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It was in December 2012, after a screening of several of Tinto’s movies, that I heard an incredulous audience member angrily vent out the vehement question,
“So, why do you like Tinto Brass?”
The question was not directed at me, but I nonetheless took it personally, and I took it as a challenge.
In my eyes, Tinto is simply grand.
In the US, Tinto is primarily known for Caligula,
which is a pity, as that is by far the worst work in his entire canon.
It has some nice moments, it has some beautiful visuals, but overall it is quite dull and unconvincing,
and it doesn’t help that the film was taken out of his hands and refashioned to become a work of vile sensationalism.
Throughout the rest of the world, Tinto is known for his softcore comedies, which are, more often than not, nice and silly and funny and enjoyable, but fluff.
That is fair enough, but there is something more.
For those of us in the know, Tinto made his mark in the 1960’s and early 1970’s as the master storyteller and stylist.
Not “a master,” but “the master” — yes, I’ll go that far, yes.
I first heard of him, quite by accident, in about February 1979.
Intrigued, I attempted to seek out his movies, but not a single one of his films was available anywhere in the US in any format, on film or on video.
I wrote to every distributor who had previously licensed US rights to any of Tinto’s movies, and nearly every letter was returned, as the businesses had folded.
The few who responded said that no such titles were in their catalogues, and indeed, that they had no records of any such films.
It was also in about early 1979 that video shops began popping up here and there.
All video shops were
The movies shared something in common, but I had trouble articulating their similarities
and what made them different from everything else.
In a nutshell, Tinto combined two entirely different styles of narrative.
He used the standard storytelling technique, with a plot that one could follow easily
together with characters who captivate us.
In that respect, he followed two of his idols, Charlie Chaplin and Jean Renoir.
So, yes, he used standard framing and cutting and scenery, but that is not all he used.
His influences were also
Alberto Cavalcanti and
Maya Deren and
Bruce Conner and
Fred Mogubgub
and countless other
At the Landmark Loew’s State Theatre during the Syracuse Cinefest in March 2001, I was looking through a display of historical items in the mezzanine,
and concentrated my gaze on a Western Electric Vitaphone projector I had recently seen in operation but which had to be retired once no more replacement parts were available.
Standing next to me I noticed a distinguished
As you can see, these movies were exceedingly difficult to find, requiring incessant searches.
When I watched these blurry VHS tapes and the battered 16mm print, I was simply astonished at what unreeled before my eyes.
Not only were Tinto’s early films entertaining, but they were thought-provoking and brilliantly made — for budgets of close to zero.
He had the strongest sense of cinema of any filmmaker I know of, and he made the most demanding films I’ve ever seen.
However demanding some of his films are, they are nonetheless playful, filled with visual jokes and preposterous humor.
Tinto also had a propensity to experiment with mimicking thought processes,
offering a barrage of flashing images and sounds that should be discordant, but which are actually soothing, as they mesh so well with our thinking patterns.
He would admix naturalism with absurdism, stir both together with comedy, and add lyricism with a frothing of insouciance, to create movies unlike anything else.
What I found especially amusing was his habit of placing actors in actual crowds and shooting with hidden cameras — or, sometimes, with cameras that were not hidden.
The interaction of reality and
Seeing these films, filled as they were with playfulness and brain teasers and compassion, I could not help but be drawn.
There was another ingredient, as well, that shouted out at me:
These films were evidently made by a person who had no love of the status quo
and who had entirely different ideas about who is sane and who is not.
Those who had caring hearts, those who had poetic sensibilities, were those at the bottom of the social ladder; they were “the losers,” as Tinto called them.
Those who lacked these qualities were the bureaucrats at the top.
The stories sympathized with “the losers,” even those “losers” who were so emotionally retarded as to be cruel.
In Tinto’s view, they deserve sympathy as well, for however horrid they may be, they still have the simplicity of infants, and it was not their fault that they could not mature.
