Directors: Italian Directors 1895-1970
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Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life of a pimp in the slums of Rome caused a sensation. He was arrested in 1962 when his contribution to the portmanteau film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963) was considered blasphemous and given a suspended sentence. It might have been expected that his next film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) (The Gospel According to St. Matthew), which presented the Biblical story in a totally realistic, stripped-down style, would cause a similar fuss but, in fact, it was rapturously acclaimed as one of the few honest portrayals of Christ on screen. Its original Italian title pointedly omitted the Saint in St. Matthew). Pasolini's film career would then alternate distinctly personal and often scandalously erotic adaptations of classic literary texts: Oedipus Rex (1967) (Oedipus Rex); The Decameron (1971); The Canterbury Tales (1972) (The Canterbury Tales); Arabian Nights (1974) (Arabian Nights), with his own more personal projects, expressing his controversial views on Marxism, atheism, fascism and homosexuality, notably Teorema (1968) (Theorem), Pigsty and the notorious Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), a relentlessly grim fusion of Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy with the 'Marquis de Sade' which was banned in Italy and many other countries for several years. Pasolini was murdered in still-mysterious circumstances shortly after completing the film.- Director
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Francesco Maselli was born on 9 December 1930 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Storia d'amore (1986), Codice privato (1988) and Time of Indifference (1964). He was married to Stefania Brai and Goliarda Sapienza. He died on 21 March 2023 in Rome, Italy.- Director
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Carlo Lizzani was born on 3 April 1922 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for The Violent Four (1968), Chronicle of Poor Lovers (1954) and Celluloide (1996). He was married to Edith Bieber. He died on 5 October 2013 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Alberto Lattuada was born on 13 November 1914 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Guendalina (1957), Flesh Will Surrender (1947) and Bambina (1974). He was married to Carla Del Poggio. He died on 3 July 2005 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Ettore Scola was born on 10 May 1931 in Trevico, Campania, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for A Special Day (1977), The Family (1987) and Passion of Love (1981). He was married to Gigliola. He died on 19 January 2016 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Mario Monicelli was born on 16 May 1915 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for The Organizer (1963), Speriamo che sia femmina (1986) and Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958). He was married to Chiara Rapaccini and Antonella Salerni. He died on 29 November 2010 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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The women who both attracted and frightened him and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII - inspired the dreams that Fellini started recording in notebooks in the 1960s. Life and dreams were raw material for his films. His native Rimini and characters like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would be remembered in several films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real life role of journalist and caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds "Cico and Pallina". Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became his real life wife from October 30, 1943, until his death half a century later. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1940 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Rome, Open City (1945) and made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisan (1946). On that film he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work.- Writer
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Elio Petri was born on 29 January 1929 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), We Still Kill the Old Way (1967) and His Days Are Numbered (1962). He was married to Paola Pegoraro. He died on 10 November 1982 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films were known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone (1961) and directed The Grim Reaper (1962). His second film, Before the Revolution (1964), which was released in 1971, received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. Bertolucci also received an Academy Award nomination as best director for Last Tango in Paris (1972), and the best director and best screenplay for the film The Last Emperor (1987), which walked away with nine Academy Awards.- Writer
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Dario Argento was born on September 7, 1940, in Rome, Italy, the first-born son of famed Italian producer Salvatore Argento and Brazilian fashion model Elda Luxardo. Argento recalls getting his ideas for filmmaking from his close-knit family from Italian folk tales told by his parents and other family members, including an aunt who told him frighting bedtime stories. Argento based most of his thriller movies on childhood trauma, yet his own--according to him--was a normal one. Along with tales spun by his aunt, Argento was impressed by stories from The Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen and Edgar Allan Poe. Argento started his career writing for various film journal magazines while still in his teens attending a Catholic high school. After graduation, instead of going to college, Argento took a job as a columnist for the Rome daily newspaper "Paese Sera". Inspired by the movies, he later found work as a screenwriter and wrote several screenplays for a number of films, but the most important were his western collaborations, which included Cemetery Without Crosses (1969) and the Sergio Leone masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). After its release Argento wrote and directed his first movie, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), which starred Tony Musante and and British actress Suzy Kendall. It's a loose adoption on Fredric Brown's novel "The Screaming Mimi", which was made for his father's film company. Argento wanted to direct the movie himself because he did not want any other director messing up the production and his screenplay.
After "The Bird With the Crystal Plumage" became an international hit, Argento followed up with two more thrillers, The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971), starring 'Karl Madlen' (qv" and 'James Fransiscus', and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) ("Four Flies On Black Velvet"), both backed by his father Salvatore. Argento then directed the TV drama Testimone oculare (1973) and the historical TV drama The Five Days (1973). He then went back to directing so-called "giallo" thrillers, starting with Deep Red (1975), a violent mystery-thriller starring David Hemmings that inspired a number of international directors in the thriller-horror genre. His next work was Suspiria (1977), a surreal horror film about a witch's coven that was inspired by the Gothic fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson, which he also wrote in collaboration with his girlfriend, screenwriter/actress Daria Nicolodi, who acted in "Profondo Rosso" ("Deep Red") and most of Argento's films from then to the late 1980s. Argento advanced the unfinished trilogy with Inferno (1980), before returning to the "giallo" genre with the gory Tenebrae (1982), and then with the haunting Phenomena (1985).
The lukewarm reviews for his films, however, caused Argento to slip away from directing to producing and co-writing two Lamberto Bava horror flicks, Demons (1985) and Demons 2 (1986). Argento returned to directing with the "giallo" thriller Opera (1987), which according to him was "a very unpleasant experience", and no wonder: a rash of technical problems delayed production, the lead actress Vanessa Redgrave dropped out before filming was to begin, Argento's father Salvatore died during filming and his long-term girlfriend Daria broke off their relationship. After the commercial box-office failure of "Opera", Argento temporarily settled in the US, where he collaborated with director George A. Romero on the two-part horror-thriller Two Evil Eyes (1990) (he had previously collaborated with Romero on the horror action thriller Dawn of the Dead (1978)). While still living in America, Argento appeared in small roles in several films and directed another violent mystery thriller, Trauma (1993), which starred his youngest daughter Asia Argento from his long-term relationship with Nicolodi.
Argento returned to Italy in 1995, where he made a comeback in the horror genre with The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) and then with another version of "The Phantom of the Opera", The Phantom of the Opera (1998), both of which starred Asia. Most recently, Argento directed a number of "giallo" mystery thrillers such as Sleepless (2001), The Card Player (2003) and Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005), as well as two gory, supernatural-themed episodes of the USA TV cable anthology series Masters of Horror (2005).
Having always wanted to make a third chapter to his "Three Mothers" horror films, Argento finally completed the trilogy in 2007 with the release of Mother of Tears (2007), which starred Asia Argento as a young woman trying to identify and stop the last surviving evil witch from taking over the world. In addition to his Gothic and violent style of storytelling, "La terza madre" has many references to two of his previous films, "Suspiria" (1997) and "Inferno" (1980), which is a must for fans of the trilogy.
