Nino Castelnuovo - actor

Starred in sumptuous French musical and TV adaptation of literary classic

Nino Castelnuovo worked with some of Italy's
 most famous 'golden age' directors

The actor Nino Castelnuovo, best known for playing opposite a young Catherine Deneuve in a Palme d’Or-winning French musical and as the star of a celebrated TV adaptation of Alessandro Manzoni’s classic novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), died on this day in 2021 at the age of 84.

Castelnuovo’s talent came to the fore during a golden age of Italian cinema, working with leading directors such as Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, Pietro Germi, Luigi Comencini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and starring opposite such luminaries as Alberto Sordi, Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale.

Yet it was the visually beautiful, deeply sentimental French musical, Le parapluies de Cherbourg - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - that catapulted him to fame in 1964, five years after his screen debut.

Directed by Jacques Demy, the musical, in which the dialogue is entirely sung (although by voice dubbers rather than the actors appearing on screen), Castelnuovo played the handsome Guy, a mechanic, who is in love with Deneuve’s character, Geneviève, who works in her mother’s umbrella shop.

Their romance is interrupted when Guy is called up to serve in the Algerian War. Geneviève gives birth to their child while Guy is away but they lose touch. When they meet again, six years later, they are both married to other people, their lives having taken very different courses. An affecting tale, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was nominated for five Academy Awards.

Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo arrive at a
promotional event for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Born in the lakeside town of Lecco, in Lombardy, Castelnuovo was christened as Francesco. His mother, Emilia Paola, a maid, was married to Camillo Castelnuovo, who worked in a button factory. 

Nino worked at different times as a mechanic and a painter. An enthusiastic cinema-goer, he idolised Fred Astaire, which prompted him to take lessons in gymnastics and dancing.  After moving to Milan at the age of 19, he studied drama at the Piccolo Teatro, presided over by the director Giorgio Strehler.

His first screen appearance came via a bit part in a film titled The Virtuous Bigamist in 1956, but his first credited role was in the 1959 thriller Un maledetto imbroglio, directed by Germi, based on Carlo Emilio Gadda’s crime novel, which was titled in English as That Awful Mess on Via Merulana. The film was shown in America as The Facts of Murder.

The following year he starred with Alain Delon in Visconti’s acclaimed drama Rocco and His Brothers and alongside the actor-director Pasolini in The Hunchback of Rome. 

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg won him gushing reviews, yet where Deneuve’s career took off internationally after the film’s release, Castelnuovo fared less well.  He was never short of parts, going on to make more than 50 films, yet Italian cinema audiences in particular were slow to warm to him.

Castelnuovo with Claudia Cardinale in a scene from
his first credited movie, Un maledetto imbroglio

In the event, it was the small screen that provided him with his second, career-defining part, as Renzo, the principal male character in a television adaptation of Manzoni’s epic I promessi sposi, first published in three volumes in 1827.

The revised, definitive version published in 1842 has become the most widely-read novel in the Italian language, studied by virtually every Italian secondary school student and regarded by Italian scholars as a literary masterpiece on a par with Dante’s Divine Comedy.

By coincidence, Manzoni places Renzo and Lucia, the couple at the centre of the novel’s storyline, in a village just outside Lecco, where their story begins.  The novel is notable for its description of 17th century Milan during a major outbreak of plague. Rai’s adaptation won much praise from critics and Castelnuovo enjoyed a surge of popularity that won him an audience with Pope Paul VI, among other things.

Thereafter, Castelnuovo became a familiar face in TV dramas both in Italy and in other European countries, although he continued to make films and was keen to work in theatre, too. He performed in several stage productions of the works of Carlo Goldoni, the 18th century Venetian playwright, and returned to the cinema in 1996 when director Anthony Minghella cast him as an archaeologist in the Oscar-winning The English Patient.

Despite suffering problems with his eyesight due to glaucoma, Castelnuovo continued working, mainly on television, into his late 70s.  He suffered two personal tragedies, losing both his brothers. In 1976, Pierantonio died after being beaten up by a group of revellers at a festival, while Clemente was killed in a car accident in 1994.

Nino himself died in hospital in Rome after a long period of ill health. He was survived by his wife, the actress Maria Cristina Di Nicola, and a son, Lorenzo, from a previous relationship.

