Tonino Delli Colli
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tonino Delli Colli (November 20, 1922 – August 16, 2005) was an Italian cinematographer.
Born in Rome, he began work at Rome's Cinecittà studio in 1938, at the age of sixteen. By the mid-1940s he was working as a cinematographer and in 1952 shot the first Italian film in colour, Totò a colori. He went on to work with a number of acclaimed, and diverse, directors, including Sergio Leone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America), Roman Polanski (Death and the Maiden and Bitter Moon), Louis Malle (Lacombe Lucien), Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Name of the Rose), and Federico Fellini, whose last three films he photographed.
His collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini was especially fruitful: they made twelve films together, including Pasolini's debut Accattone (1961), Mamma Roma (1962), The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972) and Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1976).
His last film was Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1997), for which he won his fourth David di Donatello Award for Best Cinematography. In 2005 he was awarded the American Society of Cinematographers' International Achievement Award. In August of the same year, he died at home in Rome. He is also due to win the Lifetime Achievement Award (now posthumously) from the Camerimage Film Festival (a cinematography-focused film fest) in Łódź, Poland this year.
Tonino Delli Colli died from a heart attack in 2005 at the age of 83.
