Tinto Brass, director of Caligula and maestro of Euro erotica, dies aged 93

The cult Italian film-maker began as an assistant to Roberto Rossellini but moved into sex films, believing ‘eroticism to be a fundamental key to human expression’

Italian film director Tinto Brass, who was once hailed as the “Antonioni of the 70s” but came to be better known for bringing Italian erotic cinema to a wider audience with films such as Caligula and Salon Kitty, has died aged 93.

His wife Caterina Varzi and children Bonifacio and Beatrice Brass announced the news of the director’s death to Italian press agency Ansa on Wednesday.

Born in Milan and raised in Venice, Brass first started working in cinema after moving to Paris, where he was an editor and archivist at the Cinémathèque. Upon returning to Italy, he worked as an editor and assistant director to Roberto Rossellini.

His experimental and anarchic approach to film quickly earned him a reputation, and in 1964 he was commissioned by Umberto Eco to create two short films experimenting with visual language for the Triennale di Milano. Warner Bros reportedly approached him to direct A Clockwork Orange, though scheduling conflicts meant the film was offered to Stanley Kubrick instead.

In the 1970s, Brass moved on to erotic cinema. Though crass and filled with nudity, his first steps in the genre were also politically minded explorations of the relationships between sex, power and money.

“I made so many erotic films because I believed eroticism to be a fundamental key to human expression and, above all, the key to portraying women,” he told La Repubblica newspaper. “That was what interested me most.”

His 1976 “Nazisploitation” film Salon Kitty was based on the true story of a Berlin brothel co-opted by Nazis to spy on foreign allies and fellow officers. It caught the attention of producer and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, who hired Brass in 1979 to direct Caligula, which was an attempt to make a star-studded, mainstream pornographic film, with a plot based on the story of ancient Rome’s most feared ruler.

Starring Malcolm McDowell in the title role, alongside Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud, the film was based on a screenplay by Gore Vidal, which Brass rewrote to include orgies, decorative phalluses, and plenty of female nudity.

Vidal disavowed the film, as did Brass after Guccione shot additional unsimulated hardcore sex scenes and spliced them into the film without the director’s permission. It was released in the UK and US in 1980, with Brass only credited for “principal photography”. A recut version, without Guccione’s inserts, was released in 2023, although Brass was not involved and did not approve of it.

In recent years Brass lived in Isola Farnese, on the outskirts of Rome. He is survived by his wife, Varzi, whom he married in 2017 and who curated his archive. In an interview on the occasion of his 90th birthday, he expressed a wish for his ashes to be scattered in the Venice lagoon.