Tonino Delli Colli, director of photography for the greats of Italian and United States cinema, has died at the age of 81, his family announced on Thursday.
He “gave light to the dreams” of numerous directors, including Pier Paolo Pasolin in his film Ucellacci e Ucellini (Hawks and Sparrows), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose, Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon and Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, his last film for the cinema.
Delli Colli, born in Rome on November 20 1923, worked on 130 films during his 61-year career, which began on the set of Finalmente Si with Hungarian director Laslo Kish in 1943.
He won four of Italy’s premier cinema awards, known as David de Donatellos, for Tales of Ordinary Madness by Marco Ferreri in 1981, In the Name of the Rose in 1986, Marian Ucria by Roberto Faenz in 1997 and Life Is Beautiful, also in 1997. — AFP