His movies may be regarded by some critics and opponents as cheap and overly violent, but second or third viewings show him to be a talented writer/director with a penchant for original ideas and creative directing.- Writer
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Born in his ancestral palazzo, situated in the same Milanese square as both the opera house La Scala and the Milan Cathedral, Luchino Visconti (1906 - 1976) was raised under the auspices of aristocratic privilege, theater and Catholicism. This triangulation of monuments would create an equally titanic filmmaker whose work remained stylistically sui generis through arguably the most impressive decades of 20th century filmmaking. The quietude of La Terra Trema (1948) is managed with an operatic virtuosity, and the baroque period pieces-for which he is best known today-clearly point to a noble upbringing. However, there is also a Gothic character to Visconti-embodied in the spired cathedral that overshadowed his childhood-that has remained largely unsung. The relationship between the Visconti family and Gothic architecture stretches back to the Medieval Era. In 1386, Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti envisioned a cathedral in the heart of Milan, though it was fated to remain under construction for almost half a millennium until Napoleon ordered its completion in the 19th century. Just as his ancestor brought Northern Gothic architecture to Italy, so, in 1943, did Luchino introduce the groundbreaking cinematic genre of Italian neorealism to the peninsula. Doing away with sets, neorealist cinema was set in the raw environment of postwar Italy. In one sense anti-architectural in its desire to transcend the bonds of interior space, this same ambition is what makes the style a perfect cinematic analog to the Gothic. The Gothic is an architecture of exteriority: Throwing ceilings to the sky and opening walls onto the outside with large windows, the Gothic presents light as the manifestation of divinity within a place of worship. The mysticism of light, dating back to the pseudo-Dionysian theology of Abbot Suger of St. Denis Cathedral, translates well to the medium of light that is the cinema. In any Visconti work, lighting is intimately connected to set design: It is often seen in the gleam of curtains, the radiance of starlight or the glow of Milanese fog, where the director carries the religiosity of Gothic architecture into his realism. Visconti's religion (or should we say religions? For he was also a Marxist) adds an ethical weight, powerful and challenging, to his works. The term decadence, often associated with Visconti, only attains meaning through being in excess of contemporary mores. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian communists could accept Visconti's homosexuality, and a resultant displaced angst is plainly worn by his protagonists-monumental individuals who bear the full weight of their social milieus. While neorealism has come to be packaged with its own mythology-a new cinema for a liberated nation, the idea of a new "Italian" style-re-centering our historical gaze on the Gothic Visconti allows one's imagination to spread across a much larger plane of geography and time. From his cinematic apprenticeship with Jean Renoir in France-the very cradle of Gothic architecture-to his German trilogy, Visconti's style has always been one of cosmopolitan effort. This international flavor also matches the deeper etymological referent of the Gothic-the Goths, those barbarian invaders who toppled the Roman Empire. Among Visconti's formal signatures are many borrowings from foreign directors, including the particularly pronounced influence of Jean Renoir, Josef Von Sternberg and Elia Kazan. Global in scope, timeless in influence and architectural in spirit: This is the legacy of Luchino Visconti.- Writer
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The master filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, as one of the creators of neo-realism, is one of the most influential directors of all time. His neo-realist films influenced France's nouvelle vague movement in the 1950s and '60s that changed the face of international cinema. He also influenced American directors, including Martin Scorsese.
He was born into the world of film, making his debut in Rome on May 8, 1906, the son of Elettra (Bellan), a housewife, and Angiolo Giuseppe "Beppino" Rossellini, the man who opened Italy's first cinema. He was immersed in cinema from the beginning, growing up watching movies in his father's movie-house from the time that film was first quickening as an art form. Italy was one of the places were movie-making matured, and Italian film had a huge influence on D.W. Griffith and other international directors. Between the two world wars, Hollywood would soon dictate what constituted a "well-made" film, but Rossellini would be one of the Italian directors who once again put Italy at the forefront of international cinema after the Second World War.
His training in cinema was thorough and extensive and he became expert in many facets of film-making. (His brother Renzo Rossellini, also was involved in the industry, scoring films.) He did his apprenticeship as an assistant to Italian filmmakers, then got the chance to make his first film, a documentary, "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune", in 1937. Due to his close ties to Benito Mussolini's second son, the critic and film producer Vittorio Mussolini, he flourished in fascist Italy's cinema. Once Il Duce was deposed, Rossellini produced his first classic film, the anti-fascist Rome, Open City (1945) ("Rome, Open City") in 1945, which won the Grand Prize at Cannes. Two other neo-realist classics soon followed, Paisan (1946) ("Paisan") and Germany Year Zero (1948) ("Germany in the Year Zero"). "Rome, Open City" screenwriters Sergio Amidei and Federico Fellini were nominated for a Best Writing, Screenplay Oscar in 1947, while Rossellini himself, along with Amidei, Fellini and two others were nominated for a screen-writing Oscar in 1950 for "Paisan".
"I do not want to make beautiful films, I want to make useful films," he said. Rossellini claimed, "I try to capture reality, nothing else." This led him to often cast non-professional actors, then tailor his scripts to their idiosyncrasies and life-stories to heighten the sense of realism.
With other practitioners of neo-realism, Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti, film was changed forever. American director Elia Kazan credits neo-realism with his own evolution as a filmmaker, away from Hollywood's idea of the well-made film to the gritty realism of On the Waterfront (1954).
Rossellini had a celebrated, adulterous affair with Ingrid Bergman that was an international scandal. They became lovers on the set of Stromboli (1950) while both were married to other people and Bergman became pregnant. After they shed their spouses and married, producing three children, history repeated itself when Rossellini cheated on her with the Indian screenwriter Sonali Senroy DasGupta while he was in India at the request of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to help revitalize that country's film industry. It touched off another international scandal, and Nehru ousted him from the country. Rossellini later divorced Bergman to marry Das Gupta, legitimizing their child that had been born out-of-wedlock.
Rossellini continued to make films until nearly his death. His last film The Messiah (1975) ("The Messiah"), a story of The Passion of Christ, was released in 1975.
Roberto Rossellini died of a heart attack in Rome on June 3, 1977. He was 71 years old.- Actor
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Vittorio De Sica grew up in Naples, and started out as an office clerk in order to raise money to support his poor family. He was increasingly drawn towards acting, and made his screen debut while still in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee idol of the Italian theatre, and repeated that achievement in Italian movies, mostly light comedies. He turned to directing in 1940, making comedies in a similar vein, but with his fifth film The Children Are Watching Us (1943), he revealed hitherto unsuspected depths and an extraordinarily sensitive touch with actors, especially children. It was also the first film he made with the writer Cesare Zavattini with whom he would subsequently make Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), heartbreaking studies of poverty in postwar Italy which won special Oscars before the foreign film category was officially established. After the box-office disaster of Umberto D. (1952), a relentlessly bleak study of the problems of old age, he returned to directing lighter work, appearing in front of the camera more frequently. Although Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) won him another Oscar, it was generally accepted that his career as one of the great directors was over. However, just before he died he made The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), which won him yet another Oscar, and his final film A Brief Vacation (1973). He died following the removal of a cyst from his lungs.- Writer
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Together with Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni is credited with defining the modern art film. And yet Antonioni's cinema is also recognized today for defying any easy categorization, with his films ultimately seeming to belong to their own distinctive genre. Indeed, the difficulty of precisely describing their category is itself the very quintessence of Antonioni's films. Among the most-cited contributions of Antonioni's cinema are their striking descriptions of that unique strain of post-boom ennui everywhere apparent in the transformed life and leisure habits of the Italian middle and upper classes. Detecting profound technological, political and psychological shifts at work in post-WWII Italy, Antonioni set out to explore the ambiguities of a suddenly alienated and dislocated Italy, not simply through his oblique style of narrative and characters, nor through any overt political messaging, but instead by tearing asunder the traditional boundaries of cinematic narrative in order to explore an ever shifting internal landscape expressed through architecture, urban space and the sculptural, shaping presence of objects, shapes and emotions invented by camera movement and depth of focus.
Antonioni deftly manipulates the quieter, indirect edges of cinematic structure, often so discretely that his existential puzzles are felt before they can be intellectualized. The negative space is as prominent as the positive, silence as loud as noise, absence as palpable as presence, and passivity as driving a force as direct action. Transgressing unspoken cinematic laws, Antonioni frequently focuses on female protagonists while refusing to sentimentalize or morally judge his characters and placing them on equal footing with the other elements within his total dynamic system, like sounds or set pieces. And he violates spoken rules with unconventional cutting techniques, fractured spatial and temporal continuity, and a camera that insistently lingers in melancholy pauses, long after the actors depart, as if drifting just behind an equally distracted, dissipating narrative. Leaving questions unanswered and plot points irresolute, dispensing with exposition, suspense, sentimentality and other cinematic security blankets, Antonioni releases the viewer into a gorgeous, densely layered fog to contemplate and wrestle with his characters' imprecise quandaries and endless possibilities. Culminating in tour de force endings that often reframe the narrative in a daring, parting act of deconstruction, Antonioni's rigorously formal, yet open compositions allow his great, unwieldy questions to spill over into the world outside the cinema and outside of time.
