Tinto Brass, the Italian director who made eroticism, provocation and visual play his trademark, has died in Rome at the age of 93. His death was announced by his wife Caterina Varzi and his children Bonifacio and Beatrice to the Italian news agency ANSA.
Born Giovanni Brass on March 26, 1933, in Milan, he grew up in Venice, the city with which he would later remain deeply connected. At the beginning of his career, he worked as an editor and archivist at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, and after returning to Italy, he became an assistant to Roberto Rossellini.
From avant-garde cinema to „Caligula“
During the 1960s, Brass established himself as an experimental director. In 1964, he made two short films commissioned by Umberto Eco for the Milan Triennale. His early titles include „Whoever Works Is Lost,“ „The Vacation“ and „Deadly Sweet.“
Later, the director turned his attention to erotic cinema. Films such as „Salon „Kitty““ from 1976, „The Key“ from 1983, „Miranda,“ „Paprika“ and „The Nun“ made him one of the most recognizable figures in Italian cinema.
His greatest fame came with „Caligula“ – a large-scale production starring Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole and John Gielgud. The film was conceived as a scandalous interpretation of the Roman emperor, but Brass later distanced himself from the final result. The reason was that producer Bob Guccione added scenes of unsimulated sex, filmed without the director’s approval, after Brass was no longer involved in the editing.
A director who could not be confined to a single genre
„I made so many erotic films because I believed that eroticism was a fundamental key to human expression and, above all, to the representation of women,“ Brass said in an interview with „La Repubblica,“ quoted by „The Guardian.“
Alberto Barbera, the artistic director of the Venice Film Festival, said that it was „entirely reductive“ to define Brass solely as a director of erotic films. According to him, during the 1960s the Italian filmmaker was among the important authors of the avant-garde, and later contributed to the visibility of the erotic genre in popular culture.
In 2026, a restored 4K version of his film „The Heart in the Throat“ was screened in the program ahead of the opening of the Venice Film Festival. Due to his health, Brass was unable to attend in person, but his wife read a message from him to the audience.
Tinto Brass leaves behind dozens of films and a reputation as an auteur who consciously blurred the boundaries between eroticism, satire and visual experimentation. On the occasion of his 90th birthday, he expressed a wish for his ashes to be scattered in the Venetian Lagoon – the place he described as his true home.
Sources: theguardian.com, screendaily.com, euronews.com