That was originally the concept behind Caligula, by the way, an idea that the editors inadvertently obscured in the final film.
This idea is not explicitly hammered home in any of his movies.
It is a subtle undercurrent, barely perceptible, almost subliminal.
These movies were made by someone who had no use for social customs and genuflection to authority figures in a world forever going to war.
“Civilisation,” he explained, “has not learned to live in a cultured way.
It has always avoided looking at certain aspects of human nature, not cultivated dignity as a solid basic passion.”
(Shades of Stanley Diamond
and Jerry Mander, yes?)
His political views also imbued all his films.
For reasons that elude me, he has sometimes been derided as a Communist propagandist, but he is not a Communist.
Teen rebellion drew him into the Togliatti orbit, but Roberto Rossellini soon enough talked him out of that.
After a discussion with the master filmmaker, Tinto went home, pulled down all his images of Lenin and Mao and so forth,
and replaced them with pinups, which is much healthier.
He decided that he abhorred all political power structures, whether of the Left or of the Right, which maintain and increase their power only through violence.
I cannot find fault with that viewpoint.
Tinto is opposed to authoritarianism; as a lifelong admirer of Wilhelm Reich, he made his films critical of all authorities and all isms.
His overriding theme, evident in nearly everything he has ever done, is personal and individual freedom above all else.
The logical question now is:
How can a master
The reason commonly supplied is that Tinto’s career must be divided in two.
Tinto himself confirms this, as he happily declares that his career consists of two distinct phases:
The experimental works “Before The Key” and the erotic works “After The Key” —
apparently with The Key resting as the fulcrum between the two phases.
That’s not so helpful.
It would be better to divide his works into three categories:
The ones from the ❤ are great. Most of the ❤ films are challenging, demanding, difficult, provocative, and require multiple viewings. Some of the  commissions are tons of fun, but some (notably Caligula) are probably worth skipping.
The ones made for  vary wildly in quality.
Most of the are softcore works.
The stories are second-rate, if that, though the craftsmanship, performed by the most skilfull technicians, is superlative.
Some people find them offputting, while others seem unable to get enough.
They are not bad, they are sincere, they do have a somewhat sensible message, and some are infectious and even downright hilarious, but they are lightweight.
Regardless of category, these films are all of a piece, and they all bear Tinto’s distinctive personality.
Even if his credit were to be deleted, you would instantly recognize any of these films as Tinto’s.
His techniques and outlook cannot be mistaken for anybody else’s, and nobody has been able successfully to imitate him.
Despite this unity of authorial voice, if you find that you like a ,
For 24 years Tinto remained a respected but minor filmmaker who had to struggle to get his dreams on screen.
Why? Because of law enforcement.
His first two feature films were challenged in the courts and initially banned.
By the time they were cleared, they were sent out to cinemas as an afterthought, minus publicity.
The decision by the distributor (Dear Film) and the producer (Zebra Film) to cancel adequate publicity resulted in the films doing nothing more than earning back their minimal costs.
Yet his first two features were better than anything that anyone else was doing at the time.
If only they had been released widely with adequate promotion, if only they had been released on the “art circuit” throughout Europe and the Americas and elsewhere too,
Tinto would have been able to cut his own checks for the rest of his life.
Any serious film viewer would have recognized that these were exceptional works by a young master filled with promise.
Alas, it was not to be.
That is why Tinto found himself accepting several
job offers for mostly
A young person who grew up with Tinto as a family friend tried to explain something else to me.
In Italy, a filmmaker’s political views determine success.
A
After 24 years of semi-obscurity, the unexpected happened:
In 1983 a studio agreed to produce Tinto’s 1965 script of The Key, and provided a decent budget, too.
The result was a smash hit that outperformed all other films that year in Italy.
With such a success under his belt, Tinto felt certain that he would now be able to dictate his own terms.
He was wrong.
