Francesco Maselli, Influential Italian Auteur, Dies at 92
variety.comNick Vivarelli International Correspondent Influential Italian auteur Francesco “Citto” Maselli who worked with Lucia Bosé, Claudia Cardinale, Shelley Winters and Valeria Golino on films that combined his political passion with his bent for female-centered dramas, has died in Rome.
Maselli, who was known for making left-wing militant cinema, was 92. The director’s death was announced to Italian news agency ANSA by Maurizio Acerbo, leader of Italy’s small Communist Refoundation Party, the group of die-hard Italian leftists that Maselli championed, and confirmed by the director’s wife.
The exact cause of Maselli’s death was not revealed. Born into a cultured family originally from Italy’s Southern Molise region and raised in an intellectually stimulating environment – his father was an art critic – Maselli participated at a very early age in Italy’s partisan Resistance movement against fascists and German occupiers and as a young man started asserting his belief in Communism.
After graduating from Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and working as an assistant to Michelangelo Antonioni, Maselli made his feature film debut with World War II drama “Gli Sbandati” (“Abandoned”), featuring Lucia Bosé, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1955.
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