• Obituary: Olivia de Havilland, classic Hollywood legend, dies at 104

It was Mae West who managed to define even better than his own and always cursed Nietzsche the true attraction of evil. You know, "When I'm good, I'm good, but when I'm bad, I'm better . " Olivia de Havilland, who died Sunday at the age of 104 in Paris, could well be described as the most anti-West of the actresses. She, as determined by the canon, was forever the only one who could afford the luxury of platonic transparency, of Apollonian beauty: she was always better in the clarity of goodness. Against the common place of the 'femme fatale '; against the wickedly macho ideal and lucubration of the rebellious woman ... De Havilland was shameless, and in the best sense of the word, good. And against the evidence, there is no dispute.

She used to say to every interviewer who assaulted her with the most tiresome of the common places that to play a good woman you need to be a better actress than to give life to the bad one. After all, one goes to the cinema to identify with everything that cannot be in ordinary life. And so we are always seduced by villains. But time gives reason to loyalists. And somehow, that is what has happened. After all, in the face of Scarlett O'Hara's empty, fragile, and anachronistic hysteria, she firmly resists the eternal harshness of Melanie Hamilton's unwavering loyalty . ' Gone with the wind' , a film in the center of the storm 'black lives matter ', has de Havilland as his strongest banner. Not only is her character the most decent, but also the most generous: remember, the Oscar for best supporting actress won by the black interpreter Hattie McDaniel she was also nominated.

The official chronicle places the winner of two Oscars (in 1946 for the forgotten " The intimate life of Julia Norris" and in 1949 for "The heiress" ) as the last banner of the golden Hollywood, the classic. And it would seem that in the placidity without trauma of the affirmation a biography by force calm, duly gentrified and free of conflict runs. Candor is the controversial attribute that most accompanies its name. And yet, nothing is further from the truth. Kindness can be the most revolutionary and nonconformist of the soul states. And the most beautiful .

If it is traced in his filmography beyond the obvious of ' Gone with the Wind' or the two films cited that won him the Academy Awards or the eight collaborations with his non-love Errol Flynn ranging from 'Las Adventures of Robin Hood '(1938) to' The Charge of the Light Brigade '(1936) passing through ' Captain Bllod ' (1935), in the background it is not difficult to find a jewel that perfectly defines who Olivia de Havilland was. There, as resplendent as it is hidden, is ' Through the Looking Glass' , Robert Siodmak's 1946 film in which she plays two twin sisters. One is obviously a dark and evil assassin; the other, again, is just good.

Grace, virtue and even the miracle consists in the perfectly calculated and elegant way in which the actress fled stereotypes in her refined work. This is not an always sick new remake of 'Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' . On the contrary, de Havilland strove to give depth to each of her identical characters until she disappeared the reassuring frontier that separates good from evil. The message that she sends us from the deepest conviction is that the two people are the same and that both good and evil can become simple tricks behind which the human being simply hides. It sounds tremendous and, indeed, few actresses so tremendous in their twisted candor.

Someone might say that the double role of the Collins sisters in the Siodmak film perfectly reflected their relationship with their sister Joan Fontaine. It all fits. De Havilland belongs to having been the father's protégé and always stuck to balanced roles that exemplify not only the perfect wife but the brightest of all possible ' hollywoods '. On the other hand, Joan owns the Dionysian doubts of her works in ' Letter from an Unknown Woman' (Max Ophüls, 1948) or Alfred Hitchccock's Hollywood debut, ' Rebecca ', in 1940. That and the shame of the ' other ' last name. It is known that the first refused to greet the second when she received the Oscar for ' The heiress ' in revenge for the contempt suffered when Fontaine left De Havilland in 1941 without the statuette. The two were nominated: one for ' If it did not dawn' (Mitchell Leisen) and the other by ' Suspicion ' (Hitchccok).

But all this is nothing more than the insistence of a too simple story. As obvious as maybe just false. In the balance of de Havilland always hid the strongest of revolts. In fact, life off the screen proves her right. Thanks to her, the treatment that the industry gave to the stars changed forever. She, in her infinite calm, stood before injustice. And she did it from, again, the conviction of the good. "They told me to win or lose, I would not work again ... I won and went back to work. Without rancor," he said at the time. For her, the advertisers, the representatives, the managers were born ... The studio stopped being the golden cage of lives destined to carry out orders off the screen and represent revolutions in it. For her, Hollywood dreamed of the possibility of us being only false.

But still, his last great insubordination was yet to come. The day he left the world of cinema and took refuge in his own life. "Life is much more enriching than fantasy," he said, and out of the door it showed the world that, even once, good can prevail. She, unlike Mae West, when she was good, was the best. Until 104 years. Until the entire eternity. It's a lie that good girls go to heaven and bad girls where they want. De Havilland, the best of all, was always where she wanted. The first.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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