Renato Castellani

Director

September 4, 1913 (72 years)

† December 28, 1985

Finale Ligure, Liguria, Italy

Biography

Renato Castellani (4 September 1913 – 28 December 1985) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Son of a representative of Kodak, he was born in Varigotti, at the time a hamlet 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 Poly…

Filmography

8.4

The Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Miniseries dramatizing the life of the Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci.

5.0

Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 and lived until 1901, his life spanning nearly a century of political turmoil and considerable personal turmoil. This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem.

10.0

Il furto della gioconda

A miniseries in three parts about the theft of Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" in 1911.

5.9

Department Store

In a massive department store the driver romances the shopgirl. The problem is that the manager also has his eye on her, and some employees seem to be pilfering goods from the place.

6.4

Two Cents Worth of Hope

Once a young woman gets a man to fall in love with her, he must prove himself financially stable and meet her dowry requirements.

7.1

Under the Sun of Rome

A lovely, incisive portrait of adolescents in the crowded San Giovanni quarter of Rome during the last years of WWII.

6.2

Ghosts, Italian Style

Pasquale and Maria, husband and wife, live in a palace supposedly haunted by ghosts and pay no rent. When Pasquale finds some food in the cupboard he thinks the ghosts are at work.

5.9

Three Nights of Love

Omnibus film with individual segments directed by Renato Castellani, Luigi Comencini and Franco Rossi; all of them starring the radiant Catherine Spaak as "out of place" women longing for love, in a Sicillian village, a monastery, and a modern Italian urban setting, respectively.

5.4

Romeo and Juliet

In Shakespeare's classic play, the Montagues and Capulets, two families of Renaissance Italy, have hated each other for years, but the son of one family and the daughter of the other fall desperately in love and secretly marry.

4.4

Crazy Sea

A pretty woman approaching middle age rents out rooms in a small Italian town. An aging sailor and a handsome younger man are amongst the lodgers.

6.5

Controsesso

A vivid assortment consisted of three acts taken from the lives of modern 1960s Italians, always in orbit around the restless theme of sexual inhibition and the pursuit of pleasure in sex.

7.4

Hell in the City

A young girl comes to prison and experiences the entire prison subculture. The inmates she befriends vary from big tough dangerous dames to smaller submissive ladies who are totally lost in prison life.

4.5

Zazà

A glamorous female singer Zazà has an affair with a passerby engineer Dufresne. But when Zazà impatiently comes to him in Paris she finds out that he is married and even has a daughter. He wants to escape from his relatives with Zazà, but, disillusioned and exhausted, she rejects his proposition and insists on his coming back to his family.

8.0

I sogni nel cassetto

The difficulties of a young married couple, since the husband has to prepare for his examinations during his wife's pregnancy.

9.0

Il grande appello

An Italian proprietor of a squalid Djibouti bar collaborated in selling arms to Ethiopians fighting his own country's invasion but after finding his long lost son on the Fascist front he decides to choose patriotism over selfish profit.

10.0

Verdi

This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem.

7.0

Professor, My Son

During Fascism and after WWII, a school porter sacrifices himself so his son, who is slightly ashamed of a lowly background, can become a respected professor.The film also takes a few jabs at Italy's rapid governmental reshuffles.

8.5

A Pistol Shot

Count Anikoff, a Russian officer, challenges his best friend, Sergei, to a duel when he finds him courting the young woman he, too, is in love with. Sergei can't bring himself to kill his friend. He fires only after taking the bullet out of his pistol. Now, it is the Count's turn to fire...

6.4

It's Forever Springtime

The second of Castellani's trilogy dealing with the less-than-smooth course of young love in postwar Italy (it was filmed just after Sotto il sole di Roma and just before Two Cents Worth of Hope). Leading man Mario Angelotti, loving not wisely but too well, quickly discovers that the penalty for bigamy is two wives. Between his tempestuous Sicilian bride, played by Elena Varzi and his sedate Milanese missus (Irene Gemma), the poor man barely has time to take a breath.

6.7

A Hundred Thousand Dollars

On a whim, an American man offers a girl the sum of $100,000 if she will marry him.