Piazza XX Settembre in the Lombardy town of
Lecco, looking towards the Basilica di San Nicolò

Travel tip:

Lecco, where Nino Castelnuovo was born, lies at the end of the south eastern branch of Lago di Como, which is known as Lago di Lecco. The town is surrounded by mountains including Monte Resegone, which has cable-car access to the Piani d’Erna lookout point, and Monte Barro, a regional park area that contains the remains of a fifth-century settlement and the Costa Perla birdwatching station. In the centre of Lecco, the Basilica di San Nicolò, with its neo-Gothic bell tower, is a notable attraction, while the town makes much of it being the childhood home of Alessandro Manzoni, who chose it as the home of his betrothed lovers, Renzo and Lucia, in I promessi sposi. The historic fishermen’s quarter of Pescarenico, which features in the book, has a number of restaurants that make it well worth a visit.

Bellagio is one of many pretty towns dotted
around the shores of Lago di Como

Travel tip:

Lago di Como - Lake Como - the third largest lake in Italy after Garda and Maggiore, has been a popular retreat for aristocrats and the wealthy since Roman times, and remains a popular tourist destination. Its many lakeside villas include the Villa Carlotta, overlooking the lake at Tremezzo, built in the late 18th century as a holiday home for the Clerici family, successful silk merchants, the Villa Olmo in Como, built for the marquis Innocenzo Odescalchi, and  Villa d'Este, in Cernobbio, now a luxury hotel and, between 1816 and 1817, home to Caroline of Brunswick, estranged wife of the Prince of Wales and later Queen Consort of King George IV of the United Kingdom.  Numerous pretty towns along the shores of the lake, which covers an area of 146 sq km (56 sq miles), include Bellagio, Menaggio and Varenna. 

Also on this day:

1610: The birth of Francesco I d’Este, Duke of Modena

1620: The birth of composer Isabella Leonarda

1825: The birth of painter Giovanni Fattori

1925: The birth of novelist and screenwriter Andrea Camilleri

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Mario Carotenuto - actor

Roman from theatrical family made more than 100 films

Mario Carotenuto forged a career
as a character actor in comedies

The actor Mario Carotenuto, who became one of the most familiar faces in the commedia all’italiana genre of Italian film, was born on this day in 1916 in Rome.

Carotenuto, who was active in the movie industry for more than 30 years having started in the theatre and on radio, acted alongside some of the greats of Italian cinema, including Totò, Alberto Sordi, Vittorio De Sica, Sophia Loren and Monica Vitti.

More often than not, he was cast in supporting roles rather than as the star, yet became respected as one of Italy’s finest character actors in comedy, winning a Nastro d'argento award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of The Professor in Luigi Comencini’s 1973 comedy-drama Lo scopone scientifico - The Scientific Card Player - which starred Sordi, Silvana Mangano and the American Bette Davis.

Carotenuto was born into an acting family. His father, Nello, made a living in Italian silent movies, while his older brother, Memmo, also had a long career in films. His nephew, Bruno, and his niece, Nennella, also entered the acting profession.

He made his stage debut at the age of eight but is said to have had a rebellious nature as a child and his involvement in petty crime and antisocial behaviour saw him receive part of his education in a reform school.

As he matured, he became fascinated with theatre and acting and alongside various jobs he took in order to earn money he was always on the lookout for opportunities to act, one of which came with a radio station in Florence, where he was given parts in radio drama productions.

Carotenuto's acting style was perfect for the 
highly popular commedia all'italiana genre

After the end of the Second World War, in which he claimed he joined the Italian Waffen SS in order to avoid being imprisoned by the Germans, he set up his own small theatre company in Milan before being discovered in 1956 by the director Giorgio Strehler, who wanted to entrust him with the part of Peachum, the king of beggars, in Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. 

Carotenuto’s interpretation of the role gained the approval of Brecht himself and won him the San Ginesio Prize, awarded by a Milan-based magazine. He went on to have roles in plays by Shakespeare, Pirandello, Molière, Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams.

After making his film debut in 1950, his ability to portray a broad range of characters soon saw him an actor much in demand, particularly in the comedy genre, working for famous directors such as Alberto Latuarda, Dino Risi, Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Luigi Zampa and Ugo Tognazzi. 

Ultimately, his most popular roles were those in which his character was one with which many Italians could identify in the years after the war, a character looking to make his way in a changing society in which generally people looked forward with optimism.

Carotenuto's simple memorial at 
the cemetery of Grottammare 

Federico Fellini used him as the voice of the actor Mario Cannochia in Otto e mezzo (8 ½).

