Tinto Brass, director of cult film Caligula, dies at 93

Italian film-maker Tinto Brass has died at the age of 93. His wife Caterina Varzi and his children Bonifacio and Beatrice Brass announced the news to the Italian press agency Ansa on Wednesday, 4 November.

Brass was once praised as the "Antonioni of the 70s". Later he gained wider fame by popularising erotic Italian films for a broad public. His best-known films include Caligula and Salon Kitty.

A career that changed direction

Brass was born Giovanni Brass in Milan on 26 March 1933. His family was already well known in the art world. He studied law before turning to film. He worked as an assistant director in Paris and later assisted Federico Fellini and Roberto Rossellini. His debut, Chi Lavora è Perduto, won the prize for Best First Work at the Venice Film Festival. Another of his films, I Am What I Am, won the Golden Lion at the same festival.

Brass then moved into erotic cinema. He made Salon Kitty in 1976, a film set in a Nazi brothel that also contained political satire. Its success drew the attention of Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, who asked him to direct Caligula. Brass agreed on the condition that the film would be a political satire rather than pornography.

The Caligula controversy

Caligula starred Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and Peter O'Toole. Brass directed most of it. During post-production, however, producer Guccione and filmmaker Giancarlo Lui added scenes of explicit sex. Brass and the screenwriter Gore Vidal both asked for their names to be taken off the finished film. The New York Times called it "the most expensive pornographic movie ever made".

Brass made more than two dozen films in total. These included Vacation (1971), which won the Best Italian Film award at the Venice Film Festival that year. Reports of his death do not say when or where he died, or what the cause was.