Born into a middle-class family in the northern Italian town of Ferrara, Antonioni studied economics at the University of Bologna where he also co-founded the university's theatrical troupe. While dedicating himself to painting, writing film reviews, working in financial positions and in different capacities on film productions, Antonioni suffered a few false starts before expressing his unique directorial vision and voice in his first realized short film, Gente del Po, a moving portrait of fisherman in the misty Po Valley where he was raised. Uncomfortable with the neo-realist thrust of Italian cinema, Antonioni directed a series of eccentric and oblique documentary shorts that, in retrospect, reveal his desire to investigate the psyche's mysterious interiors. In his first fictional feature, Story of a Love Affair, Antonioni immediately subtly challenged traditional plot and audience expectation in ways that anticipate the formal and emotional expressionist dynamic that would fully flower within the groundbreaking L'Avventura (1960).
Reversing its raucous 1960 premiere to an infuriated Cannes audience, L'Avventura was rapturously lauded by fellow artists and filmmakers and awarded a special Jury Prize "for its remarkable contribution toward the search for a new cinematic language." It also presented the controlled ambivalence of Monica Vitti, who would become his partner, muse and psychological constant throughout his famed trilogy of L'Avventura, La Notte (1961) and L'Eclisse (1962) in addition to the exquisite Red Desert (1964), a film that marked another significant shift toward expressive color, male leads and working with soft focus and faster cuts. After the phenomenal commercial success of the MGM-produced Blow-Up (1966), Antonioni was devastated by the anti-climactic box office disaster of Zabriskie Point (1970) and returned to documentary. Invited to make Chung Kuo China by the Chinese government, Antonioni delivered a mesmerizing yet unsentimental four-hour tour of China which was vehemently rejected by its solicitors. A few years later, Antonioni returned to fictional form in his last masterpiece, The Passenger (1975), an enigmatic fable of vaporous identity that offers a bold companion piece to L'Avventura. Aside from the thematically retrospective Identification of a Woman (1982) and a period film made for television, The Mystery of Oberwald (1980) in which he conducted unusual experiments with color and video, Antonioni closed out his career with mostly short films, many of which were made after he suffered a stroke in 1985.
Tremendously influential yet largely taken for granted, Antonioni made difficult, abstract cinema mainstream. Embracing an anarchic geometry, Antonioni turned the architecture of narrative filmmaking inside-out in the most eloquent way possible, with many of his iconic scenes eternally preserved in the depths of the cinema's psyche. Observing modern maladies without judgment - sexism, dissolution of family and tradition, ecological/technological quandaries and the eternal questions of our place in the cosmos - Antonioni's prescience continues to resonate deeply as we find our way in the quickly moving fog.- Director
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Carmelo Bene was born on 1 September 1937 in Campi Salentina, Puglia, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Nostra signora dei turchi (1968), One Hamlet Less (1973) and Salome (1972). He was married to Raffaella Baracchi and Giuliana Rossi. He died on 16 March 2002 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Marco Ferreri was born on 11 May 1928 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981), L'udienza (1972) and El cochecito (1960). He was married to Jacqueline Ferreri. He died on 9 May 1997 in Paris, France.- Writer
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Marco Bellocchio is one of the most consistent and most adventurous of today's Italian directors-an achievement all the more remarkable given that he made his feature debut almost fifty years ago. Over those years, he has amassed a body of films that encompasses a large number of original screenplays, adaptations of the likes of Pirandello and Kleist and personal, quasi-autobiographical work. What unifies these films is the beauty and originality of Bellocchio's images and his unceasing quest to understand the place of the individual in contemporary Italy and contemporary cinema. After making a few shorts, Bellocchio announced himself with his ferocious first feature, the acclaimed Fists in the Pocket (1965). This caustic and anarchic look at an extremely troubled family launched him instantly to the first ranks of the Italian film scene, alongside Antonioni, Pasolini and Bertolucci. For the next several years, films such as China Is Near (1967) and In the Name of the Father (1971) found Bellocchio examining the turbulent world of leftist politics and revolutionary dreams with an eye both sympathetic and jaundiced. During the 1980s and 1990s, under the spell of unorthodox-and, to some, controversial-psychoanalyst Massimo Fagioli, Bellocchio's emphasis turned to examining the interweaving of family dynamics and sexual desire as they produce and undermine personal identities. Films such as A Leap in the Dark (1980) and Devil in the Flesh (1986) create complex allegories of an audacious originality. More recently, Bellocchio has turned to more straightforward narratives in a number of films that examine Italy's recent past and its present, from The Nanny (1999) to one of his most recent works, Dormant Beauty (2012). Shifting brilliantly from realist fiction to archival footage to the imagery of dream or fantasy, all within a single film, this recent period has returned Bellocchio to the forefront of contemporary cinema, while combining the lessons learned from both the previous political and allegorical work. What has remained constant is Bellocchio's searching critique of the institutions that control individuals and organize the flow of power: the army, political parties, schools, the state and its laws, the Church, and the family.- Director
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Giuseppe Ferrara was born on 15 July 1932 in Castelfiorentino, Tuscany, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Il caso Moro (1986), Bambini nell'acquedotto (1960) and La città del malessere (1973). He died on 25 June 2016 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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Giorgio Diritti was born on 21 December 1959 in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He is a director and writer, known for The Wind Blows Round (2005), The Man Who Will Come (2009) and Hidden Away (2020).- Writer
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Born in 1930 in Genoa. Still a young student in 1950 when director Carlo Lizzani gave him a role in the film Achtung Banditi!. Following this experience he traveled to Rome where, after acting in film and theater, he became the assistant director to Lizzani, Gillo Pontecorvo, Sergio Leone, Francesco Rosi. In 1960 he made his debut as a Director with Pigeon Shoot, a film about the Partisan Resistance, on competition at the 1961 Venice Film Festival. In 1964 he directed La Moglie Svedese, an episode of the film Extramarital. His second movie, The Reckless, won the special prize of the jury at the Berlin Film Festival in 1965; it's about a social climber in Italy during the time of the economic miracle. That year he also directed the second unit of Pontecorvo's masterpiece The Battle Of Algiers.
After having filmed for Paramount the heist movie Grand Slam (1967) and the gangster film Machine Gun McCain (1969) in the US, Montaldo returned to Italy to direct The Fifth Day of Peace (1970), Sacco and Vanzetti (in competition at Cannes Film Festival, where it won Best Actor 1971) and Giordano Bruno (1973). These films received great recognition and were widely appreciated at various film festivals around the world. The theme of the Resistance underlined And Agnes Chose to Die (1977).
In 1980 the director engaged in the production of a television series about the exploration of Marco Polo, an international co-production with RAI, BBC and NBC. It was filmed in Italy, the Middle East, Tibet, Mongolia and China. It was shown in 76 nations, and won 4 Emmy Awards. Other awards worldwide for cinematography, production design and costumes were received. Montaldo's experience with China reveals a turning point in his work.
Other films he directed are Closed Circuit (in competition at the Berlinale in 1978 and in permanent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art), A Dangerous Toy (1979), The Gold Rimmed Glasses (1987), Control (1987), and Time to Kill (1989).
Always worked with an international cast. Some of the actors that worked with him are: Burt Lancaster, Rupert Everett, Nicolas Cage, Philippe Noiret, Janet Leigh, Edward G. Robinson, John Cassavetes, Peter Falk, Rade Serbedzija, Charlotte Rampling, Ingrid Thulin, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, F. Murray Abraham, Leonard Nimoy.
Some of his usual collaborators have been score composer Ennio Morricone and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.
Montaldo is also internationally recognized as a Opera director, directed commercials, documentaries and experimental film technology projects. From 1999 he was president of RAI Cinema, a major film production company, for 5 years in which the movies he produced became box office hits, won awards all over the world and formed a new generation of Italian directors.
In 2001 he was appointed Cavaliere di Gran Croce by the president of Italy, one of the top honors of the Republic.- Director
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After school, Amelio studied philosophy. He graduated with a doctorate. Amelio developed a keen interest in film at a young age. In 1970 he began working as a cameraman for the Italian state television RAI. A little later, Amelio worked as an assistant director for RAI. In 1970 he directed his first television film: "La fine del gioco". He then also took part in the production of several TV commercials, for example for the state-owned airline Alitalia. In the 1970s, Amelio first attracted attention in international cinema with films such as "La città del sole" (1973), "La morte al lavoro" (1978) and "Il piccolo Archimede" (1979).
