Germi, Pietro

Born Sept. 14, 1914, in Genoa; died Dec. 5, 1974, in Rome. Italian actor and movie director.

Germi studied at the Rome Experimental Cinema Center. He was one of the initiators of neorealism; his first films were The Witness (1946) and Lost Youth (1947). Social themes and documentary (1965), and Amoral (1966). His castigating as a director he also attached great significance to the ability of his subject matter to capture the viewer’s attention. In his most significant films, In the Name of the Law (1949; released in the Soviet Union as Under the Skies of Sicily) and The Road to Hope (1950), the age-old poverty and backwardness of Sicily are boldly shown; both films aroused great public interest. The traditions of neorealism were developed in the multileveled social cinema novels The Engineer (1956) and The Spineless Man (1958); Germi played the title roles in both these films.

From the early 1960’s, Germi worked in the genre, new for him, of social and realist satiric comedy: Divorce Italian Style (1961), Seduced and Abandoned (1964), Ladies and Gentlemen (1965), and Amoral (1966). His castigating satire is at times filled with caustic bitterness and hopelessness. In 1969 he produced the merry and mischievous comedy Serafino, full of national spirit, which won the Gold Prize at the Sixth International Film Festival in Moscow in 1969.