Carla Miló
Carla Miló | |
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| Born | 11 February 1933 Xakalen, Alscia |
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| Known for | Gallista comedies |
Elena Elladio (born 11 February 1933), better known by the stage name Carla Miló (Gylic transcription: Karla Miló), is a Megelanese–Gylian actress, model, media personality, and businesswoman. She achieved stardom in the 1960s with a series of collaborations with director Vittorio Marchi, in which she portrayed gallista characters — satirically embodying traits of male chauvinism as a woman.
Early life
She was born Elena Elladio on 11 February 1933 in Xakalen. She came from a Free Megelanese working-class family. Her father had wanted a son, but when Elena was born, he simply raised and treated her like one.
Her parents were firmly nationalist, expressing strong pride in being Megelanese. They succeeded in instilling the same ethnic pride into Elena, but the disproportionate nature of her parents' pride compared to their circumstances inspired her towards comedy.
The family moved to Cacerta after Alscia's dissolution, to escape the danger of the Liberation War. They moved between Molise and Molfetta several times. She described her childhood self as "a bundle of contradictions": an aggressive tomboy with a love of sports, and also a "compulsive dreamer" interested in the arts.
She attended school in Cacerta, where she was a good but not exceptional student. Her parents returned to Megelan after the Warlord Era ended, but she stayed in Cacerta.
Career
Elena began working as a model after leaving school. She became a successful model, appearing on the cover of many fashion magazines, and was in demand for her black hair and arched eyebrows.
Her success as a model gave her an entrance into acting. She appeared in several television advertisments and got small roles in films, traveling between Cacerta and Megelan. She also began visiting the Free Territories more frequently as the Liberation War was ending.
One of her notable early roles was in the 1960 film Adua e le compagne ("Adua and her friends"), in which she played a prostitute who starts a restaurant with her colleagues. It was one of her first larger roles to foreground her sensual allure.
She was introduced to Megelanese director Vittorio Marchi in 1960, which became a turning point in her career. She changed her stage name to "Carla Miló", and began a lengthy collaboration. She credited Vittorio as "the first director who really understood me", and appreciated the way he encouraged her brashness on screen.
Gallista
Carla's first release under her stage name and in collaboration with Vittorio was Nuovi costumi (1960). The film introduced her defining character: a lecherous libertine constantly getting into misadventures but ultimately succeeding through her pluck and wits. The film was a success, and launched a series of Carla–Vittorio collaborations, which were dubbed Gallista comedies, playing on the Italian term gallismo, meaning "exaggerated masculinity".
Carla jokingly described her gallista characters as "female chauvinist pigs": they satirically embodied stereotypically masculine traits, especially in terms of bravado, swagger, and sexual assertiveness. These traits were counterbalanced by Carla's refined poise and impeccable wardrobe, providing an amusingly feminine contrast to their masculine pretensions. The characters' great efforts to maintain an elegant appearance at all times were depicted extensively on screen, reinforcing the satirical message of masculinity as a social performance.
Vittorio similarly noted that Carla portrayed her characters as harmless braggarts (sbruffoni innocenti). Although her pick-up lines could be blunt and somewhat crude on occasion, it was her playful delivery and polished appearance that infused them with charm. Her eventual success at seduction, established over multiple encounters, thus served as a form of wish fulfilment to the audience. The appeal was perhaps best summed up by one of her own film titles: Cortigiana Cortese ("Courteous courtesan").
The gallista films adhered to a tight formula, enforced by Carla as a screenwriter and producer. They were strongly influenced by orgone films, especially in their celebratory depiction of sexuality and strong mutual relationships of trust and reciprocity, as well as Megelanese neorealism. As the series advanced, new influences were assimilated, including nouvelle vague and psychedelia.
One of their defining traits was her playfully boastful narration, as well as scenes where she broke the fourth wall and spoke asides directly to the audience. This was an element it came to share with georgette comedies like Sandra, and in Carla's case it created a "conspiratorial" relationship to the audience. Her trademark habits of shushing the camera, winking at the audience, and often referring to "our little secret" created an effect that The Etra Echo likened to "a riveting friend sharing juicy gossip".
Carla's gallista films made her into a star and a prominent voice in Gylian light comedy. Commentators praised the films' profound exploration of gender roles beneath their light surface, and their fundamentally liberatory message.