Amelio celebrated his breakthrough as an internationally recognized film director in 1990 with "Porte aperte". With "Il ladro di bambini" in 1992, Gianni Amelio impressively staged the conflicts of conscience of a carabinieri officer in today's Italian society. In 1994 he came to the public with the film "Lamerica", which dealt with the current refugee problem between Albania and Italy and exposed the unscrupulous dealings with the plight of refugees by the smuggling organizations. The director has been honored with several international awards for his film work.
He received an Oscar nomination in 1991 for "Porte aperte". In 1992, Amelio was awarded the Nastro d'Argento, the Felix Award and the Cannes Grand Prix for "Il ladro di bambini". Another silver ribbon (Nastro d'Argento) at the Venice Film Festival followed in 1994 for "Lamerica". In the same year he received the Grolla d'Oro for his life's work. In 1996 the Spanish Goya Film Prize also followed for "Lamerica". The director also published a book under the same title in 1994 about the film "Lamerica". At the same time, Amelio also worked as a theater director: in 1995 he staged the play "I pagliacci" in Genoa's Carlo Felice Theater. The director's other successful films were "Così ridevano" in 1998 and "Le chiavi di casa" in 2004.
In 2008 he took over the management of the Torino Film Festival from Nanni Moretti.- Writer
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Mario Monicelli was born on 16 May 1915 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for The Organizer (1963), Speriamo che sia femmina (1986) and Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958). He was married to Chiara Rapaccini and Antonella Salerni. He died on 29 November 2010 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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Giovanni Pastrone was born on 13 September 1883 in Montechiaro d'Asti, Piedmont, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Cabiria (1914), Julius Caesar (1909) and Il fuoco (la favilla - la vampa - la cenere) (1916). He died on 27 June 1959 in Turin, Piedmont, Italy.- Producer
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Stefano Pittaluga was born on 2 February 1887 in Genoa, Liguria, Italy. He was a producer and writer, known for Maciste in Hell (1925), La canzone dell'amore (1930) and Caporal Saetta (1924). He died on 26 April 1932 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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Dino Risi became a movie director by chance. In 1940 he met Alberto Lattuada at a friend's boutique. Lattuada told him they needed an assistant director for the movie Piccolo mondo antico (1941). Risi accepted just for fun, not for work. Later, he became a psychiatrist and wrote some articles for a local newspaper in his spare time.
After the Second World War, he met a producer who financed his short films. One of these, Buio in sala (1950), was bought by Carlo Ponti. At that point, Risi decided to become a movie director. So he went to Rome and wrote the plot of Poor But Beautiful (1957) which made him famous. But the film that changed his life forever was The Easy Life (1962). At the opening night, Risi and producer Mario Cecchi Gori were waiting outside the movie theater. They were worried because no viewers had been coming to see the movie. So Risi went back home with much disappointment. However, the next day all the tickets were sold out and Risi became a star.- Writer
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Pietro Germi was born on 14 September 1914 in Genoa, Liguria, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for The Railroad Man (1956), Divorce Italian Style (1961) and The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (1966). He was married to Olga D'Aiello and Anna Bancio. He died on 5 December 1974 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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His father was a shipowner. After school, Rosi initially began studying law, which he soon dropped out to work as a broadcast journalist and book illustrator in Naples. From 1944 to 1945 he worked for "Radio Napoli". In the immediate post-war years, Rosi moved to Rome, where he came into contact with the film world. He initially acted as an assistant to several directors and thus played a key role in the development of Italian "Neorealismo". From 1947 to 1948, Rosi assisted Luchino Visconti in the filming of the masterpiece of neorealism "La terra trema". In addition to working on other Visconti films, he also studied with Michelangelo Antonioni. In 1957 Rosi celebrated his directorial debut with "La sfida".
The success led to a long series of films in the following decades, some of which courageously dealt with unpleasant and critical topics in Italian post-war society. Rosi's films such as "Le mani sulla città" (1963), "Cadaveri eccellenti" (1976) and "Cristo si è fermato a Eboli" (1979) are dedicated to the ruthless analysis of events in contemporary Italian history and the present. The director bluntly denounces the grievances resulting from war, crime and corruption as social processes that are tolerated, accepted or even intended by political power. With the film adaptation of the opera "Carmen" (1984) and the novel by Gabriel García Márquez "Cronaca di una morte annunciata" (1987), Rosi approached emotional productions, abandoning his previous materialistic analysis.
However, both films remain connected to the basic theme of Rosi's work, the Italian South, which the director deepened again through the pessimistic study of the global character of the Italian-American mafia in "Dimenticare Palermo" (1989). Rosi received numerous awards for his work. His directorial debut won an award in Venice in 1958. In 1962 he was awarded the Berlin Silver Bear for the film about "Salvatore Giuliano". In 2000 he received the "Grand Prix des Amériques" in Montreal for his life's work.
Francesco Rosi is married to Giancarla Rosi Mandelli and lives in Rome.- Director
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- Actor
Giuseppe Tornatore was born on 27 May 1956 in Bagheria, Sicily, Italy. He is a director and writer, known for The Best Offer (2013), Cinema Paradiso (1988) and The Legend of 1900 (1998). He is married to Roberta Pacetti.- Writer
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- Actor
Giuseppe De Santis was born on 11 February 1917 in Fondi, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Tragic Hunt (1947), Giorni d'amore (1954) and Bitter Rice (1949). He was married to Gordana Miletic. He died on 16 May 1997 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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- Cinematographer
Franco Piavoli was born on 21 June 1933 in Pozzolengo, Lombardy, Italy. He is a director and writer, known for Al primo soffio di vento (2002), The Blue Planet (1982) and Voices Through Time (1996). He is married to Neria Poli. They have one child.- Director
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- Cinematographer
Vittorio De Seta was born on 15 October 1923 in Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Bandits of Orgosolo (1961), Un uomo a metà (1966) and Islands of Fire (1955). He died on 28 November 2011 in Sellia Marina, Calabria, Italy.- Editor
- Director
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Silvano Agosti was born on 23 March 1938 in Brescia, Lombardy, Italy. He is an editor and director, known for Uova di garofano (1991), Quartiere (1987) and Fit to Be Untied (1975).- Writer
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- Actor
Luigi Comencini was born on 8 June 1916 in Salò, Lombardy, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Voltati Eugenio (1980), Everybody Go Home! (1960) and Bread, Love and Dreams (1953). He was married to Giulia Grifeo. He died on 6 April 2007 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Valerio Zurlini was born on March 19, 1926. During his law studies in Rome, he started working in the theatre. In 1943, he joined the Italian resistance. Zurlini became a member of the Italian Communist Party. He filmed short documentaries in the immediate post-war period and in 1954 directed his first feature film, Le ragazze di San Frediano (1955), his only comedy. In 1958, together with Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi and Alberto Lattuada, he won the Silver Ribbon for Best Script for Lattuada's Guendalina (1957). Zurlini made his name as a director with his second feature film, Violent Summer (1959), starring Eleonora Rossi Drago and Jean-Louis Trintignant.
In 1961 Zurlini filmed Girl with a Suitcase (1961), a successful drama, starring Claudia Cardinale and Jacques Perrin, who would become Zurlini's favorite actor. In 1962 Zurlini's film Family Diary (1962) earned him the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival (it tied with Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood (1962)). Zurlini had a masterful skill for screen adaptations Both Le ragazze di San Frediano (1955) and Family Diary (1962) were based on Vasco Pratolini's work. Zurlini admired the work of Italian novelist Giorgio Bassani and hoped to adapt his novel "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," which was subsequently directed by Vittorio De Sica (see The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970)). His 1965 film The Camp Followers (1965) was entered into the 4th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Special Silver Prize. Zurlini's last film, The Desert of the Tartars (1976), produced by Jacques Perrin and featuring an all-star ensemble, was based on Dino Buzzati's novel of the same name. The movie won both the David di Donatello for Best Director and the Silver Ribbon for Best Director.
