Massimo Girotti
Acting • Born 1918-05-18 – Died 2003-01-05
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.
Filmography
111 credits
Last Tango in Paris
Movie • 1972
Marcel
The French Revolution
Movie • 1989
Envoyé du Pape
The Innocent
Movie • 1976
Count Stefano Egano
Theorem
Movie • 1968
Paolo, the Father
Baron Blood
Movie • 1972
Dr. Karl Hummel
Ossessione
Movie • 1944
Gino Costa
The Red Tent
Movie • 1969
Giuseppe Romagna Manoja
Medea
Movie • 1969
Creonte
Luchino Visconti
Movie • 2002
Self (archive footage)
Duel Without Honor
Movie • 1950
Carlo
The Witches
Movie • 1967
Sportsman (segment "La strega bruciata viva")
Facing Windows
Movie • 2003
Simone / Davide Veroli
The Love of a Woman
Movie • 1953
André Lorenz
The Iron Crown
Movie • 1941
Arminio / King Licinio
The Suspicious Death of a Minor
Movie • 1975
Gaudenzio Pesce
Story of a Love Affair
Movie • 1950
Guido
Art of Love
Movie • 1983
Ovid
Letters of a Novice
Movie • 1960
Don Paolo Conti
Preludio d'amore
Movie • 1946
Marguerite of the Night
Movie • 1955
Valentin
A Pilot Returns
Movie • 1942
Lieutenant Gino Rossati
Difficult Years
Movie • 1948
Giovanni Piscitello
The Berlin Affair
Movie • 1985
Werner von Heiden
Mr. Klein
Movie • 1976
Charles, Florence's husband
At the Edge of the City
Movie • 1953
Avv. Roberto Martini
Mafia alla sbarra
Movie • 1963
The Giants of Thessaly
Movie • 1960
Orfeo
Rome 11:00
Movie • 1952
Nando the Unemployed
Fabiola
Movie • 1949
Sebastian
In the Name of the Law
Movie • 1949
Il pretore Guido Schiavi
A Day in the Life
Movie • 1946
Luigi Monotti
Gold for the Caesars
Movie • 1963
Pro-consul Caius Cornelius Maximus)
Desire
Movie • 1946
Nando Mancini
Wolves in the Abyss
Movie • 1959
Comandante
Woman Trouble
Movie • 1948
Paolo Bertoni
I pirati della Malesia
Movie • 1941
Tremal-Naik
The Voracious Ones
Movie • 1973
Olmi
Lost Youth
Movie • 1948
Marcello Mariani
Passion of Love
Movie • 1981
Colonel
A Husband for Anna
Movie • 1953
Andrea Grazzi
Imperial Venus
Movie • 1962
Leclerc
Stateline Motel
Movie • 1973
Fred Norton
Marco the Magnificent
Movie • 1965
Nicolo, Marco's Father
La cento chilometri
Movie • 1959
Toccaceli
Listen, Let's Make Love
Movie • 1968
Tassi
Senso
Movie • 1954
Il Marchese Roberto Ussoni
The Kiss
Movie • 1974
Eugenio Dazzi
Behind Closed Shutters
Movie • 1951
Ingegnere Roberto
The Mysterious Mr. Van Eyck
Movie • 1966
Friend of Charles
Nights of the Teddy Boys
Movie • 1959
Constantino's Father
Leathernose
Movie • 1952
Doctor Marchal
La trovatella di Pompei
Movie • 1957
Guglielmo Curti
Harlem
Movie • 1943
Tommaso Rossi
Vortice
Movie • 1953
Dr. Guido Aureli
Goddess Of Love
Movie • 1957
Prassitele
Apparizione
Movie • 1943
Franco
Fatalità
Movie • 1947
Vincenzo Masi
La tua donna
Movie • 1954
Sandro Ademari
The Head of a Tyrant
Movie • 1959
Holofernes
Dora Nelson
Movie • 1939
Enrico
Il segreto delle tre punte
Movie • 1952
Massimo Dal Colle
It Happened in Rome
Movie • 1957
Ugo Parenti
The Cossacks
Movie • 1960
Tsar Alexander II
The Sisters
Movie • 1969
Alex
And Agnes Chose to Die
Movie • 1976
Palita
Cinecittà, de Mussolini à la Dolce Vita
Movie • 2021
Self (archive footage)
Asphalt
Movie • 1959
Éric
Romulus and Remus
Movie • 1961
Tazio
Herod the Great
Movie • 1959
Ottaviano
Tragic Hunt
Movie • 1947
Michele
The Year Long Road
Movie • 1958
Chiacchiera (Naklapalo)
Mark Shoots First
Movie • 1975
Il Questore Spaini
L'Ultimo Aereo per Venezia
Movie • 1977
Marcello Masini
Christmas at Camp 119
Movie • 1947
Nane, il veneziano
The Gate of Heaven
Movie • 1945
The blind youth
Four of the Thundering Jet
Movie • 1955
Maggiore Montanari
Lieutenant Giorgio
Movie • 1952
Tenente Giorgio Biserta
Un reietto delle isole
Movie • 1980
Tom Lingard
La carne e l'anima
Movie • 1945
Andrea
The Monster
Movie • 1994
il condomino distinto
Der Kardinal - Der Preis der Liebe
Movie • 2000
Donato
Affairs
Movie • 1989
Count Valery Du Terrail
From Night to Dawn
Movie • 1992
Vergiotti
La Bohème
Movie • 1988
The Old Pretender / Featuring
Sins of Rome
Movie • 1953
Spartacus
I dieci comandamenti
Movie • 1945
(segment "Ricordati di santificare le feste")
Land der Sehnsucht
Movie • 1950
Sul ponte dei sospiri
Movie • 1953
Marco Spada
Idoli controluce
Movie • 1965
Ugo Sanfelice
La bestia humana
Movie • 1957
Pedro Sandoval
Disperato addio
Movie • 1955
dottor Andrea Pitti
Le due tigri
Movie • 1941
Tremal-Naik
Altura
Movie • 1949
Stanis Archena
Cagliostro
Movie • 1975
Giacomo Casanova
La famiglia Brambilla in vacanza
Movie • 1941
Marco Sassoli
Cavalcata selvaggia
Movie • 1960
Lorenzo
Saranno uomini
Movie • 1957
Don Antonio
My Body With Anger
Movie • 1972
Gabriele
The Shortest Day
Movie • 1963
Capitano alla finestra (uncredited)
Fugitive in Trieste
Movie • 1952
Fred Nolan
L'Amore Dopo
Movie • 1993
Ing. Staino
La coppia
Movie • 1969
Guido
Un bel dì vedremo
Movie • 1996
Emilio Venditti
Il segno del comando
TV • 1971
George Powell
Jekyll
TV • 1969
John Utterson
Quo Vadis?
TV • 1985
Aulus Plautius
Christopher Columbus
TV • 1985
Duca Medina Coeli
Origins of the Mafia
TV • 1976
Viceroy Caracciolo
Der Ochsenkrieg
TV • 1987
Someier
Der Erfolg ihres Lebens
TV • 1990
Le comte di Falco
The French Revolution
TV • 1989
L'envoyé du Pape (« Les Années Lumière »)