Biography

Giuseppe 'Peppino' Rotunno entered the film industry as a still photographer at Cinecitta but lost his job due to his anti-fascist views. Conscripted and sent to Greece in 1942, he then served as a newsreel cameraman with the Italian army film unit. A year later, he was captured during the German occupation of Greece and spent two years internment in Germany. Freed by US troops in April 1945, Rotunno returned to Italy. During the following decade, he worked his way up the ladder from a humbly paid assistant cameraman to director of photography. The romantic comedy Scandal in Sorrento (1955) was the first motion picture he shot in that capacity and he has since worked with some of Italy's leading post-war directors. His most famous collaborations were with Luchino Visconti, whom he regarded as his mentor (White Nights (1957), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1963)) and with Federico Fellini (Satyricon (1969), Amarcord (1973)). Rotunno acquired a well-deserved reputation for creating realistic, opulent, nostalgic or uncanny atmospheres through ingenious use of lighting techniques. His work in the international field has included the Ava Gardner starrers The Naked Maja (1958) and The Angel Wore Red (1960), Stanley Kramer's On the Beach (1959), Arthur Hiller's Man of La Mancha (1972), Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979) (1981 BAFTA winner and 1980 Oscar nominee) and the remake of Sabrina (1995), starring Harrison Ford. In 1966, Rotunno became the first non-US citizen admitted to join the American Society of Cinematographers. From 1988, he taught at the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in Rome where he died on February 7 2021 at the age of 97..
- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis