ROME — Italian film director Tinto Brass, best known internationally for the provocative 1979 epic “Caligula,” has died in Rome at 93, Deadline reported.
His wife, Caterina Varzi, and children Bonifacio and Beatrice Brass announced his death Wednesday to the Italian news agency Ansa, according to Deadline.
Brass was born in Milan in 1933 to a Venetian family. After earning a law degree in Padua, he moved to Paris in 1957, where he became connected with the Cinémathèque française under Henri Langlois and the emerging French New Wave. He worked as an assistant to Joris Ivens and Roberto Rossellini.
He made his directing debut in 1963 with a Venice-set film about a young unemployed man, later retitled “Chi Lavora è Perduto.” It drew fire from censors, the first of many battles Brass fought over his work during his career, Deadline reported.
Through the 1960s and early ’70s, Brass focused largely on avant-garde films, including two experimental shorts commissioned by author Umberto Eco. He shot three films in London: “Deadly Sweet” (1967), “Attraction” (1969) and “Dropout” (1970).
A restored 4K version of “Deadly Sweet,” starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Ewa Aulin, screened at this year’s Venice Film Festival in its Venice Classics program.
In the late 1970s, Brass gained new notoriety with the historical films “Salon Kitty” (1976) and “Caligula” (1979), followed by “The Key” (1983), a loose adaptation of a novel by Japanese author Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. His later career became closely associated with erotic cinema.
Sources: Deadline. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Kōshirō Onchi / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
