GIUSEPPE ROTUNNO

GREAT CINEMATOGRAPHERS

#2: 2006

GIUSEPPE ROTUNNO

Born: 19 March 1923, Rome, Italy. A.k.a: Giuseppe 'Peppino' Rotunno.

Career: Entered the film industry as a still ph at the Cinecittà Studios at the age of 17. Was drafted in 1942 and send to Greece as film reporter for the Supreme Headquarters of the Italian Army. Was captured by the Germans in September 1943. Freed by the Americans in 1945 and returned to Italy where he became a c.asst. Worked for many years with doph G.R. Aldo. Became [again] doph in 1955.

Member and past president of the AIC. Member of the ASC since June 1966.

Also active as superv of film restorations, e.g. 'Il gattopardo' [in 1983; ph: G. Rotunno], 'Roma' [in 2002; ph: G. Rotunno], 'Pane, amore e fantasia' [in 2002; ph: Arturo Gallea] & 'Una giornata particolare' [in 2003; ph: Pasqualino De Santis].

Teaches at the National Film School in Rome since 1988.

Orio Caldiron wrote the book 'Giuseppe Rotunno - la verità della luce' [2007].

Appeared in the doc's 'Direttori fotografia: Rotunno/Six Kinds of Light: Peppino Rotunno' [1983, Massimo Magri & Gianpaolo Tescari], 'Ljuset håller mig sällskap/Light Keeps Me Company' [1999, Carl-Gustav Nykvist], 'Fellini: Je suis un grand menteur/Fellini: I'm a Born Liar' [2001, Damian Pettigrew], '[The Life and Times of Count Luchino] Visconti' [2002, Adam Low; ph: Dewald Aukema] & 'Federico Fellini - Through the Eyes of Others' [2003, Eckhart Schmidt].

Awards: BAFTA Film Award nom [1978] for 'Il Casanova di Federico Fellini'; 'Oscar' AA nom [1979] & BAFTA Film Award [1981] for 'All That Jazz'; David di Donatello Award [1984] for 'E la nave va'; David di Donatello 'Luchino Visconti Award' [1986]; David di Donatello Award [1990] for 'Mio caro dottor Gräsler'; Venice IFF 'Pietro Bianchi Award' [1995]; ASC International Award [1999]; Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award [1999]; AIC Premio alla carriera [Career Award] [2010].

GO TO FILMS

Giuseppe Rotunno started out from very humble beginnings. As a boy, he never entertained ideas of going into the film business; it was the death of his father, when Giuseppe was just 17, that prompted him to seek work anywhere he could find it during the difficult pre-war days of 1940. He got the only available opening at Cinecittà Studios: a job helping out in the studio's photography lab, which was run by the three Bragaglia brothers. One of them, Arturo, gave him a Leica still camera to experiment with on his days off. "On Saturdays and Sundays, I started to make some photographs of my own," Rotunno recalls. "Then on Monday, Arturo gave me permission to bring in my photos. I started to learn about what was happening with the light, the film, and other things, and I began to love it. It soon became part of my life."

Within 18 months, Rotunno graduated from developing pictures to becoming an on-set still photographer at Cinecittà. "Arturo helped me move to the camera department, because he felt it was important for me. I became a camera assistant."

By the early 1940s, Rotunno was serving as a camera assistant and operator. Meanwhile, he was also getting his first experience as a director of photography by working on some 10 documentaries for Michele Gandin.

Before he could make any more headway in his homeland's film industry, Rotunno was drafted into the military during the darkest days of World War II, serving as a combat photographer in the Italian army's film unit. "I was in the service, shooting alongside reporters, from 1942 until April 11, 1945," Rotunno says. "That's when I was liberated by the American Army in Germany, where I was a prisoner."

Landing a job in Italy was much harder after the war, however. Although Rotunno returned to Rome in September of 1945, it wasn't until 1948 that he was able to pick up where he had left off. "I started again as a camera assistant, made a little salary, and occasionally worked as a camera operator."

During this time, Rotunno amassed more technical knowledge while working on at least 25 films. He recalls, "They often used more than one camera - in fact, they used three cameras sometimes. They would put me by a camera and say, 'Stay there!'"

It was a tragedy that propelled Rotunno to prominence as a director of photography. He was operating for revered cinematographer Aldo Graziati [G.R. Aldo] on Visconti's 'Senso', and in November of 1953, near the end of production, the company moved from Verona to Venice. Meanwhile, Rotunno went to Rome to discuss 'L'oro di Napoli', Graziati's upcoming collaboration with Vittorio De Sica. There, he received word that Graziati had been killed in a car accident. Devastated, Rotunno returned to 'Senso', and production resumed for a time with British cinematographer Robert Krasker. When Visconti and the Englishman failed to click, the director asked Rotunno to take over as director of photography.

