(26 March 1933 – 4 November 2026)
In his time, Tinto Brass caused quite a few waves. As a writer and director, his preference in his later years was for highly eroticised works. However, he made erotic film history with his all-star, hardcore historical epic Caligula, made for Penthouse Films. A dauntless Malcolm McDowell took the title role and was supported by none other than Sir John Gielgud, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and Teresa Ann Savoy. The previous year Brass had directed the English actress Savoy in his outrageous erotic melodrama Salon Kitty (1976) set in a real-life upmarket brothel in Berlin during the war, frequented by sadistic SS officers and other members of the Nazi party. Helmut Berger played a fictionalised version of the SS officer Walter Schellenberg, while Ingrid Thulin played the madam and other cast members included Savoy, Tina Aumont, Bekim Fehmiu and the American actor John Ireland.
Tinto started out as an experimental filmmaker in his native Italy and his first film, Chi lavora è perduto (1963), was well received in Venice. He also directed a Western in 1966 – Yankee, with Philippe Leroy – and in 1967 an English-language murder mystery set in London, Deadly Sweet, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Ewa Aulin. He was next offered the chance to direct A Clockwork Orange, a project he turned down due to scheduling conflicts and so he made the surreal The Howl (1968) instead, with Tina Aumont. His last feature was the erotic romance Monamour (2005). He died, aged 93, of unknown causes in Rome and is survived by his wife, Caterina Varzi, and his children Bonifacio and Beatrice Brass.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
