About Salvatore Baccaro

A "monstrous" character actor, without whom the Italian encore would have been seriously diminished

Nocturno

By Davide Paluci

June 27, 2024

Roccamandolfi, an Italian town of 896 inhabitants in the province of Isernia in Molise. Home to many men dedicated to post-unification brigandage. But the homeland, above all, of Salvatore Baccaro, who was born there on May 6, 1932. His story begins when he moves to the capital, looking for a job. A deformation of the facial massif – technically it was acromegaly (the same pathology that afflicted Richard Keil) – contributed from an early age to make it offensive to the eyes, on the one hand, but on the other hand enveloped him with the charm that always accompanies the "marked" person. To the non-conforming. In the capital he found himself selling flowers at a stall on the Tiburtina, in front of the De Paolis theaters: a sort of pre-established destination, a destined location. It was there, in fact, that one day, as his brother Armando historicizes today, Carmelo Bene began to walk around the kiosk, around Baccaro, like a lion that stakes its prey. He ventured the question if Salvatore had ever made films and if he was interested in doing so. Baccaro answered, in order, no and yes. Within an hour he would have had a contract in his hands, for the role of extra in Salomé. Perhaps things were more complex than how his brother reconstructs: this is said by the frames of the pre-Salomé films in which Baccaro cannot help but be noticed. The Most Beautiful Wife by Damiano Damiani (March 1970), Ma chi t'ha dato la patente? (August 1970), a Franco & Ciccio directed by Nando Cicero, one with a great clinical eye for the Discrepancy. One could investigate how long before the passage in censorship, in August 1972, the actual filming of Salomé dated, and it would be discovered that it was in July 1971, but these would be small matters. One fact is that from 1972, equally divided between westerns and decamerotics, Baccaro's irresistible rise in the Italian encore began.

Where his character (and his somatic character) would lend itself to becoming, among others, that of a friar in purgatory, a male nurse, a goat herder, a Satanasso, a brigand, the Golem, an ogre (twice), an adept of Satan, a Neanderthal man (twice), the mother of a possessed man (Satanetto), of a "Beast" in heat, of a Big Bad Wolf, of a scumbag, of a pinball player, of a leader of the cavemen, of Schiattamorto and so on and so forth. In his bio-filmographies about seventy films are counted, but it is highly likely that there were more. The brother speaks of a hundred and broken. Dario Argento in Deep Red took him to be a fruiter, at a stall on the street: that is, in practice, to play himself. But few point out that Dario had brought it with him from the previous film, The Five Days, with a role that was not exactly microscopic. His earthly journey ended at the end of 1984, when complications related to pulmonary edema occurred following a thyroid operation. Why he died in Novara, on the 18th of that month, is probably due to the logistics of the intervention. What is certain is that Baccaro had been pre-judged and chosen by Jean-Jacques Annaud and had already received the part of the script that concerned him to study, for The Name of the Rose. A good and generous man, in spite of his appearance, as often happens to "monsters". But above all a "monstrous" character actor, without whom the Italian encore, and particularly the decamerotics, would have been seriously diminished.

 

Salvatore Baccaro’s western films:

Blazing Gun – 1971 (Holy Ghost’s/Spirito Santo’s henchman)

He was Called the Holy Ghost – 1971 (convict)

Two Sons of Trinity – 1971(King Kong)

The Grand Duel – 1972 (saloon patron)

Gunmen and the Holy Ghost – 1972 (Shepard/capraio)

Jesse and Lester, Two Brothers in a Place Called Trinity – 1972 (Paco)

Man of the East – 1972 (prisoner)

Where the Bullets Fly – 1972

Court Martial – 1973 (convict)

Seven Nuns in Kansas City – 1973 (Fatty/Bart henchman) [as Sal Boris]