Carotenuto had many television credits as well as his long list of movie roles but ceased to be active in either medium in the early 1980s, dividing his time between Rome and the seaside town of Grottammare in Marche, the home of his second wife, theatre actress Gabriella Cottignoli.

He had been married previously to Luisa Poselli, an actress, singer and dancer, with whom he had a daughter, Claretta, who went on to become an actress and director.

He died in Rome in the Aurelia Hospital in April 1995 at the age of 79, having for many years been ill with lung cancer.  His funeral took place in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo - the 'church of the artists' - and was attended by many personalities of cinema and entertainment. His body was then taken to be buried in the municipal cemetery at Grottammare.

Rome's principal opera house, the Teatro dell'Opera
di Roma, was originally the Teatro Costanzi

Travel tip:

Carotenuto made his stage debut at the Teatro Costanzi in Via del Viminale, a short distance from Piazza della Repubblica. Today the theatre has a different identity as the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma - Rome’s main opera house. Built in 1879-80, it takes its name from Domenico Costanzi, a contractor, who financed the project. It was designed by the Milanese architect Achille Sfondrini, a specialist in the building and renovation of theatres. Built on the site of the house of the Roman emperor Elagabalus, the theatre was inaugurated in November 1880 with a performance of Semiramide by Gioachino Rossini.  Sfondrini paid particular attention to the acoustics of the theatre, the dome of which was adorned with frescoes by Annibale Brugnoli. As well as the world premiere of Pietro Mascangi's Cavalleria rusticana, the theatre staged the first production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini in January 1900 and introduced Roman audiences to Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, Turandot and Il trittico as well as Richard Wagner’s Parsifal and Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.

Piazza Peretti is the central square of the older part
of Grottammare, which sits above the resort

Travel tip:

Grottammare, where Carotenuto is buried, is one of the beach resorts that make up the Marche region’s Riviera delle Palme, a stretch of coastline around the larger town of San Benedetto del Tronto. It is notable for a fine, sandy beach but also for the well preserved remains of a fortress overlooking the town that was built following the sacking of Grottammare by the Montenegrin Princes of Dulcigno in 1525.  The centre of the older part of the town is Piazza Peretti, a square enclosed by the Church of San Giovanni Battista, the Town Hall, Municipal Tower and Teatro dell'Arancio.  A peculiarity of which the administration of Grottammare takes pride is that it sits on the 43º parallel, the line of latitude that also passes through the cities of Assisi (Italy), Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Lourdes (France), Medjugorje (Bosnia), Vladivostok (Russia), Sapporo (Japan), Buffalo and Milwaukee (United States).

Also on this day:

1961: The birth of novelist Gianrico Carafiglio

1986: The birth of heiress Allegra Versace

First Martyrs Day

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Gabriele Ferzetti - actor

Starred in classic Italian films as well as Bond movie

Gabriele Ferzetti appeared in more than 160
movies and many TV dramas

The actor Gabriele Ferzetti, best known to international audiences for his role in the 1969 Bond movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but in Italy for the Michelangelo Antonioni classic L’Avventura (1960), was born on this day in 1925 in Rome.

Ferzetti, who cut a naturally elegant and debonair appearance, was the go-to actor for handsome, romantic leads in the early part of his career and although he was ultimately eclipsed to some extent by Marcello Mastroianni, he seemed equally content with prominent supporting roles. Rarely idle, he made more than 160 films and appeared in countless TV dramas and was still working at 85 years old.

His intense performance as Antonioni’s wealthy yet unfulfilled playboy opposite Lea Massari and Monica Vitti in L’Avventura was the role that identified him most as an actor of considerable talent. Ferzetti had played a similar character in another Antonioni classic Le amiche (1955).

Outside Italian cinema, he was memorable as the unscrupulous Morton, the railroad magnate who hobbled around on crutches in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and as Marc Ange-Draco, the sophisticated Mafia boss who joins forces with James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which was George Lazenby’s only outing as 007.

With Lea Massari in his most famous role in the
Antonioni classic L'Avventura

Although Ferzetti spoke very good English, his accent was heavily Italian and he was dubbed in both roles.

In Rome, Ferzetti won a scholarship to attend the Silvio d’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art, although his studies were abruptly cut short when he was expelled for appearing with a professional theatrical troupe.

It did not set him back too severely. After playing the young shepherd Sylvius in Luchino Visconti’s 1948 stage production of As You Like It, he won small roles in several films and quickly worked his way up to becoming a leading man.