In 1955, De Sica remembered Graziati's talented camera operator when he was preparing to shoot 'Pane, amore e...'. While Dino Risi is the film's credited director, Rotunno recalls that De Sica controlled the production. The 30-year-old Rotunno's first major film as a cinematographer was especially demanding because it was shot almost entirely on location. The project was also one of the first CinemaScope productions in Italy.

To prepare, Rotunno traveled to London to observe production of the Anatole Litvak's CinemaScope romance 'The Deep Blue Sea', which was photographed by Jack Hildyard. The experience helped Rotunno immeasurably when shooting commenced on 'Pane, amore e...', although the challenges were considerably different on De Sica's seaside, location-based romantic comedy. "Because we were shooting in CinemaScope, and due to the quality of the film stocks at the time, it was very difficult to balance our interiors against the bright light of the ocean exterior," Rotunno remembers. "After all, we're talking about 43 years ago."

Rotunno also forged a strong artistic bond with Luchino Visconti. "In certain ways, Visconti was my father in my job," Rotunno says. "I did many films with him from 1951 on, first as a camera operator, and later as a director of photography. I had that relationship for work, for life, forever."

Visconti started a unique cinematography tradition on 'Rocco e i suoi fratelli', which he observed on every subsequent film he made with Rotunno: each scene was shot using three cameras, not for coverage but for continuity. "Each camera captured its own piece of the story," Rotunno explains. "When the actors filmed a short segment and we changed the shot, re-lit, and started again, we sometimes lost the vibration of the performance. By shooting with more cameras, Visconti could film a big piece of the story all in the same moment. The scene would start before one camera, and then we'd move in another camera; the scene would continue to play until the actors left the second camera and we picked them up with the third camera. For the director it was much better, but it was terribly difficult for me, because there was no room for the lights. Practically everything was in the shot except the corner where we placed the cameras."

Rotunno's most famous collaboration was with Federico Fellini. Fellini approached the cameraman to work on a film about a musician, 'The Mastorna Journey', but then became ill. "I stayed with Fellini for a year, doing all the things you do for a friend who is very sick," says Rotunno. "The film was postponed, but Fellini told me I couldn't leave him."

Fellini and Rotunno finally began their collaboration on the highly regarded 'Toby Dammit' segment of 'Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of the Dead', an omnibus film based on tales by Edgar Allan Poe. Rotunno's brilliant reddish lighting lent an eerie, dreamlike quality to the film's opening sequence, in which the titular character arrives in Rome at sunset; the lighting effect simulated the character's druggy point of view, with the "sunset" lingering long after the sun had actually set.

The filmmaking duo next teamed on the opulent 'Satyricon'. The largely stagebound film was shot over eight months, and Rotunno delighted in capturing Fellini's bizarre tableaus while exercising extreme control over his cinematography.

Rotunno and Fellini reteamed on 'Roma', an impressionistic portrait of the Eternal City. 'Roma' broke with the usual baroque look of Fellini's films; in terms of visual style, it was more like a throwback to Rotunno's documentary reportage. "It's a memory film, but it is really realistic in the memory," the cinematographer says. "I was born in Rome, and I knew the city well, so it was much easier to reproduce it in a realistic way. When we shot the traffic jam [on the autostrade], we put a big Chapman Crane on a camera car and drove around. The whole crew tried for several days to catch the ambience, but we never got it. The reality in this case worked against the memory, so we had to re-create it in the studio."

Fellini's 'Amarcord' is an affectionate memory piece about life in the director's hometown of Rimini during the 1930s. Featuring an array of lovably eccentric characters, the picture remains one of the director's most popular works. "I knew all of the characters personally, because I had met them with Federico many, many times before we started shooting," Rotunno notes. "In a way, I tried to put my memory in a condition very close to Federico's. What is in the film is just a small representation of the real characters. I guarantee that if we had portrayed them in a realistic way, it would have been most unbelievable!"

'Amarcord' begins with the townspeople of Rimini building a huge bonfire on a pier to celebrate the end of winter. Rotunno used warm red gels to lend the lighting a nostalgic feel as Fellini introduced his characters. "The cameras went close in and followed the actors, and never came out further until the end of the film, when the young boy is again alone on the pier," Rotunno says. "The idea was to put the audience inside of the story from the beginning to the end of the picture."

One of the tougher Fellini assignments was 'Prova d'orchestra', which presented an orchestra as an allegorical microcosm of a troubled world. The film was made for television and shot on one set over a modest four weeks, after the director's ambitious contemporary fable 'La città delle donne' was postponed.

