"The ball is over. Tancredi has gone up to dance with the stars...forever yours, Angelica": reliving one last time the historic scenes that saw them as unforgettable protagonists of "The Leopard", Claudia Cardinale entrusts Ansa with her last words for Alain Delon. "They ask me for words - she says commenting on the death of her friend - but the sadness is too intense. I join in the grief of his children, his loved ones, his fans... The ball is over. Tancredi has gone up to dance with the stars...forever yours, Angelica".

It was a waltz and the couple - who were then 28 and 25 years old - remain in the collective imagination in one of Luchino Visconti's most beautiful films, "The Leopard", based on the masterpiece by Tomasi di Lampedusa, which went down in history with Burt Lancaster as Prince of Salina, for the final dance scene, for one of the most passionate kisses in the history of cinema, between Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, and for the Palme d'Or won unanimously at the Cannes Film Festival in '63.

Together, Claudia and Alain shot five films: '"When we finished shooting there was a queue of men and women to go to bed with him", said the actress celebrating her 80th birthday in Naples at the Teatro San Carlo.

She had already worked with Delon before The Leopard, also directed by Visconti, in 1960 in Rocco and His Brothers. The film tells the story of the Greek tragedy of five brothers in search of fortune from Basilicata to the Milan of the economic boom, with a magnificent Alain Delon. Cardinale in the film is Ginetta, the reassuring girlfriend of her older brother Vincenzo. "I still remember when we shot the scene of the fight - Claudia Cardinale said on the occasion of the restoration of the film - and Visconti took the megaphone and shouted: don't kill me Cardinale! Then he wanted me for many other films".

The peak came three years later with The Leopard: "It was the turning point in my career," the actress assured, thinking back to the scenes that Visconti shot a thousand times, as if they were in the theater. "It was different from Fellini, with whom it was all improvisation and there was no script..."