Radix commented that "In a world turned upside down by the Golden Revolution, Carla reassured viewers that nothing was fundamentally compromised, and the only thing that mattered was to act with integrity and honour." Her presentation attracted a staunch LGBT fanbase, particularly among trans viewers who appreciated the genderqueer subtext of her films.
Her sharp-dressed Levystile appearance made her a style icon. She was nicknamed La Gallona — the Italian for "rooster" with the feminine augmentative -ona.
She said that one of her career highlights was getting to appear in a Rauna Næsve film, in a short scene where both their respective characters seduced each other.
Other endeavours
Carla proved to be an astute businesswoman, and engaged in several other endeavours that extended her fame to other areas. One of the most successful was establishing a clothing line inspired by her on-screen wardrobe.
She recorded a series of singles, produced by Susan Shelley. As she wasn't a trained vocalist, she mainly used sprechgesang and recitative techniques for singing, and recorded songs that capitalised on her saucy wit, such as "Ciao Bella" (Hello lovely) and "Così tanti amori, così poco tempo" (So many loves, so little time). Her releases would later be compiled on the 1980 compilation Vocal Stylings by Carla Miló.
Carla was immensely proud of her Megelanese heritage, and was recognised for her distinctive use of Italian, marked by playful delivery and a fondness for backhanded compliments or occasional sarcasm delivered in a sweet and flirtatious voice.
She was part of the banda italiana, a group of fellow Italians that included Silvana Perriello, Les Myas, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Maria Guerra, Edwige Ferré, Vittorio Marchi and Paolo Giussani. The group was known for its tight-knit camaraderie, regular ensemble work, collaborations, and social outings, and humorous boosterism of Italian culture and playing with Italian stereotypes.
Carla shared the linguistic politics of her fellow bandieri. She never let audiences forget that she was Italian first and foremost, and acted almost exclusively in Italian. She was also fluent in French, and accepted several roles in French-language films, getting to collaborate with actors like Anna Karina and Chantal Beaumont.
However, in public she maintained a rigorous façade of total contempt for English. She ridiculed English in her films, ranging from deliberately butchered Anglitaliano to "rousing outbursts of theatrical derision for English", which cultural commentator Hanako Fukui describes as "greatly heartening to viewers preoccupied with preserving Gylias' multilingualism as the apotheosis of l'belle mosaïque".
Later career
Carla retired from making gallista films in 1973, feeling that the characters had been explored in full and she had no new ideas for them.
She remained active in cinema. Although she retired the parodically masculine characterisation of her gallista films, she happily remained typecast in roles of feisty temptresses, braggarts, and sexually aggressive women. She told bavarde in 1976,
"You will never see Carla Miló tamed! [laughter] I feel I owe it to everyone who wrote me letters saying my films saved their lives when they were questioning their identity, I have to maintain the integrity of my work. Sure, I'm the rowdy friend who's settled down — what you do at 20 can't be the same thing you do at 30. But I won't do anything that would betray what I've done before. Carla Miló will remain a wild horse — one you can take for a ride but never tame."
She also began to work as a television presenter, primarily with ATV Arxaþ and Alţira, which allowed her to present in Italian.
Carla's film career gradually slowed down in the 1980s, as she preferred to focus on television and behind-the-scenes work. She continued to champion Italian talent in her capacity as a businesswoman, supporting the career of Moana Pozzi and starting a distribution company to import Megelanese films into Gylias, under the banner Carla Miló presenta ("Carla Miló presents…").
After the publinet was established, Carla uploaded her films onto Proton. During the 1990s, she gained a brief resurgence in popularity as an icon of Groovy Gylias, with her films and music being used for samples by certain Neo-Gylian Sound and city pop acts. The Ins & Outs' 1997 album Our Little Secret was named after her famous catchphrase.
Her film and television appearances grew sporadic after 2000, and today she is largely retired.
Private life
Carla married her collaborator Vittorio Marchi in 1960, and they have 3 children. Her friend Silvana described the marriage as "an unusual match made in Elysion" — Vittorio a quiet and talented introvert with feminine leanings, and Carla a gregarious, self-reliant personality and the driving force behind the marriage.
She is a practitioner of Megelanese traditional witchcraft, and is fiercely outspoken about being identified as Italian. She holds Megelanese citizenship, and called obtaining it one of her proudest achievements. She is a socialist and feminist, and has stated she generally preferences the Independent Regional Alliance for Minorities first in elections.