Renato Castellani

Renato Castellani
Born(1913-09-04)4 September 1913
Varigotti, Finale Ligure, Kingdom of Italy
Died28 December 1985(1985-12-28) (aged 72)
Rome, Italy
Occupations
  • Director
  • screenwriter
Notable workUnder the Sun of Rome

Two Cents Worth of Hope

Romeo and Juliet

Renato Castellani (4 September 1913 – 28 December 1985) was an Italian film director and screenwriter.

Early life

Son of a representative of Kodak, he was born in Varigotti, a hamlet at the time of Final Pia, which became Finale Ligure (Savona) in 1927, where his mother had returned from Argentina to give birth to his son. He spent his childhood in Argentina, in the city of Rosario. After 12 years, he returned to Liguria and resumed his studies in Genoa. He moved to Milan, where he graduated from the Polytechnic University in architecture. In Milan he met Livio Castiglioni and together they aired for GUF (Fascist University Group) L'ora radiofonica and La fontana malata by Aldo Palazzeschi, experimenting with new techniques for sound editing on radio.

Career

He began collaborating in 1936 as a military consultant for The Great Appeal, a film by Mario Camerini. He worked as a film critic and worked - as a screenwriter or assistant director - with important names of the Italian cinema of the time, such as Augusto Genina, with whom he signed the script for Castles in the air (1939), by Mario Soldati, of which he was assistant director on the set of Malombra (1942). He then worked with the director Alessandro Blasetti, signing the screenplays of his movies An Adventure of Salvator Rosa (1939), The Iron Crown (1941), Four Steps in the Clouds (1942) and with the director Camillo Mastrocinque, signing the screenplay of The Cuckoo Clock (1938).

His first work as a director was A Pistol Shot (1942), based on a story by Aleksandr Puskin, in which Alberto Moravia also took part in the screenplay, with Fosco Giachetti and Assia Noris. This movie, as well as the subsequent Zazà (1942), fit into the caligraphism genre.

With Under the Sun of Rome (1948), It's Forever Springtime (1950), both shot outdoors with non-professional actors, and especially Two Cents Worth of Hope (1952), Castellani gave rise to a new genre, defined as "pink neorealism", considered by critics at the time as the downward trend of neorealism, but destined to a vast audience success.

With Two Cents Worth of Hope, he won the ex aequo Grand Prix at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. With Romeo and Juliet (1954), he won the Golden Lion at the 1954 Venice Film Festival.

After some other significant films such as Dreams in a Drawer (1957) and The Brigand (1961), Castellani devoted himself mainly to biopics in episodes shot for television, widely followed, such as The Life of Leonardo da Vinci (1971) and The Life of Verdi (1982).

Filmography

Film

Year Title Director Writer
1938 The Cuckoo Clock No Yes
1938 Unknown of Monte Carlo No Yes
1939 Two Million for a Smile No Yes
1939 Heartbeat No Yes
1939 Department Store No Yes
1939 The Document No Yes
1939 Castles in the Air No Yes
1939 The Knight of San Marco No Yes
1940 One Hundred Thousand Dollars No Yes
1940 A Romantic Adventure No Yes
1940 An Adventure of Salvator Rosa No Yes
1941 The Jester's Supper No Yes
1941 The Iron Crown No Yes
1942 Malombra No Yes
1942 A Pistol Shot Yes Yes
1942 Zazà Yes Yes
1943 The Woman of the Mountain Yes Yes
1943 In High Places No Yes
1946 Malìa No Yes
1946 Professor, My Son Yes Yes
1948 Under the Sun of Rome Yes Yes
1948 Fabiola No Yes
1950 It's Forever Springtime Yes Yes
1950 Romanticismo No Yes
1952 Two Cents Worth of Hope Yes Yes
1954 Romeo and Juliet Yes Yes
1957 Dreams in a Drawer Yes Yes
1959 Nella città l'inferno Yes Yes
1961 The Brigand Yes Yes
1963 Mare matto Yes Yes
1964 Marriage Italian Style No Yes
1964 Countersex Yes Yes
1964 Three Nights of Love Yes Yes
1967 Ghosts - Italian Style Yes Yes
1969 The Archangel No Yes
1969 Brief Season Yes Yes

Television

Theater

See also


This page was last updated at 2024-02-19 12:54 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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