Though The Key was easily the most heartfelt film of Tinto’s career,
though it was intelligent, perceptive, thought-provoking, emotionally complex, and rather difficult,
that is not how audiences saw it, and so that is not how producers saw it.
The Key, you see, contained several minutes of nudity, presented in a natural way, not at all exploitive, and the actors were comfortable performing their scenes.
As Tinto explained, “The Key is a film on sexuality, but not sexy.”
Yet it was the nudity alone that made the movie a sensational international blockbuster.
Producers now saw that Tinto was golden.
His name would guarantee returns, they thought, but only if his name would continue to be associated with T&A.
So Tinto was not able to control his career after all.
He made a concession:
He would make softcore films to please his producers, but he would make them his own, with his own spin and his own style,
and he had the time of his life creating these silly fluffball
The silly fluffball
Since Tinto has barely a trace of ego, he took this lesson to heart.
It was not his early works that brought him money and recognition.
It was only the fluff that brought him money and fame, and so it is the fluff that he guards with his life and promotes everywhere.
His early works, regardless of how brilliant they were, failed to attract large audiences, failed to change minds, failed to bring people together.
They caught the attention mostly of intellectuals, who were not the audience he had hoped to reach, as he had no interest in preaching to the choir.
That is why he has let his early works disintegrate.
That is why he makes no effort to revive his early works and has little interest in talking about them.
Yes, if someone wants to license one of his early movies, he won’t object, and he might even put in a good word or two, but that’s it.
That, without question, is a tragedy.
In one sense, his later erotic films are indeed superior to his earlier works.
In the earlier films, the characters were ciphers,
Another striking difference between the earlier and later films is the attitude towards the machinery.
In the earlier films, Tinto so enjoyed the cameras and the recorders and the editing tables
and the Ciro guillotine splicers
that he found any excuse imaginable to have flashy editing, peculiar camera angles,
speeded motion, colliding sound effects, elliptical narrative, overlays, stream-of-consciousness.
Further, whenever he got an idea that he found amusing, he stuck it in,
even if it ruined the narrative or the sense of the scene.
Beginning with The Key, no more.
The narrative prevailed.
All else was subsumed to the narrative.
Where does Tinto’s heart truly lie?
With the ciphers, or with the characters?
With the playfulness, or with the strict narrative?
He told us, possibly because he didn’t catch himself.
In the commentary track of Cult Epics’ DVD of Howl, by far the wildest and most abstract film of his career,
he admitted that Howl was the film with which he most identified,
that it was his personal favorite of all his works,
the singular work that best represents who he is.
I breathed a long sigh of relief to hear that.
I met Tinto and his wife Tinta for all of three hours at their rented house on an overcast Saturday morning, the third of April 2004.
Upon entering the grounds, I was greeted by a glazed tile embedded in the wall by the kitchen door, which served as the entrance door, which read, simply, “TINTI.”
It was the perfect expression of their marriage.
Tinta, of course, was a nickname.
Her real name was Carla Cipriani, of the famous family of restaurateurs, and she was the warmest person I have ever met.
I’ll always regret that I never got to see her again.
Though I never got to know them, I could pick up on a few things.
First, they were inseparable.
Second, while Tinto was the talent, Tinta was the brains.
I got the distinct impression that it was Tinta who made the deals and negotiated the contracts, leaving the creative duties to her husband.
Perhaps this was not so after all, but I should be surprised were I to be proved wrong.
After The Key, when studio executives would not talk unless Tinto were to propose a work of erotica,
it was Tinta who came to the rescue by writing Miranda.
After getting his feet wet in the new genre, Tinto became comfortable and was able to churn out more and more fantasies.
You see, Tinto had patronized brothels in his youth, with parental approval, and continued to do so even after he married, with wifely approval.
For the life of me I cannot fathom why, and I certainly cannot relate to such a situation at all, but who am I to judge?
It worked for their marriage, and so that’s that.
This surely explains an attitude expressed in some of his movies, in which prostitution is presented as virtuous and joyous —
a view so contrary to my own that, again, I am left baffled, but, again, I don’t judge.
The other side of this equation appears far more strongly, and it is present in nearly all his erotic films,
which are based on the idea that a wife’s occasional
Partly related to this viewpoint, take a look at
David Brooks, “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake,” The Atlantic, March 2020.
Tinto and Tinta loved marriage and detested divorce.
Tinto loved casual sex, loved all manner of pleasures, but found selfish hedonism repulsive.
Tinto and Tinta loved extended family and a wide circle of friends.
Put your thinking caps on.
Every sentient adult realizes that everything is unfair.
There are many unfairnesses in the arts.
Anyone who has worked in the arts has discovered that the business of the arts is no different from the business of drug trafficking.
Both businesses are run by gangsters,
and both are founded upon smear campaigns, planted evidence, smuggling, laundering,
cops on the take, rigged court hearings, grand theft, pervasive viciousness, and worse.
The particular unfairness that concerns us here is recognition.
Recognition is entirely unrelated to quality.
Once a major press offers a scholarly book about a filmmaker, intellectuals begin to take that filmmaker seriously, justly or otherwise.
There were multiple books about Kubrick, Visconti, and Fellini, for instance.
Thus it was that these and some other filmmakers of the 1960’s and 1970’s were embraced by the intellectuals.
Their collected works continue to be revived at museums, complete with program notes.
The screenings are hosted by scholars who give lectures and interview cast and crew on stage before and after each film.
Select VIP’s are invited to
This, then, is the situation with Tinto Brass.
If any filmmaker has ever been deserving of serious appraisal, it is Tinto.
Yet he is widely dismissed as merely “the director of Caligula.”
Making matters worse is the unavailability of his better films.
Available copies are generally VHS, blurry, cropped, censored, abridged, as the masters have been locked away for decades.
Some of the masters have even been lost.
There are specialty houses and archives that will present the occasional movie sourced from a VHS, indeed,
but without access to the masters, it is impossible to get screenings at major venues.
That is another reason for the continued obscurity of Tinto’s finest works.
The irony? There is an irony here. Life cannot be lived without irony.
The irony is that on the rare occasions when Tinto’s early works are revived at special screenings, audiences go wild over them.
The audiences are small, only a hundred people at most, usually much less, but the reactions are heartwarming.
The response is half a century too late, but it is better than no response at all.
Chi lavora è perduto (Whosoever Works Is Lost, 1963),
Il disco volante (The Flying Saucer, 1964),
Yankee (1965),
Col cuore in gola (Deadly Sweet, 1967),
Nerosubianco (Attraction, 1968),
La vacanza (Vacation, 1971),
and sometimes even L’urlo (Howl, 1969)
will excite audiences into rounds of loving applause and almost unendurable enthusiasm.
This was not the response half a century ago, sadly.
I wish Tinto could witness these reactions.
Too many people see Tinto as a pornographer.
He is not, not at all.
I see him as a delicate person, a gentle artist,
widely read, thoughtful, with an unusually high intelligence,
who hides his education from others, out of modesty.
I see him as one of those men who is unskilled at independent living,
who was hopelessly dependent upon his late wife Tinta for his day-to-day existence, for his home life,
for his comfort, for his balance, for his sensibility.
I was heartbroken when Tinta passed away, and I was truly worried for him.
Would he be able to survive without her?
Somehow he managed, but his health deteriorated frightfully.
There is a wise warning to us all:
Never meet your idol.
If you do happen to meet your idol, you will be disappointed, or worse.
Chances are, really, that you would be devastated.
I met my idol, and I was extraordinarily lucky, for Tinto did not disappoint me in any way.
I shall never in a thousand lifetimes be able to see certain things from Tinto’s point of view,
but that did not prevent us from getting along.
Though he attempted, at first, to be crusty, he quickly melted and revealed an endearing sweetness.