Rotunno's last collaboration with Fellini was the whimsical fantasy 'E la nave va'. In one of the film's most memorable scenes, a group of musical artistes touring the ship happen upon the boiler room, where they give an informal recitation. "That sequence was shot on a very tall stage, which made it easier to light because there was more room - it's much easier to control the illumination when you can place lights farther away. When I can move, I can do everything! The lights were placed above and below the actors. Below, it had to be very dark, so I used a reddish color that came from the fire inside the boiler as the coals were stoked. Above, I used golden light on the faces of the singers, using a window behind the doorway as the motivation. The two types of lighting were intended to signify hell and paradise."

After completing work for 'E la nave va', Fellini called Rotunno to make three extravagant TV commercials for a large Italian bank, but fate determined that the two friends had worked together for the final time. "We always talked about doing another film," Rotunno says. "When Federico was sick, he was in the hospital in Ferrara, a beautiful town in northern Italy. When I went to visit some relatives there, I called Federico, and we talked and talked. He was very weak, but he told me, 'Peppino, listen, why don't we meet next Saturday in front of Cinecittà?' I think he didn't want me to see him in the hospital. Unfortunately, he never arrived at the studio."

In surveying his nearly 60-year career, Rotunno likes to say that he has created a great deal out of very little; he points out that just as music has only seven basic notes, cinematography has only three lights: "You've got the key light, fill light, and back light, out of which comes an infinity of results. The light is like a kaleidoscope, but those three lights mixed together are more touchy than the kaleidoscope. It's difficult to ask a painter, 'How did you paint the picture?' I go with my eyes and intuition. I like so much to light, and I cannot stop. When I was shooting with Fellini, I was always lighting the next shot, because I was afraid to lose the idea of the light." [From the article 'Renaissance Man' by Ron Magid in 'American Cinematographer', 1999.]

FILMS
1953	Senso/The Wanton Countess/Livia [Luchino Visconti] c; ph final scenes (+ co-c.op); cph: G.R. Aldo & Robert Krasker
1954	Attila [, il flagello di Dio]/Attila the Hun [Pietro Francisci] c; co-addph (+ co-c.op); ph: Aldo Tonti
1955	Pane, amore e.../Scandal in Sorrento [Dino Risi] cs/c
*1955*	Operation Cinderella [Orson Welles] unrealized project about the postwar 'occupation' of an Italian town by a Hollywood movie company
1955	Cristo non si è fermato a Eboli [Michele Gandin] c; short/?m
1956	Tosca [Carmine Gallone] cs/c
1956	Montecarlo/The Monte Carlo Story [Sam Taylor] tr/c; first film shot in Technirama
1957	Le notti bianche/White Nights [Luchino Visconti] b&w
*1957*	Seven Hills of Rome [Roy Rowland (replaced Rudolph Maté)] replaced by ph Tonino Delli Colli
1957	La ragazza del palio/The Love Specialist [Luigi Zampa] tr/c
1958	Anna di Brooklyn/Anna of Brooklyn/Fast and Sexy [Reginald Denham & Carlo Lastricati] tr/c
1958	Borgo a Mozzano [Michele Gandin] c; doc/27m; for Shell Italiana
1958	The Naked Maja/La Maja desnuda [Henry Koster] tr/c
1958	Policarpo, ufficiale di scrittura [Mario Soldati] c
1959	On the Beach [Stanley Kramer] b&w; cph (auto race seq filmed in California, USA): Daniel L. Fapp; uncred addph (deserted San Francisco seq): Ernest Laszlo
1959	La grande guerra/The Great War [Mario Monicelli] cs/b&w; cph: Roberto Gerardi, Leonida Barboni & Giuseppe Serrandi
1959	5 Branded Women/Jovanka e le altre [Martin Ritt] b&w
1959	The Angel Wore Red/La sposa bella [Nunnally Johnson] b&w
*1959*	8½/Otto e mezzo [Federico Fellini] discussions took place, but Rotunno didn't take the job because he was preparing for Mario Monicelli's 'I compagni'; by the time he realized that the project was postponed [it was eventually made in 1963], Fellini was already shooting '8½' with ph Gianni Di Venanzo

1960	Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers [Luchino Visconti] b&w; restored in 1991
1961	The Best of Enemies/I due nemici [Guy Hamilton] tr/c
1961	Fantasmi a Roma/Ghosts of Rome/Phantom Lovers [Antonio Pietrangeli] cs/c
1961	Boccaccio '70 [seg #2 'Il lavoro/The Job' dir by Luchino Visconti] c; 3 seg (originally 4 seg in Italy); other ph: Otello Martelli & Armando Nannuzzi
1962	Il gattopardo/The Leopard [Luchino Visconti] str70 (+ tr)/c
1962	Cronaca familiare/Family Diary [Valerio Zurlini] c
1963	I compagni/The Organiser [Mario Monicelli] b&w

