Brunello Rondi

Writer

November 26, 1924 (64 years)

† November 7, 1989

Tirano, Sondrio

Biography

Brunello Rondi was an Italian screenwriter and film director renowned for his extensive collaborations with Federico Fellini. He began his film career in 1947, contributing to the script of Last Love and serving as assistant director. Rondi worked with Roberto Rossellini on The Flowers of St. Francis (1950) and Europa '51 (1952). His partnership with Fellini included co-writing scripts for La Dolce Vita (1960), 8½ (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Orchestra Rehearsal (1978), and City of Wom…

Filmography

6.9

Boccaccio '70

An anthology of four comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy: frothy young love and office politics in the big city; milk advertisements that begin to haunt an aging prude; a trophy wife enduring her husband's very public affairs; a lucky ticket-holder at a small town fair.

8.1

8½

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

8.0

La Dolce Vita

Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.

6.9

City of Women

The charismatic Snaporaz encounters an alluring woman on a train and pursues her through a forest. He ends up at a hotel populated by women gathered for a feminist conference, where he is an unwanted presence. Snaporaz soon discovers he’s entered a phantasmagoric world where women have taken power.

8.0

Nights of Cabiria

Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.

6.7

Satyricon

After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.

4.4

Black Velvet

Crystal, a wealthy, scorned woman living in a massive Egyptian palace with her daughter Magda, finds commiseration in a dried-up Hollywood expat who surrounds himself with singing children.

7.4

Europa '51

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.

7.2

Juliet of the Spirits

Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.

7.2

The Demon

Purif is distraught when her lover is betrothed to another. When she summons the old ways to curse him, her erratic behavior is interpreted as demonic possession, and the villagers turn against her with physical and sexual violence.

4.4

The Sisters

Faced with a broken marriage, a woman decides to try to rekindle an incestuous relationship with her younger sister, who is married to a wealthy older man.

7.5

Arabella

A young woman uses her womanly wiles to seduce older men in order to aid her debt-ridden grandmother.

7.1

The Flowers of St. Francis

In a series of simple and joyous vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of the People’s Saint: humility, compassion, faith, and sacrifice. Gorgeously photographed to evoke the medieval paintings of Saint Francis’s time, and cast with monks from the Nocera Inferiore Monastery, The Flowers of St. Francis is a timeless and moving portrait of the search for spiritual enlightenment.

6.6

Orchestra Rehearsal

An orchestra assembles for a rehearsal in an ancient chapel under the inquisitive eyes of a TV documentary crew, but an uprising breaks out.

5.1

A Place for Lovers

Globe-trotting clothes-horse Julia, who's harboring a secret, embarks on a 10-day fling with Valerio in Italy.

7.2

Violent Life

Tommaso Puzzilli is a boy who grew up in the suburb of Pietralata outside Rome. Not having a job, Tommaso and his friends are committing crimes to make money.

4.7

Check to the Queen

Silvia is young, beautiful and rich. When her husband goes on a business trip, she starts working as a secretary for Margaret, a famous film star. Margaret appears to have no problems giving her what she wants and turns her into a sex slave- little by little, she subjects herself to increasingly serious humiliations in a masochistic relationship.

4.0

I prosseneti

David and his wife Gilda transform their beautiful villa in a brothel, which are home to several characters. Odile, the daughter of a woman tortured by mercenaries, meets in the villa one of the torturers and want to relive over his own body the suffering endured by the mother. An ambassador who was abandoned by his companion, imposes its new partner to take his place. An eighteen year old, very open-minded, staged an orgy.

4.3

Valerie Inside Outside

After a beautiful young woman tells her famous choreographer husband that she wants to have a child, he begins rejecting all of her sexual advances, which turns her to a life of insatiable adultery.

7.0

Escape by Night

In Nazi-occupied Rome, a beautiful bootlegger, to the chagrin of her lover, gives sanctuary to three escaped POWs: an American pilot, a Russian sergeant and a British major.