Italian filmmaker Tinto Brass, who helped bring erotic cinema to a wider audience with controversial films such as Caligula and Salon Kitty, has died aged 93.
According to The Guardian, Brass was once hailed as the “Antonioni of the 70s” for his experimental filmmaking before he became better known for his work in erotic cinema. His wife, Caterina Varzi, and children Bonifacio and Beatrice Brass announced his death to Italian news agency ANSA on Wednesday.
Born in Milan and raised in Venice, Brass began his film career in Paris, where he worked as an editor and archivist at the Cinémathèque. After returning to Italy, he worked as an editor and assistant director with Roberto Rossellini.
His experimental and unconventional approach soon earned him recognition. In 1964, writer Umberto Eco commissioned him to make two short films exploring visual language for the Triennale di Milano. Warner Bros reportedly also approached him to direct A Clockwork Orange, but scheduling conflicts led the studio to offer the film to Stanley Kubrick instead.
Brass turned to erotic cinema in the 1970s. His early films in the genre combined explicit imagery with political themes, examining the links between sex, power and money.
“I made so many erotic films because I believed eroticism to be a fundamental key to human expression and, above all, the key to portraying women,” he told La Repubblica. “That was what interested me most.”
His 1976 film Salon Kitty drew on the story of a Berlin brothel that the Nazis took over to spy on foreign allies and fellow officers. The film attracted the attention of producer and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, who hired Brass in 1979 to direct Caligula.
The film sought to bring together a major cast and an explicit portrayal of the life of one of ancient Rome’s most notorious rulers. Malcolm McDowell played the title role, alongside Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud. Gore Vidal wrote the screenplay, which Brass later rewrote to include orgies, decorative phalluses and extensive female nudity.
However, the production descended into a dispute. Vidal disowned the film, while Brass also distanced himself after Guccione filmed additional unsimulated hardcore sex scenes and inserted them without the director’s permission.
The film reached cinemas in the UK and US in 1980, but Brass received credit only for “principal photography”. A new version without Guccione’s added scenes appeared in 2023. Brass had no involvement in that recut and did not approve it.
In his later years, Brass lived in Isola Farnese, on the outskirts of Rome. His wife, Varzi, whom he married in 2017, also curated his archive.
In an interview marking his 90th birthday, the filmmaker expressed a wish for his ashes to be scattered in the Venice lagoon.
