Tinto Brass, master of Italian erotic cinema, dies at 93

Italian erotic film director Tinto Brass, best known for his cult film Caligula (1979), died Wednesday at the age of 93 in Rome, his wife Catarina Varzi and his children Bonifacio and Beatrice announced to the ANSA news agency. The Milan native who grew up in Venice made his debut in the 1960s as an avant-garde and experimental filmmaker before moving into the field of eroticism. He has directed several stars, notably Helen Mirren, who in 2020 demonstrated an “extraordinary” complicity on the set of Caligula with her “adored” Tinto Brass.

The filmmaker has worked on around thirty films in his forty-year career. For him, eroticism represented a “fundamental key to human expression and, above all, the key to the representation of women”, recalls the daily La Repubblica. Before adding: “I believe I have contributed to changing, if only a little, the perception of eroticism, at least for the spectators who have seen my films”. Tinto Brass trained at the Cinémathèque de Paris, where he met Roberto Rossellini, whom he described as a “master of cinema and life”. “I stayed with him, in Cartier-Bresson’s studio, and we viewed the images of India that he had shot,” he said.

Tribute to the Venice Film Festival

Other names in cinema have marked his early careers, like Alberto Cavalcanti and Joris Ivens. His first film, In capo al mondo, was warmly received at the Venice Film Festival in 1963. His subsequent feature films, such as Col cuore in gola, shot with Jean-Louis Trintignant, also convinced the critics. Another of his great successes, La Chiave (The Key), released in 1983, brought together the great actress Stefania Sandrelli, the British actor Frank Finlay and Franco Branciaroli.