The first movie to bring him wide recognition was Mario Soldati’s La provinciale (1953), which was packaged for English-speaking audiences as The Wayward Wife. Despite the nature of the production as a vehicle for the rising star Gina Lollobrigida in the title role, Ferzetti was superb as her bespectacled science professor husband.

Monica Vitti in another scene from L'Avventura

In the same year he landed the title role in the big-budget production Puccini, directed by Carmine Gallone, in which he portrayed the philandering Italian opera composer from his student days to a man in his 80s. He was Puccini again in House of Ricordi (1954), about the music-publishing house.

Ferzetti was first cast by Antonioni in Le Amiche (The Girl Friends) (1955), which won a Silver Lion at the Venice film festival.

When Antonioni summoned him again for L’Avventura, it ended a five-year period of rather mediocre films that did Ferzetti no favours, so the chance to play his weak and disillusioned character, a failed architect whose lover disappears while they are sharing a sailing trip around Sicily with wealthy friends, could not have come at a more opportune moment. L’Avventura won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Ferzetti was acclaimed for his portrayal of the
the playboy composer Giacomo Puccini

His career still had a long time to run but the consensus is that nothing Ferzetti did in subsequent films stood up particularly well next to his performance in L’Avventura, although his Draco, the gentlemanly mafia boss who helps Bond track down his arch-enemy Blofeld, was a memorable character.

Ferzetti was hailed later for his portrayal of a psychiatrist trying to cover up his Nazi past in Liliana Cavani’s controversial The Night Porter (1974), a study of a sadomasochistic relationship between another former Nazi (Dirk Bogarde) and the woman he raped in a concentration camp (Charlotte Rampling).

By the 1990s, Ferzetti was appearing more frequently on television but there were still a few big-screen triumphs to come, notably as the Duke of Venice in Oliver Parker’s Othello and, in 2009, by which time he was 84, as the head of a wealthy Milanese industrial family in Io sono l’amore - I Am Love - directed by Luca Guadagnino.

Married twice and with a daughter, Anna, Ferzetti died in December 2015 at the age of 90.

Parioli's tree-lined boulevards make it one of the most
attractive residential areas in Rome

Travel tip:

Rome’s Silvio D’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art, which has been attended by many aspiring actors, can be found in Via Vincenzo Bellini where it meets Via Guido d’Arezzo in the Parioli district of Rome, between the Villa Borghese gardens and the vast Parco di Villa Ada. It was opened in 1936. D'Amico, a theatre critic and writer who was a friend of Nobel prize winner Luigi Pirandello and French theatre director Jacques Copeau, was appointed Special Commissioner for the reform of the drama school and led the academy for many years.The academy now has university status.  Parioli is regarded as Rome’s most elegant residential area.

Smoke and steam rising from the crater of the
active volcano Stromboli during its 2008 eruption

Travel tip:

L’Avventura was filmed partly on location in the Aeolian Islands, a cluster of eight small islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily. The best known is undoubtedly Stromboli, an active volcano known as the ‘lighthouse of the Mediterranean’ on account of the molten lava that streams down the side of the visible 3,000ft (914m) of the mountain with every eruption, of which there are many. The largest of the islands is Lipari, which has a population of 12,000 people and is not unlike Capri in appearance, but with a fraction of the tourists. Salina, famed for its capers and sweet Malvasia wine, was used for the movie Il Postino while Panarea, which has a resident population of only 280, has become a fashionable celebrity hang-out. Yachts owned by Giorgio Armani and Roman Abramovich have regularly been spotted in the small harbour.

Stromboli hotels by Booking.com

More reading:

Michelangelo Antonioni - the 'last great' of postwar Italian cinema

How enigmatic beauty Monica Vitti also excelled in comedy roles

Marcello Mastroianni - the film star who immortalised the Trevi Fountain

Also on the day:

1826: The birth of inventor Innocenzo Manzetti

1861: The newly-created Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed in Turin

1939: The birth of football coach Giovanni Trapattoni


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Monica Vitti - actress

Star of Antonioni classics also excelled in comedy roles

Monica Vitti made her name playing
enigmatic characters in Antonioni films

The actress Monica Vitti, who became famous as the star of several films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni during the early 1960s, was born on this day in 1931 in Rome.

Antonioni, with whom she had a romantic relationship that lasted a decade, cast her as his female lead in L'avventura (1960), La notte (1961), and L'eclisse (1962), three enigmatically moody films once described as a "trilogy on modernity and its discontents".

