeri.