Italian director, screenwriter and actor Giuliano Montaldo, who directed more than 20 films, some as internationally famous as ‘Sacco and Vanzetti’ (1971), and a filmmaker who always fought against the injustices of power, has died in Rome at the age of 93, according to the Italian media today.
Montaldo (Genova, 1930), who began his career as an actor in the fifties, directed more than 20 films, after debuting with ‘Tiro al Piccione’ (1961), although his greatest successes came at the end of that decade and the beginning of the following, fundamental in his career, closely linked to American cinema.
Collaborating with Gillo Pontecorvo, with whom he worked as an assistant director on several films, including the mythical ‘The Battle of Algiers’, Montaldo directed stars such as Edward G. Robinson, Janeth Leigh, John Casavettes, Klaus Kinski and Gian Maria Volonté, fetish actor of some of his greatest successes.
After the crime film ‘Gli Intocacabili (1969), another of his greatest successes, the director made a trilogy about power with ‘Got mis uns’ (1970), about military power; ‘Sacco e Vanzetti’ (1971), on the judicial, and ‘Giordano Bruno’ (1973) on the religious, which earned him recognition, particularly the second, on the true story of two Italian anarchists who emigrated to the US at the beginning of of the 20th century.
The interpretation of Volonté and Riccardo Cucciolla (awarded at the Cannes Film Festival), as well as the song of the mythical Ennio Morricone popularized by Joan Baez, made ‘Sacco e Vanzetti’ a great international success.