'Fellini didn't make me famous. I made him famous.'

Anita Ekberg who died at the weekend aged 83 here makes a, to me, much more alluring sight than Ingrid Bergman. But de gustibus.... Or perhaps, de bustibus.

Ingrid Bergman hoped for a Nazi victory in the Second World War. I don't know if Miss Ekberg took sides in the war but Marcello Mastroianni said she reminded him of a German officer who arrested him. I think one can see something of that in her performances and her pictures.

I saw many years ago a television documentary about her in old age and she was a very sad, vain and self-absorbed old woman, of hideous aspect, who knew herself to be a star as exiled royalty knows itself to be royal. It reminded me of what Lytton Strachey said about the death of the egotist.

"While he is alive, he devours all the happiness about him,like a grub on a leaf; but when he goes, the spectacle la not exhilarating."

In Anita Ekberg's case she had ceased devouring happiness many years earlier, one saw. 

However, she was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. This is important.