Thursday, March 7, 2013

RIP Damiano Damiani



The Italian cinema is in mourning tonight. Damiano Damiani died this evening at his home in Rome of respiratory failure., he  was 90.

Born in Pordenone July 23, 1922, Damiano Damiani had a long career as a director of the cinema of such films as "The Day of the Owl" and the TV film "La Piovra".

He was passionate, curious, with a taste for controversy, Damiano Damiani began working with a group of talented people who are called Comencini, Lattuada and Olmi. In 1960 he appeared in his first film, “Il rossetto”, in which appeared in the role of a police officer directed by Pietro Germi. The 1960s were the golden decade of Damiani that appealed to the critics and the cash box and the praises of the secular left. Cesare Zavattini joined him in the adaptation of “Arturo di Elsa Morante” (1962) while the following year the adaptation with Tonino Guerra of “Noia” by Alberto Moravia. The same year, 1963, he reunited with Walter Chiari and engaged in the Spaghetti Western with “A Bullet for the General” with Klaus Kinski. In 1966 he made his best-known film, “Il giorno della civetta” that follows a trend of cinema civil disobedience. In 1972 he was the director of “Girolimoni, il mostro di Roma” with Nino Manfredi one of the highest-grossing film of the decade.

Damiani wrote and directed two Euro-westerns, the before mentioned “A Bullet for the General” (1966) with Gian Maria Volonte and “The Genius” (1975) with Terence Hill. As an actor he had a cameo as a journalist in "A Bullet for the General."

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