Dino Risi: Master filmmaker whose bitter-sweet comedies chronicled the transformation of life in post-war Italy

The film director and writer Dino Risi made his first feature in 1952 and quickly established himself as a master of Neapolitan comedy with films that masked trenchant social commentary and a sometimes cynical look at the inequities of Italian life behind a bitter-sweet approach.

He had a particularly rewarding relationship with the actor Vittorio Gassman, who starred in 15 of his films, including Profumo di Donna (Scent of a Woman, 1974), which won him two Oscar nominations – for best foreign film and best adapted screenplay, and which was remade by Hollywood in 1992 with Al Pacino giving an Oscar-winning performance in Gassman's role as a blind, philandering army officer who uses his sense of smell to identify types of women.

Risi was born in Milan in 1916, the son of a doctor who was resident physician at the La Scala Opera House. His father died when he was 12, and he and his two brothers were raised by their mother. "We studied medicine as a homage to our father. I started specialising in psychiatry, but then became afraid of committing myself to such a sad profession."

He began writing film criticism, which brought him to the attention of Alberto Lattuada, first assistant director on Mario Soldati's Piccolo Mondo Antico (Old-Fashioned World, 1941), who asked Risi to collaborate on the film. He then became an assistant on Lattuada's own film Giacomo l'idealista (1943). "I had discovered work that in fact really wasn't work at all. It was almost like a game".

In the last years of the Second World War, he emigrated to Switzerland, where he attended film courses given by the pioneer of poetic realism, Jacques Feyder, who had been forced to seek refuge there. After the war, Risi decided not to become a doctor, and took up journalism for a couple of years. "Then I met a producer who made short subjects and started getting involved in cinema. It all came about quite easily." He directed several documentaries, starting with Bersaglieri della Signora (1946), prior to his first feature film, Vacanze col Gangster (Vacation with a Gangster, 1952), which he also co-wrote – Risi wrote the stories of most of his films, also collaborating on the screenplays.

Neo-realism was still a prime influence on Italian cinema, and Risi next became one of seven directors on an omnibus film, L'Amore in Città (Love in the City, 1953), produced by one of the movement's leading exponents, Cesare Zavattini. Based on newspaper reports of true events, it was filmed in the locales where the events took place.

Risi is considered one of the prime creators of "rose-tinted" neo-realism ("neo-realismo rosa"), having big box-office hits with Pane, amore e . . . (Scandal in Sorrento, 1955), starring Sophia Loren at her most voluptuous, and Poveri ma belli (Poor But Beautiful, 1956), after which he established himself as a master of caustic Neapolitan comedies that used buffoonery to satirise the often bleak realities of contemporary Italian life. "The Neapolitans say that there is no burial without a burst of laughter," he said. "Life is a mixture of the serious and the comical, the good and the bad, continuously."

Notable among these early movies was the first film he directed starring Gassman, Il Mattatore (Love and Larceny, 1959), and a very funny comedy poking fun at Italy's judiciary, A Porte Chiuse (Behind Closed Doors, 1960), featuring a delightful performance by Anita Ekberg as an amoral beauty on trial for the murder of her wealthy lover. Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life, 1962) starred Gassman as a hedonist travelling around Italy in a sports car with a shy student (Jean-Louis Tritagnant) and was described by the critic Paolo D'Agostini as "a skilful description of Italy's and Rosi's own transition from youthful euphoria to utilitarian cynicism."

Rosi told the French historian Jean A. Gili, "I joined the ranks, not of militant realism, but of those films which later revealed themselves to be perhaps even more politically committed than the ones that claimed to be, in their stressing of the evils of Italian society".

He also favoured actors who came from the theatre or music hall, such as Ugo Tognazzi, Albert Sordi, and Gassman ("a great theatre player who I took on, and who little by little shifted over to the comedy of manners."). He teamed Gassman with Tognazzi in La Marcia su Roma (The March to Rome, 1962), as two simpletons recruited into a Fascist squad, and I Mostri (The Monsters, 1963), and he directed Gassman in Il Tigre (The Tiger and the Pussycat, 1967) and the biting In nome del popolo italiano (In the Name of the Italian People, 1972), in which he was a judge exposing corruption in the Italian justice system. For his performance in Risi's Profumo di donna, Gassman won the Best Actor award at Cannes in 1975.

Risi gave Alberto Sordi the chance to prove himself as a dramatic actor in Una vita difficile (A Difficult Life, 1961), and teamed Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in the controversial La Moglie Del Prete (The Priest's Wife, 1970), in which some of Risi's attempts at humour sat uneasily on the tale of a Catholic priest who has an affair with a suicidal young woman.

Mordi e Fuggi (Dirty Weekend, 1973) dealt with terrorism, and Risi's later films were marked by an increasing melancholy – a notable exception was Straziami, ma di baci saziami (Torture Me, But Kill Me with Kisses, 1968). "I had this capacity to sense things that were in the air, which is important, I believe, for someone who wants to make comedies that reflect society."

Risi's son Marco is a noted director, and his other son Claudio has also directed. "My relationship with my sons is very beautiful", he said. "I took care of them a lot until they were 10, 12 years old. Then, I felt they were old enough and could manage without me and live with their mother. We grew closer again later. We love each other very much . . . My romantic life has been full of ups and downs, intense relationships that I've always tried to live with a bit of foolhardiness, always with a spirit of adventure. I once made a film just to meet a woman."

Asked to define his directorial style, Risi replied that it was hybrid. "Critics like classifications, they always want to put you in a compartment. I bring subjects to the screen that I'm interested in and which can be very dramatic, though I always add a pinch of irony in even the most serious stories". Risi was given a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2002, the year he retired after spending his final years mainly writing for television. In 2004 he published an autobiography, I miei mostri ("My monsters").

Tom Vallance

Dino Risi, film director: born Milan, Italy 23 December 1916; married (two sons); died Rome 7 June 2008.

Interesting? Click here to explore further