When we finished our videotaped interview, and as I was crouched on the floor to pack up the camera,
he slid his glasses to the end of his nose and peered over them to look down on me, to remark, in admiration:
“You have a very good knowledge of film culture.”
I answered that I had learned a great deal when I had been a projectionist,
a job he had once had as well, and so we spoke some more.
Of course, it helped that we were both fans of Charlie Chaplin.
He was fond of me, as I was fond of him.
We continued our correspondence for about four years.
He mentioned me to several people, saying that
“he knows more about me than I do!”
Then, tragically, he suffered a cerebral hæmorrhage and lost all memory of me.
I have been unable to reach him since.
I cannot be sure, but it seems that his guardians protect him from my letters,
assuming, probably, that I am naught more than another tiresome fan.
Nothing would please me as much as to speak with him again.
Alas, that will probably never happen.
My website is, in part, a small, humble, skeletal effort to begin to turn the tide.
I first posted this site in March 2002.
Since that time several of Tinto’s better movies have been released on DVD in Italy and in the US.
There have been occasional retrospective screenings of some of his early films both in Italy and in the US,
and even, once, at la Cinémathèque Française.
In 2008 Film International at long last devoted a few pages to Tinto, and so did several other film journals.
Is my site in any way responsible for this new state of affairs?
I should like to think so, but I don’t know.
TABLE OF CONTENTSAPPRENTICESHIP
WINNING ACCOLADES
MAINSTREAM
AVANT-GARDE, UNDERGROUND,
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❤ NEROSUBIANCO Attraction — Black on White 1968 |
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A Clockwork Orange Arancia meccanica 1968 Unproduced film, later made by Stanley Kubrick |
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❤ L’urlo Howl 1968–1970 |
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Barbarella Goes Down 1969 Unproduced film |
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❤ Dropout 1970 |
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DNA 1970 Unfinished film |
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L’evasione The Evasion 1971 Unproduced film |
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❤ La vacanza Vacation 1971 |
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Untitled thriller 1971 Unproduced film |
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I Miss Sonja Henie Nedostaje Mi Sonja Henie 1972 |
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Ordine e disciplina Order and Sex Discipline 1972 Unproduced film |
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Storia d’Italia History of Italy 1972 Unproduced film |
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Le sardomobili The Sardine-Mobiles 1972 TV commercial |
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I Borgia The Borgias 1972–2008 Unproduced film |
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Pranzo di famiglia Family Lunch 1973 Stage play by Roberto Lerici |
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Punch 1974 Unproduced film |
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Sturmtruppen 1974 Unproduced film, later made by Salvatore Samperi |
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Salon Kitty Madam Kitty 1975–1976 |
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Pranzo di famiglia Family Lunch 1976 revival Stage play by Roberto Lerici |
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L’uomo di sabbia The Man of Sand 1976 Stage play by Riccardo Reim |
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Gore Vidal’s Caligula Io Caligola 1976–1977 |
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A Documentary on the Making of “Gore Vidal’s Caligula” 1976–1981 Not by Tinto Brass, though he appears in it |
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Punch 1977–1978 Unproduced film |
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The Pig Advantage 1978 Unproduced film |
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❤ Action 1979 |
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Champagne dir: Gigliola Faenza, with Tinto Brass as editor and actor 1981 Unproduced |
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La felicità dir: Vittorio De Sisti, with Tinto Brass as actor Four-episode TV series 1981 |
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Boudoir 1981–1982 Unproduced film, later adapted for the stage (1985) |
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Tinto Brass’ “Fanny Hill” 1982–1983 Unproduced film, later made by Harry Alan Towers |
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Lord Byron 1982 Unproduced film |
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❤ The Key La chiave 1983 |
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Pranzo di famiglia Family Lunch 1983 revival Stage play by Roberto Lerici |
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3-13-33 Unproduced TV series 1983 |
