Fernando Di Leo, Quentin Tarantino's teacher

The director from San Ferdinando di Puglia, a reference from the author of "Pulp fiction", innovated noir and was one of the fathers of the pulp genre. With the ability to describe the world of the underworld, he also anticipated today's successful TV series

Rai News

By Gianluca Veneziani

11/10/2025

He was an innovator of noir cinema and one of the fathers of the pulp genre, recognized as a master even by Quentin Tarantino.

Fernando Di Leo was born in 1932 in San Ferdinando di Puglia where he lived until the age of 11. Even as a boy he showed a histrionic verve and an ability to create film sets in an artisanal way. "At the center in the village," says Giuseppe Memeo, artistic director of the Fernando Di Leo Short Film Festival, "he used to throw down chairs and tables from the bar with other naughty kids, images and sounds that were later found in some of his films. When asked who had caused that chaos, he used to answer, 'Ha stat u' vind', It was the wind...".

Di Leo continued his studies in Foggia where he graduated in law. Even if his passion was another. "Once he moved to Foggia," Memeo recalls, "he and Arbore became best friends. Arbore said that Fernando was the ringleader because he always decided what had to be done. Fernando developed this enormous passion for cinema there, so much so that he went to the cinema twice a day to see the films that were there. And Arbore, when they made an appointment, looked for him in the streets of Foggia shouting: Fernando, where have you gone? He had thrown himself into a cinema...".

After moving to Rome, Di Leo attended the Experimental Center of Cinematography. At first he collaborated on the screenplays of important films of the spaghetti western genre, writing the treatment of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and Django but his name did not appear among the authors partly because of his young age, partly because of his innate modesty.

"We are talking about years," Memeo continues, "in which the apprenticeship was also done in this way. Many, even Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, have written for Sergio Leone without their names appearing. But then they requested that their name be included. Fernando, on the other hand, did not do it and, as a reason, he said that those films were all thanks to Sergio Leone".

His affirmation took place with the detective genre, in particular with the Milieu Trilogy composed of Milano calibro 9, La mala ordina and Il boss, and inspired by the novels of Giorgio Scerbanenco.

"He," points out Davide Pulici, founder of the magazine Nocturno Cinema, "has almost always told stories from the other side, that is, from the side of the criminals. He evidently had a connection and an inclination precisely to tell that type of world, the world of the underworld. For the type of noir he created, he can well be said to be a forerunner of a genre that then depopulated between films and TV series, think of Romanzo Criminale, Gomorrah, Suburra etc. In any case, it is wrong to call his films police: he does not tell stories from the point of view of the policemen. And the only time the police appear in the title of one of his films is associated with a negative image. It is no coincidence that the film is called The Rotten Policeman".

His films inspired Quentin Tarantino who, recognizing in Di Leo "a master", defined La mala ordina "a masterpiece of Italian noir". "Among the protagonists of that film," Pulici warns again, "there are Henry Silva and Woody Stroode, two killers, a white and a black, who come from America to kill a Milanese pimp. Also, in Pulp fiction Tarantino has included a pair of killers, a white and a black, played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. Well, it's easy to think that he took them from La mala ordina".

Di Leo also landed in the horror genre - with the film The Beast Kills in Cold Blood with Klaus Kinski - and the erotic one, from Burn Boy Burns to Being Twenty Years, with Gloria Guida. Many of his films caused a scandal and were subject to censorship, partly because of the splatter scenes, partly because they recounted taboo topics such as female sexuality, partly because they touched on institutions such as the Church and the Police, highlighting their limits and contradictions. Starting with his first direction, that of the episode A Place in Paradise in the film "The heroes of yesterday ... today... tomorrow".

"In this episode," says Rita Di Leo, Fernando's sister, "if they were not really ridiculed, at least priests and the Vatican were described in a comic key. Giulio Andreotti, who had the task of viewing the films (as undersecretary to the Prime Minister's Office, he was in charge of Italian film production), stopped their distribution and ordered their censorship. My brother's films were uncomfortable, also because his was, in some way, a "committed" cinema. It might seem like a popular cinema, for an average audience. But, if we look with attentive eyes, today we can say that he made avant-garde films as regards, for example, the themes of corruption, the mafia and so on".

In recent decades we have witnessed the rediscovery of Di Leo, thanks to a magazine, Nocturno Cinema, and a festival, the Fernando Di Leo Short Film Festival. "It was September-October 1996," says Pulici, "when we had the opportunity to meet Di Leo at his house, then almost forgotten in Italy. We did a historic interview with him for Nocturno Cinema, which then became a source for all those who later began to write Fernando".

"As for me," Memeo warns, "I decided to recover Di Leo's memory after Tarantino's statements celebrating him. I was lucky enough after a few years to build this festival and, at the fourth edition, I can finally say that now in San Ferdinando everyone knows who Fernando Di Leo is".