The visual style of Zurlini's adaptations was informed by artists Giorgio De Chirico, Giorgio Morandi and Ottone Rosai. During the last years of his life, Zurlini taught at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome and worked as a dubbing director for the Italian versions for such movies as The Deer Hunter (1978) and My American Uncle (1980). He died of stomach hemorrhage in Verona on October 27, 1982.- Director
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Liliana Cavani was born on 12 January 1933 in Carpi, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. She is a director and writer, known for L'ospite (1971), Dove siete? Io sono qui (1993) and The Night Porter (1974).- Writer
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- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Franco Brusati was born on 4 August 1922 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Bread and Chocolate (1974), Romeo and Juliet (1968) and I tulipani di Haarlem (1970). He died on 28 February 1993 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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Gillo Pontecorvo was an Italian filmmaker. He is best known for his 1966 masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers, widely viewed as one of the finest films of its genre: realistic though fictionalized documentary. Its portrayal of the Algerian resistance during the Algerian War uses the neorealist style pioneered by fellow Italian film directors de Santis and Rossellini, employing newsreel-style footage and non-professional actors, and focusing primarily on a disenfranchised population that seldom receives attention from the general media. Though very much Italian neorealist in style, Pontecorvo co-produced with an Algerian film company.
The Battle of Algiers achieved great success and influence. It was widely screened in the United States, where Pontecorvo received a number of awards. He was also nominated for two Academy Awards.
Pontecorvo's next major work, Queimada! (Burn!, 1969), is also anti-colonial, this time set in the Antilles. This film (starring Marlon Brando) depicts an attempted revolution of the oppressed. Pontecorvo continued his series of highly political films with Ogro (1979), which addresses the occurrence of terrorism at the end of Francisco Franco's dwindling regime in Spain.
In 2006, he died from congestive heart failure in Rome at age 86.- Writer
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Steno was born on 19 January 1917 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Execution Squad (1972), Cops and Robbers (1951) and La patata bollente (1979). He died on 12 March 1988 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
- Production Designer
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Francesco Bertolini is known for L'Inferno (Remastered) (2024), Il disco d'oro (1921) and Dante's Inferno (1911).- Director
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Giuseppe de Liguoro was born on 10 January 1869 in Naples, Campania, Italy. He was a director and actor, known for Dante's Inferno (1911), Homer's Odyssey (1911) and Re Lear (1910). He died on 19 March 1944 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Adolfo Padovan was born in Northern Italy and grew up city of Varese at the feet of Sacro Monte di Varese, part of the Campo dei Fiori mountain range, that hosts an astronomical observatory.
On completing high school he settled in Milan where he went on to study astronomy, although he chose to abandon this in favour of a literary and philosophical career. Here in Milan he also briefly collaborated in making films with Milano Films, an early Italian silent film company which was active from 1909 to 1926. From this collaboration he is best known for co-directing L'Inferno and L'Odissea, both in 1911, with Francesco Bertolini and Giuseppe De Liguoro.
He returned to his writing of literary and philosophical essays and died in July 1930. - Director
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Emidio Greco was born on 20 October 1938 in Leporano, Puglia, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Una storia semplice (1991), Notizie degli scavi (2010) and L'uomo privato (2007). He died on 22 December 2012 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Sergio Citti was born on 30 May 1933 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for We Free Kings (1996), Vipera (2000) and Il minestrone (1981). He died on 11 October 2005 in Ostia, Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Giuseppe Bertolucci was born on 24 February 1947 in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Berlinguer: I Love You (1977), Segreti segreti (1985) and The Sweet Sounds of Life (1999). He was married to Lucilla Albano. He died on 16 June 2012 in Diso, Puglia, Italy.- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
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Sergio Leone was virtually born into the cinema - he was the son of Roberto Roberti (A.K.A. Vincenzo Leone), one of Italy's cinema pioneers, and actress Bice Valerian. Leone entered films in his late teens, working as an assistant director to both Italian directors and U.S. directors working in Italy (usually making Biblical and Roman epics, much in vogue at the time). Towards the end of the 1950s he started writing screenplays, and began directing after taking over The Last Days of Pompeii (1959) in mid-shoot after its original director fell ill. His first solo feature, The Colossus of Rhodes (1961), was a routine Roman epic, but his second feature, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a shameless remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), caused a revolution. It was the first Spaghetti Western, and shot T.V. cowboy Clint Eastwood to stardom (Leone wanted Henry Fonda or Charles Bronson but couldn't afford them). The two sequels, For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), were shot on much higher budgets and were even more successful, though his masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), in which Leone finally worked with Fonda and Bronson, was mutilated by Paramount Pictures and flopped at the U.S. box office. He directed Duck, You Sucker! (1971) reluctantly (as producer he hired Peter Bogdanovich to direct but he left before shooting began), and turned down offers to direct The Godfather (1972) in favor of his dream project, which became Once Upon a Time in America (1984). He died in 1989 after preparing an even more expensive Soviet co-production on the World War II siege of Leningrad.- Director
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Paolo Taviani studied liberal arts at the University of Pisa, becoming interested in the cinema after seeing Roberto Rossellini's Paisan (1946). After writing and directing short films and plays with his brother Vittorio, he made his first feature in 1962. The brothers have continued to work together ever since, with each directing alternate scenes with the other watching but never interfering.- Director
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Vittorio Taviani studied law at the University of Pisa, becoming interested in the cinema after seeing Roberto Rossellini's Paisan (1946). After writing and directing short films and plays with his brother Paolo, he made his first feature in 1962. The brothers have continued to work together ever since, with each directing alternate scenes with the other watching but never interfering.- Cinematographer
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Alberto Grifi was born on 29 May 1938 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a cinematographer and director, known for In viaggio con Patrizia (1995), La nostra anima (1987) and Michele alla ricerca della felicità (1978). He died on 22 April 2007 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
- Director
Roberto Faenza was born on 21 February 1943 in Turin, Piedmont, Italy. He is a writer and director, known for Look to the Sky (1993), Escalation (1968) and I Viceré (2007).- Director
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Mauro Bolognini was born on 28 February 1922 in Pistoia, Tuscany, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Madamigella di Maupin (1966), Mosca addio (1987) and Careless (1962). He died on 14 May 2001 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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The son of an army officer and landowner, Cottafavi (christened Benedetto Vittorio Emmanuele Secondo) was already endowed with a university education in law, philosophy and literature by the time he graduated from the famous Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in 1938.
He began his professional career in the film industry as a clapper boy. After progressing to write motion picture screenplays and working as assistant director under Alessandro Blasetti and Vittorio De Sica, he became a director in his own right in 1943. Many of his films have been lavishly-produced, including several tongue-in-cheek "sword-and sandal" costume spectaculars dealing with mythological subjects and usually involving the Roman Empire or Ancient Egypt. From the mid-60s, Cottafavi concentrated exclusively on directing TV series and mini-series under contract to RAI (Radio Televisione Italiana).- Lino Del Fra was born on 20 June 1927 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Antonio Gramsci: i giorni del carcere (1977), Klon (1992) and Cake in the Sky (1973). He was married to Cecilia Mangini. He died on 19 July 1997 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
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Cecilia Mangini was born on 31 July 1927 in Mola di Bari, Apulia, Italy. She was a writer and director, known for All'armi siam fascisti! (1962), Klon (1992) and Antonio Gramsci: i giorni del carcere (1977). She was married to Lino Del Fra. She died on 21 January 2021 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Actor
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Luciano Salce was born on 25 September 1922 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was an actor and director, known for Colpo di stato (1969), Crazy Desire (1962) and Alla mia cara mamma nel giorno del suo compleanno (1974). He was married to Jole Bertolazzi and Diletta D'Andrea. He died on 17 December 1989 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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During the 1970s, Lina Wertmüller emblazoned her name into the pantheon of Italian cinema with a series of intensely polemical, deeply controversial and wonderfully entertaining films. Among the most politically outspoken and iconoclastic members of the second generation of postwar directors - the direct heirs to the neo-realists - Wertmüller was also one of the first woman directors to be internationally recognized and acclaimed. Armed with a keenly satiric and Rabelaisian humor, Wertmüller reinvented the narrative forms and character types of Italian comedy to create one of the rare examples of a radical, politically galvanized cinema that managed to achieve widespread popularity. Indeed, the fierce invectives against social, cultural and historical inequities at the heart of Wertmüller's mid-1970s masterworks Love and Anarchy, Seven Beauties and Swept Away seemed only to help the films find an appreciative audience, especially in the United States, where they broke box office records for foreign films and even secured Wertmüller an Oscar nomination for Best Director - the very first woman named for this category. Although Wertmüller remains a well-known name, her remarkable films are strangely overlooked and only selectively revisited. And yet, the incredible energy and daring of her most popular works is equally present in lesser-known masterpieces such as All Screwed Up and The Seduction of Mimi, films that are both extremely topical and yet still totally relevant today.- Actor
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Giovanni Brass was born on 26 March 1933 into the family of a famous artist, Italico Brass, who was his grandfather. Italico gave his grandson a nickname "Tintoretto," which Giovanni later adapted into his cinematic name, Tinto Brass.