1963	Ieri oggi domani/Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow [Vittorio De Sica] ts/c; 3 seg: 'Adelina', 'Anna' & 'Mara'
1964	La Bibbia/The Bible [... In the Beginning] [John Huston] Dimension 150 (70mm)/c; 2uc: Donald C. Rogers; spec optical efx: Linwood G. Dunn; filmed 1964-65
1966	Le streghe/The Witches [seg 'Le strega bruciata viva' dir by Luchino Visconti, 'Una sera come le altre' dir by Vittorio De Sica & 'La terra vista dalla luna' dir by Pier Paolo Pasolini] c; 5 seg
*1967*	Il viaggio di G. Mastorna/The Mastorna Journey [Federico Fellini] scrpl written in 1965; sets were built; unrealized
1967	Lo straniero/The Stranger [Luchino Visconti] b&w-c
1967	Anzio/La sbarco di Anzio/The Battle for Anzio [Edward Dmytryk] p/c
1967	Capriccio all'italiana [seg 'Perchè?' dir by Mauro Bolognini, 'Viaggio di lavoro' dir by Pino Zac & Franco Rossi & 'La bambinaia' dir by Mario Monicelli] scope/c; 6 seg; other ph: Silvano Ippoliti & Tonino Delli Colli
1967	Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of the Dead/Tales of Mystery and Imagination [seg #3 'Toby Dammit' dir by Federico Fellini] c; 3 seg; other ph: Tonino Delli Colli & Claude Renoir
1968	Candy [Christian Marquand] c; c.op 2u: Nino Cristiani; spec vfx: Harold Wellman; opening & closing seq: Douglas Trumbull
1968	The Secret of Santa Vittoria [Stanley Kramer] p/c
1968	Fellini - Satyricon [Federico Fellini] p/c
1969	I girasoli/Sunflower [Vittorio De Sica] c; 2uc: David Vinitsi
1970	Splendori e miserie di Madame Royale [Vittorio Caprioli] c
1970	Carnal Knowledge [Mike Nichols] p/c
1971	Roma [Federico Fellini] c
1972	Man of La Mancha/L'uomo della Mancha [Arthur Hiller] 35mm (+ 70bu)/c
1972	Film d'amore e d'anarchia, ovvero 'stamattina alle 10 in Via dei Fiori, nella nota casa di tolleranza...'/Love and Anarchy [Lina Wertmüller] c
1973	Amarcord [Federico Fellini] c
1973	Tutto a posto e niente in ordine/All Screwed Up/Everything Ready, Nothing Works [Lina Wertmüller] c
1974	Il bestione/The Beast [Sergio Corbucci] c
1974	L'erotomane [Marco Vicario] c
1975	Divina creatura/The Divine Nymph [Giuseppe Patroni Griffi] c

[Right] with dir Federico Fellini - "Casanova"

1975	Il Casanova di Federico Fellini/Fellini's Casanova [Federico Fellini] c
1976	Sturmtruppen/Stormtroopers [Salvatore Samperi] c
1977	La fine del mondo nel nostro solito letto in una notte piena di pioggia/[The End of the World in Our Usual Bed in] A Night Full of Rain [Lina Wertmüller] c
1977	Ecco noi per esempio.../Scoop! [Sergio Corbucci] c
*1977*	La signora dei Vagoni Letto/The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars [Salvatore Samperi] project with actress Sylvia Kristel; status unknown
1977	Saxofone/Saxophone [Renato Pozzetto] c

Sam Peckinpah - G. Rotunno - Sergio Leone - dir Monte Hellman [1977]

