
Acting
Massimo Girotti
Born 1918-05-18 · Mogliano, Macerata, Italy
Massimo Girotti (18 May 1918 – 5 January 2003) was an Italian film actor whose career spanned seven decades. Born in Mogliano, in the province of Macerata, Girotti developed his athletic physique by swimming and playing polo. While studying engineering, he attracted the attention of Mario Soldati, who offered him a small part in the film Dora Nelson (1939), but it was not until later, in Alessandro Blasetti's La corona di ferro (The Iron Crown) (1941) and Roberto Rossellini's Un Pilota ritorna (A Pilot Returns) (1942), that he began to make an impression as a serious actor. In 1943 came a turning point in his career when Luchino Visconti cast him opposite the torrid Clara Calamai in Ossessione (Obsession), an earlier adaptation of the same novel on which Hollywood's The Postman Always Rings Twice is based. The film marked, in a sense, the birth of Italian neo-realism. Some of his notable post-war films include Caccia tragica (The Tragic Hunt) (1946) by Giuseppe De Santis and In nome della legge (1949) (In the Name of the Law) by Pietro Germi. In 1950, he starred opposite Lucia Bosé in Michelangelo Antonioni's first full-length feature, Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair) (1950). In 1953, he played Spartacus in an Italian epic film known in the US as Sins of Rome and then, returned to work again for Visconti, in Senso (1954), giving perhaps the finest performance of his career. In the years which followed, he appeared in many mainly Italian films for directors such as Lizzani, Bolognini, Vittorio Cottafavi, Lattuada, but it was not until 1968 that he once again played a role worthy of his talents - that of the father in Pasolini's Teorema (Theorem) with Terence Stamp and Silvana Mangano. Two years later, Pasolini cast him as Creonte opposite Maria Callas in his Medea (1969). In 1972, he was in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. That same year he made a rare appearance in a horror film when he agreed to a supporting role in Baron Blood as a favor to its director Mario Bava. He continued to act in character roles for the next thirty years. Some of the films he appeared in have been notable, including Joseph Losey's Monsieur Klein (1976) with Alain Delon and Jeanne Moreau, Art of Love (1983) by Walerian Borowczyk, the 1985 television miniseries Quo Vadis?, Roberto Benigni's Il mostro (The Monster) (1994). He died in Rome of a heart attack after having just completed his last film, Ferzan Özpetek's La Finestra di fronte (Facing Windows) (2003). Source: Article "Massimo Girotti" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Acting credits
6.7In 1860s Italy, Giorgio is a young soldier is sent to a remote post, far from his lover, Clara. Lodged with the colonel, he befriends the colonel and the local doctor. Among the inhabitants are a strange young woman, both unattractive and mad; however, she's got a passion that Giorgio will have to cope with.
Passion of Love
1981
7.0A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.
Theorem
1968
6.9A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.
Last Tango in Paris
1972
7.5A history of the French Revolution beginning from the decision of the king to convene the Etats-Generaux in 1789 in order to deal with France's debt problem. Part one spans the event until August 10, 1792 (when the King Louis XVI lost all authority and was imprisoned). Part two carries the story through the end of the terror in 1794.
The French Revolution
1989
7.2Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.
Mr. Klein
1976
7.0A vicious serial sex killer is on the loose, and landscape gardener and shop-window outfitter Loris is the prime suspect, thanks to his unfortunate habit of getting caught in compromising situations (for which there is always a totally innocent explanation that the police fail to spot). Undercover policewoman Jessica is assigned by eccentric police psychologist Taccone to follow Loris.
The Monster
1994
6.8Tullio Hermil is a chauvinist aristocrat who flaunts his mistress to his wife, but when he believes she has been unfaithful he becomes enamored of her again.
The Innocent
1976
7.2A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.
Senso
1954
6.0Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.
The Witches
1967
6.9Overburdened and stuck in a greying marriage, Giovanna takes to caring for a Jewish Holocaust survivor her husband brings home. As she begins to reflect on her life, she turns to the man who lives across from her.
Facing Windows
2003
6.6Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.
Medea
1969
5.2Twin brothers were raised by wolves, revolt against tyranny in pre-Roman Italy and then come to a parting of the ways as they lead their people toward the founding of a new city, the founders of Rome.
Romulus and Remus
1961
6.1Torn by personal guilt, Italian General Umberto Nobile reminisces about his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the airship Italia.
The Red Tent
1969
4.1Pauline Bonaparte, sister of the famous Napoleon, embarks on a series of amourous escapades, including an engagement to the Conventionnel Fréron; her relationship with the comté de Canouville; and her marriage to General Leclerc, whom she follows to Saint-Domingue.
Imperial Venus
1962
6.1A young man, Peter, returns to Austria in search of his heritage. There he visits the castle of an ancestor, a sadistic Baron who was cursed to a violent death by a witch whom the Baron had burned at the stake. Peter reads aloud the incantation that causes Baron Blood to return and continue his murderous tortures.
Baron Blood
1972
7.5Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna as they plan to get rid of her older husband.
Obsession
1943
6.6After the Nazis take her husband away, an illiterate old washerwoman joins the Resistance as a bike courier in the Central Italian countryside.
And Agnes Chose to Die
1976
5.3What begins as an innocent art class becomes a steamy triangle of erotic passions and forbidden love. A beautiful Japanese girl becomes the object of obsession in a devious relationship between the wife of a German diplomat and her husband.
The Berlin Affair
1985
4.8Young Marco Polo travels to China to help Kublai Khan fight against rebels, headed by his own son, with a new invention: gunpowder.
Marco the Magnificent
1965
6.2In impoverished post-war Rome, a gang of young thieves is lead by Stefano, the son of an illustrious professor. The police suspects that the criminals are actually university students; inspector Mariani, a young World War II veteran, enrolls and tries to find out more. He falls for a pretty fellow student, Luisa, but she is the sister of the gang leader...
Lost Youth
1948
5.8Three girls are on a hitchhiking trip through northern Italy, the riviera, Venice, Pisa and Rome.
It Happened in Rome
1957
5.6In the kingdom of Kindaor, traitor Sedesmondo kills his brother, the King of Kindaor, and becomes the tyrant of kingdom. He abandons the prince Arminio to beasts in the woods, but lions don't kill him and breed him as one of them.
The Iron Crown
1941
6.7Set in an unspecified country and an unspecified time period, the film follows a communist intelectual who, after travelling the world for many decades, decides to return and settle down to the place he grew up in, a small coastal village seemingly forgotten by time itself. With him, he brings news of the dawn of a new world on the horizon, with which he wishes to connect with through constructing a modern highway. This news is welcomed in the village, however, the construction of the road begins to bring out violent conflicts, reveals forbidden romances and ends up regressing the community even further into the darkness from which it wanted to escape.
The Year Long Road
1958
5.0After leaving the reformatory where they spent their childhood, three boys begin their journey in life. The protagonist ends up becoming a criminal, but is finally redeemed by another of his former classmates, who has become a priest.
Saranno uomini
1957