Tinto inherited his grandfather's artistic skills, but he applied them to film instead of canvas. When he joined the Italian film industry, he worked with such famous directors as Federico Fellini (his idol) and Roberto Rossellini. In 1963 he directed his first film, Chi lavora è perduto (In capo al mondo) (1963). Afterwards, he went on to make such avante garde art films as Attraction (1969) and L'urlo (1966). He was approached in 1976 to directed a sexploitation quickie, Madam Kitty (1976), but he wisely chose to have the script rewritten, turning it into a dark, political satire. The success of "Salon Kitty" lead Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione to choose Brass to helm Caligula (1979), the big-budget adaption of Gore Vidal's novel "Caligula." Tinto finished shooting the film, but when he refused to convert it into the "flesh flick" that Guccione wanted it to be by including footage of Penthouse centerfolds making out and romping, he was fired and locked out of the editing room. He later disowned the film when he saw the botched editing (the film was spliced together amateurishly from outtakes and rehearsal footage) and Guccione's hardcore sex scenes spliced in with his work. Ironically, "Caligula" remains Tinto's most famous film. After it became a huge international box-office hit, Brass was hired to shoot a spy thriller Snack Bar Budapest (1988). Afterwards, he decided that he should focus on erotica, as a way to rebel against the hypocrisy of censors, explaining that sex is a normal part of life and we should just deal with it.
With his latest films Black Angel (2002) (an update of the classic novella "Senso") and the erotic comedy Fallo (1988), Brass cemented his reputation of an undisputed master of erotica and avante-garde art films.- Director
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Tonino Valerii was born on 20 May 1934 in Teramo, Abruzzo, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for My Name Is Nobody (1973), A Girl Called Jules (1970) and Day of Anger (1967). He was married to Rita. He died on 13 October 2016 in Teramo, Abruzzo, Italy.- Production Designer
- Art Director
- Set Decorator
Flavio Mogherini was born on 25 March 1922 in Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy. He was a production designer and art director, known for The Pyjama Girl Case (1977), La viaccia (1961) and Delitto passionale (1994). He died on 23 April 1994 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
- Director
- Editor
Pasquale Squitieri was born on 27 November 1938 in Naples, Campania, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Gli invisibili (1988), The Gun (1978) and Razza selvaggia (1980). He was married to Ottavia Fusco and Silvana Filotico. He died on 18 February 2017 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Luigi Magni was born on 21 March 1928 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Nemici d'infanzia (1995), In the Name of the Pope King (1977) and Nell'anno del Signore (1969). He was married to Lucia Mirisola. He died on 27 October 2013 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Sergio Corbucci was born on December 6, 1926, in Rome, Italy. He entered grade school with thoughts of becoming a businessman, but after earning a college degree in economics he took an abrupt detour into the world of cinema. Corbucci began his career as a film critic, first for the Italian film journal magazine "Schermi del Mondo" and later for the US Army newspaper "Stars and Stripes" during World War II.
Corbucci made his directorial debut with Salvate mia figlia (1951) and quickly made a name for himself as a capable and efficient filmmaker. His ability to make large-scale action sequences with a minimal budget kept him in demand as an assistant director as well. It was on one such assignment, while filming with a second unit in Spain for friend and director Sergio Leone on The Last Days of Pompeii (1959), that Corbucci claims that the idea for the so-called "spaghetti western" was born. Seeing the landscape of Spain with its wild horses, extraordinary canyons and semi-desert landscapes--which looked a lot like Mexico or Texas--Corbucci suggested making an American Wild West-themed film in Spain. He then directed his first western in Spain just before Leone completed the ground-breaking A Fistful of Dollars (1964).
Corbucci found early success in Italy by directing films in a number of different genres, as disparate as Totò, Peppino e... la dolce vita (1961)--a slapstick comedy spoof of Federico Fellini's box-office hit La Dolce Vita (1960)--as well as Duel of the Titans (1961) (aka "Duel of the Titans") and Goliath and the Vampires (1961). He also wrote screenplays for a few seminal horror films, such as Castle of Blood (1964) starring Barbara Steele, which he also co-directed. However, it was his Massacre at Grand Canyon (1964) that began a new path to his career to direct more spaghetti westerns. "Massacre at Grand Canyon"--which Corbucci co-directed, under the pseudonym Stanley Corbett. with Albert Band--differed little from the American westerns of that time, but his subsequent films would set a new and bold standard for on-screen violence and establish him as one of the most influential Italian directors of the Spaghetti Western.
Minnesota Clay (1964), starring Cameron Mitchell, was Corbucci's next film in the genre and and his first Spaghetti Western to be distributed in the US under the director's own name. It was a moderate success, but Corbucci's next Spaghetti Western would break box-office records worldwide and brand his name in Western history alongside Sergio Leone. "A Fistful of Dollars' may have sparked the international popularity of the Spaghetti Western, but Corbucci's Django (1966) brought an entirely new level of style to the genre. The ultra-violent masterpiece not only signaled a move toward an even grittier and more nihilistic brand of Western, but it picture established a lasting relationship between Corbucci and the film's star, Franco Nero.
After the success of "Django", Corbucci embarked on a trail of directing more Italian Western films and quickly became one of the more prolific filmmakers in the genre. His subsequent Spaghetti Westerns, Ringo and His Golden Pistol (1966) (Johnny Oro), The Hellbenders (1967) (Hellbenders) and Navajo Joe (1966) were filmed and released in quick succession to great success in Italy. His next Western was The Great Silence (1968), which referred to Django as an "anti-Western" with the hero moving through cold rather than heat and fighting in the mud and snow rather than sweat and dust. It starred Jean-Louis Trintignant as a mute gunslinger and Klaus Kinski as a sadistic bounty hunter. The innovative script, which was co-written by Corbucci, makes great use of mountain locations (it was filmed in northern Italy in the snow-covered area of Cortina), and showed Corbucci edging close to the new type of political Westerns he is best known for.
His next Western film was The Mercenary (1968), which would began his semi-genre with what he called the "Zapata-Spaghetti Westerns" or proletarian fables, where the bad guys are on the right and the good guys are on the left. By setting the story in Mexico and fleshing out his characters with political awareness, Corbucci's intent became more clear and his left-wing political statements became more explicit. After directing the semi-successful The Specialists (1969), Corbucci re-teamed up with Franco Nero again with Compañeros (1970), which was his last box-office success and stands as one of the most accomplished Spaghetti Westerns, with a combination of humor, pathos, comic book-style action, and political commentary.
During the 1970s Corbucci made three more Spaghetti Westerns, but the popularity of the genre began to die out. Of the three, only Sonny and Jed (1972) stands out as one of the best in the late series genre Italian Westerns as a Bonnie & Clyde type fable. What Am I Doing in the Middle of a Revolution? (1972) is almost a parody of his Zapata-Spaghetti Westerns, while The White, the Yellow, and the Black (1975) is married by racial stereotypes of Japanese characters and was not well received.
