Acting
May 17, 1918
Mogliano, Macerata, Italy
Massimo Girotti
Acting
Biography
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.
Feature Films (104)
A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.
Last Tango in Paris
A 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
Tullio 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
A 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
A 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
Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna as they plan to get rid of her older husband.
Obsession
Television & Series (9)
An English writer interested in the occult searches Rome for George Byron's lost diaries, convinced that they hide a terrible secret. During his search, mysterious events occur around him, including a murder and the enigmatic appearances of a beautiful woman...
Il segno del comando
When a series of brutal attacks are committed by a lunatic named Edward Hyde, the investigation leads to molecular biologist Henry Jekyll. But have the doctor's unorthodox experiments unlocked even greater horrors?
Jekyll
After his proposal to sail west to the East Indies is rejected by Portugal, Columbus overcomes court intrigue in Spain to gain support for his expedition.
Christopher Columbus
Miniseries based on a 1914 historical novel by the German writer Ludwig Ganghofer - The War of the Oxen - set against the backdrop of the War of the Oxen in the 1420s.
Der Ochsenkrieg
In Paris, Maxi Ardel, in her elegant forties, successfully and firmly runs a haute couture house bearing her name. In Florence, she is about to take over a textile company that belonged to an old Italian aristocratic family, the di Falco. She has, indeed, a revenge to take on them. Count Massimo di Falco had stolen her child twenty years earlier. Driven by a desire for revenge, Maxi wants to destroy this family at all costs, but she has to count on Countess Bianca, who is ready to defend herself from her former rival. From then on, the two women fight without mercy.