She also starred for him in his first colour film, Il deserto rosso (1964), which continued in a similar vein.  Her performance earned her a second of four Golden Grail awards. Vitti was also honoured with five David di Donatello awards as Best Actress from the Italian Film Academy.

After splitting with Antonioni, Vitti excelled in comedy, working with directors such as Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, Alberto Sordi and Ettore Scola.

Her performances in movies such as Monicelli’s The Girl With the Pistol (1968) and I Know That You Know That I Know (1982) saw her spoken of as one of the great actors of the Commedia all’Italiana genre alongside Sordi himself, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi.

Monica Vitti made her screen debut in
1954 after honing her skills in the theatre

Although born in Rome - her real name was Maria Luisa Ceciarelli - Vitti spent eight of her childhood years in Messina in Sicily and returned to Rome after her brothers had left to seek their fortune in America.

She acted in amateur productions as a teenager before securing a place at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, where she graduated in 1953. She toured Germany with an Italian acting troupe and made her first stage appearance in Rome in a production of Niccolò Machiavelli's La Mandragola.

Her first small film role came 1954 but her performance of note was in Mario Amendola's Le dritte (1958). By then, she had joined Michelangelo Antonioni's company at the Teatro Nuovo di Milano, which is where her association with the director began.

Vitti’s acting brilliance came to the fore in Antonioni’s films, in which her characters were inevitably complex, tormented, mysterious sometimes neurotic young women, who she was able to portray with incredible empathy.

Yet, after Monicelli suggested to her that she could turn her talent to comedy, she quickly proved her versatility with a string of successes.

Monica Vitti now lives in Rome with her
husband, director Roberto Russo

A woman of natural beauty, Vitti was much-photographed and her private life subject to close scrutiny.  Politically left-wing, she was part of the guard of honour at the funeral of the Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer in 1984.

Her last movie was Secret Scandal (1990), which she also wrote and directed, and for a few years thereafter she worked in television. At the Venice Film Festival in 1995 she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

In 2000, Vitti took part in the celebrations for the 80th birthday of Alberto Sordi and was a guest, along with many personalities from the entertainment world, at the Jubilee celebrations at the Basilica of San Pietro in the Vatican in December of the same year.

However, after 2002 she was not seen again in public and rumours began to circulate about her health. After some time her husband, the former director Roberto Russo, confirmed that she was alive and living in Rome but was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

The cathedral at Messina had to be rebuilt twice in the 20th
century because of earthquake and war damage

Travel tip:

Messina is a city in the northeast of Sicily, separated from mainland Italy by the Strait of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island and is home to a large Greek-speaking community. The 12th century cathedral in Messina has a bell tower which houses one of the largest astronomical clocks in the world, built in 1933.  Originally built by the Normans, the cathedral, which still contains the remains of King Conrad, ruler of Germany and Sicily in the 13th century, had to be almost entirely rebuilt following a catastrophic earthquake in 1908, and again in 1943, after a fire triggered by Allied bombings.

The auditorium of the Teatro Nuovo di Milano, where
Monica Vitti appeared in the 1950s

Travel tip:

The Teatro Nuovo theatre in Milan, located on the Piazza San Babila in the lower level of the Palazzo del Toro, was designed by architect Emilio Lancia and was the project of the impresario Remigio Paone. It was inaugurated on in December 1938 with a performance of Eduardo De Filippo's comedy Ditegli sempre di sì. Piazza San Babila is characterized by the presence of a fountain built in 1997 by the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni in conjunction with the Ente Fiera Milano.

More reading:

Michelangelo Antonioni - the 'last great' of post-War Italian cinema

Why Mario Monicelli is called the 'father of Commedia all'Italiana'

The comic genius of Alberto Sordi

Also on this day:

1560: The birth of painter Annibale Carracci

1801: The birth of opera composer Vincenzo Bellini

1918: Armistice ends First World War in Italy


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Michelangelo Antonioni - film director

Enigmatic artist often remembered for 1966 movie Blowup

Michelangelo Antonioni was described
as one of Italian cinema's 'last greats'

The movie director Michelangelo Antonioni, sometimes described as “the last great” of Italian cinema’s post-war golden era, died on this day in 2007 at his home in Rome.

Antonioni, who was 94 years old when he passed away, was a contemporary of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.

Remarkably, three of that trio’s most acclaimed works - Fellini’s La dolce vita, Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Antonioni’s L’avventura - appeared within a few months of one another.