By the late 1970s, with the era of Spaghetti Westerns over, Corbucci turned his film making career to comedy and found some success with, The Con Artists (1976) and Super Fuzz (1980). He continued to work off and on during the 1980s with comedies, until his death from a sudden heart attack on the late evening of December 1, 1990 at age 63. His last film was the made-for-Italian-TV-movie Donne armate (1991), which was completed a few months before his death as his health was starting to fail. Sergio Corbucci is remembered for revolutionizing the Spaghetti Western genre which was popularized by his friend Sergio Leone, who passed away a little over a year before Corbucci.- Director
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Alessandro Blasetti was born on 3 July 1900 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for First Communion (1950), La corona di ferro (1941) and Me, Me, Me... and the Others (1966). He was married to Maria Laura Quagliotti. He died on 1 February 1987 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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Guido Salvini was born on 12 May 1893 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Adriana Lecouvreur (1955), Regina della Scala (1937) and Il conte Aquila (1955). He died on 4 May 1965 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy.- Writer
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Arguably more important than his contributions as director (5 films) or scenarist (11 titles which include work for De Sica and Rossellini) are the roles Luigi Chiarini (1900-75) played in Italy as theorist, editor, festival director and film school founder. During the Fascist era, in 1935 he started the Centro Sperimentale, a place where aspiring movie makers could learn their skills.A library there named after him is the biggest film research facility in the country. Beginning in 1937 with Bianco E Nero and later with Rivista Del Cinema Italiano, Chiarini ran two of the more important cinema magazines and was one of the first to write essays on and intellectualize in depth about Italian film. After serving on the juries of both the Venice (1937) and Cannes (1961) film festivals, he was made artistic director of the Venice festival in 1963 but was let go five years later, partly because of what was seen as his authoritarian personality and partly because of political conditions during the tumultuous year of 1968. In 1961 he was made chair of the first study program in Italy specifically on film, at the University of Pisa.- Director
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Franco Giraldi was born on 11 July 1931 in Comeno, Gorizia, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy [now Komen, Slovenia]. He was a director and writer, known for La rosa rossa (1974), A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Roma dodici novembre 1994 (1995). He died on 2 December 2020 in Trieste, Friuli, Italy.- Writer
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Aldo Lado was born on 5 December 1934 in Fiume, Italy [now Croatia]. He was a writer and director, known for The Conformist (1970), Alibi perfetto (1992) and Love Ritual (1989). He died on 25 November 2023 in Rome, Italy.- Cinematographer
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Italian director Mario Bava was born on July 31, 1914 in the coastal northern Italian town of Sanremo. His father, Eugenio Bava (1886-1966), was a cinematographer in the early days of the Italian film industry. Bava was trained as a painter, and when he eventually followed his father into film photography his artistic background led him to a strong belief in the importance of visual composition in filmmaking.
Other than a series of short films in the 1940s which he directed, Bava was a cinematographer until 1960. He developed a reputation as a special effects genius, and was able to use optical trickery to great success. Among the directors for whom Bava photographed films were Paolo Heusch, Riccardo Freda, Jacques Tourneur and Raoul Walsh. While working with Freda on Lust of the Vampire (1957) in 1956, the director left the project after an argument with the producers and the film mostly unfinished. Bava stepped in and directed the majority of the movie, finishing it on schedule. This film, also known as "The Devil's Commandment", inspired a wave of gothic Italian horror films. After a similar incident occurred on Freda's Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959), and Bava's having been credited with "saving" Tourneur's The Giant of Marathon (1959), Galatea urged Bava to direct any film he wanted with their financing.
The film that emerged, Black Sunday (1960), is one his most well known as well as one of his best. This widely influential movie also started the horror career of a beautiful but then unknown British actress named Barbara Steele. While Black Sunday is a black and white film, it was in the color milieu that the director excelled. The projects which followed began to develop stunning photography, making great use of lighting, set design, and camera positioning to compliment mise-en-scenes bathed in deep primaries. Through works such as Hercules in the Haunted World (1961), The Whip and the Body (1963), and Planet of the Vampires (1965), Bava's films took on the look of works of art. In the films The Evil Eye (1963) and Blood and Black Lace (1964), he created the style and substance of the giallo, a genre which would be perfected in the later films of Dario Argento.
Bava worked in many popular genres, including viking films, peplum, spaghetti westerns, action, and even softcore, but it is his horror films and giallo mystery films which stand out and for which he is best remembered. Recommended are Black Sunday (1960), The Whip and the Body (1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964), Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966), A Bay of Blood (1971), and Lisa and the Devil (1973). Bava's son Lamberto served as his assistant on most of his films since 1965, and since 1980 has been a director himself. Lamberto Bava's films include Macabre (1980), Demons (1985) and Body Puzzle (1992).
But after the commercial failure of his later films, as well as the unreleased works of Rabid Dogs (1974), Bava went into a decline and by 1975, retired from filmmaking all together. He was persuaded to come out of retirement at the request of his son, Lamberto, to direct Shock, as well as a made-for-Italian television movie. Mario Bava died from a sudden heart attack on April 27, 1980 at age 65. With his death, an era in Italian filmmaking had come to a close.- Writer
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Lucio Fulci, born in Rome in 1927, remains as controversial in death as he was in life. A gifted craftsman with a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of dark humor, Fulci achieved some measure of notoriety for his gore epics of the late 1970s and early 1980s, but respect was long in coming.
Abandoning his early career as a med student, Fulci entered the film industry as a screenwriter and assistant director, working alongside such directors as Steno and Riccardo Freda. Granted his debut feature in 1959, with a seldom seen comedy called I ladri (1959) (The Thieves), Fulci quickly established himself as a prolific craftsman adept at musicals, comedies and westerns.
In 1968, Fulci made his first mystery thriller, One on Top of the Other (1969), and its success was sufficient to garner the backing for his pet project The Conspiracy of Torture (1969). Based on a true story, the film details the trial of a young woman accused of murdering her sexually abusive father amid fear and superstition in 16th Century Italy. A scathing commentary on church and state, the film was the first to give voice to its director's passionate hatred of the Catholic Church. Predictably, the film was misunderstood, and Fulci's career was thrown into jeopardy. Deciding it would be best to leave his political feelings on the back burner, Fulci pressed on with a series of slickly commercial ventures.
In 1971 and 1972, Fulci re-established himself in the thriller arena, directing two excellent giallos: the haunting A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) and the disturbing Don't Torture a Duckling (1972). The former, with its vivid hallucinations involving murderous hippies and vivisected canines, and the latter, with its psychotic religious zealots and brutal child killings, were -- to say the least -- controversial. In particular, Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), despite a huge box-office success, painted too graphic a portrait of perverted Catholicism, and Fulci's career was derailed... some would say, permanently. Blacklisted (albeit briefly) and despised in his homeland, Fulci at least found work in television and with the adventure genre with two financially successful Jack London 'White Fang' adventure movies in 1973 and 1974 which were Zanna Bianca, and Il ritorno di Zanna Bianca. Also during the mid and late 1970s, Fulci also directed two 'Spaghetti Westerns'; The Four of the Apocalypse... (1975) and Silver Saddle (1978), (Silver Saddle) and another 'giallo'; The Psychic (1977), as well as a few sex-comedies which include the political spoof The Eroticist (1972) (aka: The Eroticist), and the vampire spoof Dracula in the Provinces (1975) (aka: Young Dracula), and the violent Mafia crime-drama Contraband (1980).
In 1979, Fulci's film making career hit another high point with him breaking into the international market with Zombie (1979), an in-name-only sequel to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), which had been released in Italy as 'Zombi'. With its flamboyant imagery, graphic gore and moody atmospherics, the film established Fulci as a gore director par excellence. It was a role he accepted, but with some reservations.
Over the next three years, Fulci plied his trade with finesse and flair, rivaling even the popularity of his "opponent" Dario Argento, with such sanguine classics as City of the Living Dead (1980) and The Beyond (1981). Frequently derided as sheer sensationalism, these films, as well as the reviled The New York Ripper (1982) are actually intelligently crafted, with sound commentaries on everything from American life to religion. High on vivid imagery and pure cinematic style, Fulci's films from this period of the early 1980s represent some of his most popular work in America and abroad, even if they do pale in comparison to his 1972 masterpiece and personal favorite Don't Torture a Duckling (1972) (an impossible act to follow, as it happens).