1977	China 9, Liberty 37/Amore, piombo e furore/Clayton & Catherine/Gunfire [Tony Brandt (= Monte Hellman)] tvi/c; 2uc: Júlio Madurga
1978	All That Jazz [Bob Fosse] c; assoc doph: Bill Garroni
1979	La città delle donne/City of Women [Federico Fellini] tvi/c
1980	Popeye [Robert Altman] tvi/c
1981	Rollover [Alan J. Pakula] p/c; cph: William Garroni
1981	Five Days One Summer [Fred Zinnemann] c; mountain ph: Arthur Wooster, Herbert Raditschnig, Tony Riley & Leo Dickinson
1982	Bello mio, bellezza mia/My Darling, My Dearest [Sergio Corbucci] c
1982	E la nave va/And the Ship Sails On [Federico Fellini] c; doc ph: Massimo Zeri
1983	Un arrivo [Dominique De Fazio] ?; short/?m
1983	Desiderio/Desire [Anna Maria Tatò] c
1983	American Dreamer [Rick Rosenthal] c; Paris (France) ph; ph: Jan de Bont
1984	The Assisi Underground [Alexander Ramati] scope/c; 2uc: Silvano Ippoliti
1984	Non ci resta che piangere/Nothing Left to Do But Cry [Roberto Benigni & Massimo Troisi] c
1984	Red Sonja [Richard Fleischer] tvi/c
1985	Orfeo [Claude Goretta] c
*1986*	The Good Ship Ulysses [Nikita Mikhalkov] ?
1986	Hotel Colonial [Cinzia Torrini] c
1987	Haunted Summer [Ivan Passer] c
1987	The Adventures of Baron Munchausen [Terry Gilliam] c; 2uc: Giovanni Fiore Coltellacci; model unit ph: Roger Pratt
1987	Rent-a-Cop [Jerry London] c; aph: Bill Hedenberg
1988	Rebus [Massimo Guglielmi] c
1989	Leonardo's Dream [Douglas Trumbull] Showscan (3-D/70mm)/c; short/26m
1990	Mio caro dottor Gräsler/The Bachelor [Roberto Faenza] c
1990	Regarding Henry [Mike Nichols] c
1991	Once Upon a Crime... [Eugene Levy] c
1993	Wolf [Mike Nichols] c; addph: John Burnett; vfx ph: John V. Fante
1993	The Night and the Moment/La notte e il momento [Anna Maria Tatò] c
1994	Sabrina [Sydney Pollack] c; 2uc: Rob Hahn; remake of 'Sabrina/Sabrina Fair' (1953, Billy Wilder; ph: Charles Lang Jr.)

"La sindrome di Stendhal"

1995	La sindrome di Stendhal/The Stendhal Syndrome [Dario Argento] c; 2uc: Roberto Girometti
1996	Marcello Mastroianni: mi ricordo, sì, io mi ricordo/Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember [Anna Maria Tatò] b&w-c; doc/198m

TELEVISION
1970	I clowns/The Clowns [Federico Fellini] tvm; ph flashback memory seq; ph: Dario Di Palma
1974	Alle origini della mafia/Roots of the Mafia [Enzo Muzii] 5-part miniseries
1978	Prova d'orchestra/Orchestra Rehearsal [Federico Fellini] tvm; also released theatrically
1982	The Scarlet and the Black/The Vatican Pimpernel [Jerry London] tvm
1987	Giulia e Giulia/Julia and Julia/Borderline [Peter Del Monte] tvm/HD-to-35mm
1988	Guglielmo Tell/Rossini's William Tell [Luca Ronconi (regia teatrale e televisiva)] opera perf filmed in La Scala, Milan; ph background screen

FILMS AS CAMERA ASSISTANT/OPERATOR
1942	L'uomo dalla croce/The Man with the Cross [Roberto Rossellini] c.op; ph: Guglielmo Lombardi
1948	Prince of Foxes [Henry King] c.asst; ph: Leon Shamroy
1951	Tre storie proibite/Three Forbidden Stories [Augusto Genina] c.op; ph: G.R. Aldo
1951	Umberto D [Vittorio De Sica] c.op; ph: G.R. Aldo
1952	La provinciale/The Wayward Wife [Mario Soldati] c.op; ph: G.R. Aldo & Domenico Scala
1952	Stazione Termini/Indiscretion [of an American Wife] [Vittorio De Sica] c.op; ph: G.R. Aldo
1953	Ci troviamo in galleria [Mauro Bolognini] c.op; ph: Marco Scarpelli
1953	Senso/The Wanton Countess/Livia [Luchino Visconti] co-c.op (+ ph final scenes); ph: G.R. Aldo & Robert Krasker
*1953*	L'oro di Napoli/The Gold of Naples/Every Day's a Holiday [Vittorio De Sica] scheduled as a project for ph G.R. Aldo and c.op Rotunno; ph in 1954 by Carlo Montuori
1954	Casa Ricordi/House of Ricordi [Carmine Gallone] c.op; ph: Marco Scarpelli
1954	Attila [, il flagello di Dio]/Attila the Hun [Pietro Francisci] co-c.op (+ co-addph); ph: Aldo Tonti
1954	Casta diva [Carmine Gallone ] co-c.op; ph: Marco Scarpelli
1954	Madama Butterfly/Madame Butterfly [Carmine Gallone] c.op; ph: Claude Renoir