Antonioni’s genius lay in the way he challenged traditional approaches to storytelling and drama and the way people viewed the world in general.

His characters were often intentionally vague, his most favoured themes being social alienation and bourgeois ennui, reflecting his view that life left many people emotionally adrift and unable to find their bearings.  His movies often had no strong plot in a conventional sense, were dotted with unfinished conversations and seemingly disconnected incidents. His style was seen as a rejection of neorealism, his films more a metaphor for human experience, rather than a record of it.

He divided opinions. At the Cannes Film Festival in 1960, when L’avventura was shown, half the audience booed and jeered. But Antonioni’s fellow director Roberto Rossellini sprang to his defence, hailing the movie, about a young woman's disappearance during a boating trip and how her lover and her best friend join forces to search for her but eventually begin having an affair, as a work of genius.

The actress Monica Vitti in a scene from L'eclisse (1962)

L’avventura (1960) was the first of three films, with Le notte (1961) and L’eclisse (1962), that were described as his “trilogy on modernity and its discontents”. All starred a young Roman actress called Monica Vitti, who was at the time Antonioni’s lover.  Some critics argue that the exquisite, mysterious qualities that Vitti brought to her acting were the key to the trilogy’s success and Antonioni’s breakthrough with large international audiences. His first film in colour, The Red Desert (1964) explored similar themes.

He and Vitti stayed together for 10 years, their relationship falling between his two marriages. His third wife, Enrica Fico, was also a director.

Antonioni made a number of films in English, the most famous of which were Zabriskie Point (1970) and The Passenger (1975) and, above all, Blowup (1966), a movie starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave that was shocking at the time for its sex scenes, which was loosely based on the life of David Bailey, the photographer who captured the Swinging Sixties with more style and impact than any of his contemporaries.

Antonioni was honoured with numerous
awards for his films

Born in Ferrara, in the Po valley, Antonioni came from a family that enjoyed largely self-made prosperity thanks to his father’s efforts, though taking evening classes alongside his day job, to establish a career that was paid well enough for him to rise above his working-class roots.

Growing up, Antonioni loved music and drawing, with a fascination for architecture, and had he not fallen in love with the cinema he might have been an accomplished violinist. He went to university in Bologna, where he obtained a degree in economics, before beginning work for Il Corriere Padano, a newspaper based in Ferrara, where he wrote film reviews.

In his 20s he played tennis, winning amateur championships in northern Italy, and moved to Rome. During the Second World War he fought against the Fascists as a member of the Italian Resistance.

In 1942, Antonioni ventured into film-making for the first time, co-writing A Pilot Returns with Roberto Rossellini. He made his own debut with Gente del Po (1943), a short film about poor fishermen in the Po valley. His earliest feature films, many of which were lost after Rome was liberated by the Allies, were neorealist in style, before he broke away from that genre in the 1950s to make films with the theme of social alienation that would become common in his work.

Antonioni received numerous film festival awards and nominations throughout his career. He is one of only three directors to have won the Palme d'Or (Cannes), the Golden Lion (Venice) and the Golden Bear (Berlin), and the only director to have won these three and the Golden Leopard (Locarno). He received an honorary Academy Award in 1995.

The Este Castle dominates the centre of Ferrara

Travel tip:

The city of Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna is about 50km (31 miles) northeast of Bologna. It was ruled by the Este family between 1240 and 1598. Building work on the magnificent Este Castle in the centre of the city began in 1385 and it was added to and improved by successive rulers of Ferrara until the end of the Este line. Apart from the castle, the city has other architectural gems, including many the striking Renaissance building Palazzo dei Diamanti, so-called because the stone blocks of its facade are cut into the shape of diamonds.

The Archiginnasio is the oldest part of Bologna University

Travel tip:

Bologna University, where Antonioni studied, was founded in 1088 and is the oldest university in the world. The oldest surviving building, the Archiginnasio, is now a library and is open Monday to Friday from 9 am to 7 pm, and on Saturdays from 9 am to 2 pm. It is a short walk away from Piazza Maggiore and the Basilica di San Petronio in the centre of the city.

More reading:

Fellini's legacy to Italian cinema

Luchino Visconti - the aristocrat of Italian cinema

Why Roberto Rossellini is known as the 'father of neorealism'

Also on this day:

1626: The Naples earthquake that killed 70,000 people

1909: The birth of chemist Vittorio Erspamer, the scientist who discovered serotonin



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