In the mid-1980s, at the peak of his most prolific period, Fulci became beset with personal problems and worsening health. Much of his work from the mid-1980s onward is disappointing, to say the least, but flashes of his brilliance can be seen in works like Murder-Rock: Dancing Death (1984) and The Devil's Honey (1986). A Cat in the Brain (1990), one of Fulci's last works, remains one of his most original. Though strapped by budgetary restraints and marred by mediocre photography, the film is wickedly subversive and comical. With Fulci playing the lead role (as more or less himself, no less -- a harried horror director who fears that his obsession with sex and violence is a sign of mental disease), Fulci also proves to be an endearing and competent actor (he also has cameos in many of his films, frequently as a detective or doctor figure).
By the 1990s, Fulci went on a hiatus with film making for further health and personal reasons as the Italian cinema market went into a further decline. While in pre-production for the Dario Argento-produced The Wax Mask (1997), Lucio Fulci passed away at his home on March 13, 1996 at the age of 68. A serious diabetic most of his adult life, he inexplicably forgot to take his insulin before retiring to bed; some consider his death a suicide, others consider it an accident, but his many fans all consider it to be a tragedy. Whether one considers him to be a hack or a genius, there's no denying that he was unique.- Director
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Ruggero Deodato was born on May 7, 1939, in Potenza, Italy, and grew up outside Rome. One of his close friends at the time was Renzo Rossellini, the son of famed Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Knowing Ruggerio's love for the movies, Renzo persuaded him to work as a second unit director on some of his father's productions. From 1958-67 Deodato worked as a second unit director for several cult film directors such as Anthony M. Dawson (Antonio Margheriti), Riccardo Freda and Joseph Losey. Deodato's directorial debut was the action-fantasy Hercules, Prisoner of Evil (1964), replacing Margheriti who quit the production. Deodato's claim to fame was the spaghetti western Django (1966). His career took off in 1968 when he directed a number of films based on comic-book characters and musicals. It was while shooting one of these films that Deodato met, and later married, Silvia Dionisio.
From 1971-75 Deodato worked in television, directing the series All'ultimo minuto (1971) as well as TV commercials, including ones for Esso Oil, Band-Aid and Fanta. Deodato returned to filmmaking with an erotic melodrama and a police thriller. At the same time his marriage fell apart. In 1977 Deodato directed the notorious Last Cannibal World (1977) and later Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Deodato traveled to New York City and directed the disturbing thriller House on the Edge of the Park (1980), a semi-follow-up to Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972). Deodato made House on the Edge of the Park (1980) in just 19 days on a tiny budget. He then returned to directing action and horror flicks.
Deodato lives in Rome with his current partner, Micaela Rocco, and still works in movies and occasional TV series. He is rumored to be planning a sequel to "Cannibal Holocaust".- Director
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Leopoldo Savona was born on 13 July 1913 in Lenola, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and assistant director, known for Warriors Five (1962), Apocalypse Joe (1970) and Arms of the Avenger (1963). He died on 19 October 2000 in Jesi, Marche, Italy.- Writer
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Abandoning earlier studies in architecture and engineering, Luigi Zampa learned screenwriting and directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, between 1932 and 1937. He went on to make military training films for the Italian army during World War II, as well as collaborating on film scripts. He began to direct in 1941, initially 'rom-coms' (romantic comedies), though his subsequent work became increasingly influenced by his wartime experiences. This was particularly the case with his acclaimed anti-war film To Live in Peace (1947) ("Vivere in Pace"). His next success, Anni difficili (1948), examined Italy's recent history under the influence, first of the Nazis, and, subsequently, the Allies. Noted as one of the first Italian neo-realist film makers, he injected satire and political criticism into his studies of bourgeois mores and corruption. Zampa's post-1960 films again reverted to becoming more escapist, commercially oriented.- Writer
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Mario Soldati studied by the Jesuits and in the 1920s was acquainted with liberal intellectuals who gathered around Piero Gobetti. He wrote his first play ("Pilatus") when he was 18, and published hist first short story collection ("Salmace") in 1929. In 1935 he reached literary success with "America primo amore" (America First Love), a novel in which he transposed his diary of his stay in the U.S. between 1929 and 1931 as guest professor at the Columbia University. His life was divided between literature and movie-making. He was also a well-known scholar of English and American Literature, and authored several documentary programs for Italian State broadcaster RAI-TV.- Director
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Mario Mattoli was born on 30 November 1898 in Tolentino, Marche, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Abbandono (1940), La damigella di Bard (1936) and Schoolgirl Diary (1941). He was married to Mity Mignone. He died on 26 February 1980 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Antonio Pietrangeli was born on 19 January 1919 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for I Knew Her Well (1965), The Visit (1963) and March's Child (1958). He was married to Margherita Ferroni. He died on 12 July 1968 in Gaeta, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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Giorgio Bianchi was born on 18 February 1904 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and actor, known for Cronaca nera (1947), Il conte Max (1957) and La maestrina (1942). He died on 9 February 1967 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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Renato Castellani was born on 4 September 1913 in Finale Ligure, Liguria, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Romeo and Juliet (1954), Two Cents Worth of Hope (1952) and Sotto il sole di Roma (1948). He died on 28 December 1985 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Additional Crew
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Franco Zeffirelli is an Italian director and producer of operas, films and television. He was also a senator from 1994 until 2001 for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party. Some of his operatic designs and productions have become worldwide classics.
He was known for several of the movies he directed, especially the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet (1968), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. His 1967 version of The Taming of The Shrew (1967) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton remains the best-known film adaptation of that play as well. His mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (1977) won both national and international acclaim.
In 1999, Zeffirelli received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. In November 2004, he was awarded an honorary knighthood by the United Kingdom. He was awarded the Premio Colosseo in 2009 by the city of Rome.- Director
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Carlo Tuzii is known for Ciao Gulliver (1970), Dieci registi italiani, dieci racconti italiani (1982) and L'uomo dei venti (1975).- Director
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Salvatore Samperi was born on 26 July 1943 in Padua, Veneto, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Malicious (1973), Ernesto (1979) and Smell of Flesh (1974). He was married to Francesca Bardella. He died on 5 March 2009 in Trevignano Romano, Lazio, Italy.- Actor
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Corso Salani was born on 9 September 1961 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. He was an actor and director, known for Voci d'Europa (1989), Talsi: Confini d'Europa #4 (2007) and C'è un posto in Italia (2005). He died on 16 June 2010 in Ostia, Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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Renato De Maria was born in 1958 in Varese, Italy. He is a director and writer, known for Hotel paura (1996), The Front Line (2009) and Italian Gangsters (2015). He has been married to Isabella Ferrari since April 2002. They have two children.- Writer
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Giuseppe G. Stasi (director and screenwriter) and Giancarlo Fontana (director and editor) began their career in 2011, making a number of satirical videos for the web such as Inception Made in Italy and Il Processo Ruby, which enjoyed great success online, getting over one million views.
Later they make spoof trailers and shorts for the television shows Un due tre stella by Sabina Guzzanti (La7), Blob and NeriPoppins by Neri Marcorè (Rai3), and Gli Sgommati (SkyUno), sending up Italian politics, society and news.
Their first feature film, Amore Oggi, produced by Sky Cinema and broadcast on 14 February 2014 on Sky Cinema Uno, got excellent ratings and was subsequently distributed in cinemas by Warner Bros. on the occasion of the 'Cinema Days' event.
Their first official film for the cinema was Put Grandma in the Freezer, with Miriam Leone and Fabio De Luigi, written by Fabio Bonifacci and produced by Indigo Film. Released in March 2018 in 400 cinemas, it was a big hit with audiences and critics, making the top 10 for box office takings for the year and winning a nomination for the Silver Ribbon for Best Comedy of the Year.
In March 2019, Bentornato Presidente was released (the sequel to 2013's Welcome Mr. President! by Riccardo Milani), starring Claudio Bisio, Sarah Felberbaum, Pietro Sermonti, Guglielmo Poggi and Paolo Calabresi. The film gained two Silver Ribbon nominations including Best Comedy.- Director
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Andrea Adriatico was born in 1966 in L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy. He is a director and writer, known for The Wind in the Evening (2004), Pugni e su di me si chiude un cielo (2002) and L'auto del silenzio (2002).