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Untitled British Film Unproduced film 1985 |
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Miranda 1985 |
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❤ Capriccio Love and Passion 1987 |
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Snack Bar Budapest 1988 |
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Calze Levante 1990 TV commercial |
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Paprika 1991 |
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Lulù 1991 Stage play by Frank Wedekind |
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Così fan tutte All Ladies Do It 1992 |
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Tenera è la carne Tender Is the Flesh 1993 Unfinished film |
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L’uomo che guarda The Voyeur 1994 |
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Reggiseno Infiore dir: Alessandro D’Alatri 1994 TV commercial |
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Fermo posta Tinto Brass P.O. Box Tinto Brass 1995 |
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Venezia Erotica February 1996 Foreword to a book |
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The Big Strip ! uptight9.".Mama Oliver.eastwest {the Shantel Remixes} 1996 45rpm 12" vinyl |
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Quando l’Italia non èra un Paese povero When Italy Wasn’t a Poor Country dir: Stefano Missio Tinto Brass interviewed on camera 1997 |
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Monella Frivolous Lola 1998 |
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Lucignolo Cute Little Luke dir: Massimo Ceccherini Tinto Brass as actor 1999 |
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TRAsgreDIRE Transgressing 1999–2000 |
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Corti circuiti erotici Erotic Short Circuits Various directors Tinto Brass introduces each 1999–2000 |
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Untitled Ukrainian project Unproduced film 1999 |
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EuroTrash TV interview 2000 |
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Così come sono That’s the Way I Am 2000 Introduction to a novel |
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Senso ’45 Black Angel 2001–2002 |
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Fallo! Do It! 2003 |
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Monamour 2005 |
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Afterword |
| The Major Publications Notes added on 28 April 2007 | |
This one will be really exciting, and I await in excited anticipation to receive it: The never-before-told story of Tinto’s involvement with the London Arts Scene and the involvement of the London Arts Scene in his British films. This will also detail some heretofore unknown movie projects that never got off the ground, including one with Jim Morrison as Christ! The author is Simon Matthews, who wrote Psychedelic Celluloid: British Pop Music in Film and TV 1965–1974, a brief and breezy tour. The forthcoming book promises to be considerably more | |
 Hard to find, but I finally got a copy on Thursday night, 26 April 2007. Incredibly good info, and it has transcriptions of those wonderful lyrics that I had so much trouble understanding! Includes the treatments for the unmade movies!!!!!! Click on the picture above to see the front and back covers, the masthead, title page, and copyright page. |
 Not as hard to find, and it still pops up on eBay once in a blue moon. Click on the picture above to see the front and back covers, the masthead, title page, and copyright page. |
 Still pops up on eBay. Click on the picture above to see the front and back covers, the masthead, title page, and copyright page. |
 Oh this one is sweet. It consists largely of affectionate tributes to Tinto Brass from those who have known him and worked with him. Click on the picture above to see the front and back covers, the masthead, title page, and copyright page. |
 Apparently Nocturno is regularly shipped to subscribers in a plastic wrapper that includes a separately bound supplement entitled Nocturno Dossier. This particular Dossier was devoted entirely to Tinto Brass, and it includes information and photos you won’t find anywhere else. Click on the picture above to order a copy. |
 The most recent book, which apparently borrowed a bit from my web site. (But then, hey, my web site borrowed from some of the books I’m advertising here.) Click on the picture above to see the front and back covers, the masthead, title page, and copyright page. NOTA BENE: The original edition is beautiful, with glossy paper and marvelous illustrations. Apparently, there is a pirated edition making the rounds, on rough paper with degraded illustrations. Make sure to get the one with glossy paper! |
| Now, how do you get hold of these publications? Well, except for the Nocturno Dossier # 25 it will be a bit tricky to get these items. Keep trying Tinto Brass’s web site, as well as the Internet Bookshop, Hoepli, and BookFinder. Good luck! | |
