Vittorio Storaro | |
|---|---|
 Storaro at Cannes in 2001 | |
| Born | (1940-06-24)24 June 1940 (age 85) |
| Education | Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia |
| Years active | 1960–2023 |
| Organization(s) | American Society of Cinematographers Associazione Italiana Autori della Fotografia Cinematografica |
Vittorio Storaro,A.S.C., A.I.C. (born 24 June 1940), is an Italiancinematographer, widely recognized as one of the best and most influential in cinema history.[1][2][3][4]
Over the course of 50 years, he has collaborated with directors likeBernardo Bertolucci,[5]Francis Ford Coppola,Warren Beatty,Woody Allen, andCarlos Saura.
Storaro is one of three living people to have won theAcademy Award for Best Cinematography three times, a position he shares withRobert Richardson andEmmanuel Lubezki.
Born in Rome, Storaro is the son of a film projectionist.
He began studying photography at the age of 11, and at the age of 18, he went on to formalcinematography studies at the national Italian film school,Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.[6]
Storaro's philosophy is largely inspired byJohann Wolfgang von Goethe'stheory of colors, which focuses in part on the psychological effects that different colors have and the way in which colors influence our perceptions of different situations.[7]
He first worked withBernardo Bertolucci onThe Conformist (1970).[8] He then worked onDario Argento's first directorial featureThe Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), which is considered a landmark in the giallo genre.[9]
WithFrancis Ford Coppola, Storaro made his American film debut withApocalypse Now (1979),[10] which earned him his firstAcademy Award for Best Cinematography.[11]
Storaro went to win two more Academy Awards in the 1980s, one withWarren Beatty'sReds (1981)[12] and one for Bertolucci'sThe Last Emperor (1987).[12][13]
In 2002, Storaro completed the first in a series of books that articulate his philosophy of cinematography.[14]
He was the cinematographer for a BBC co-production with Italian broadcasterRAI ofVerdi'sRigoletto over two nights on the weekend of 4 and 5 September 2010.[15]
Though working primarily with film cameras,Woody Allen's featureCafé Society (2016) was Storaro's first project to be shot digitally.[16]
In 2017, Storaro was honored with theGeorge Eastman Award.[17] The same year he also attended theNew York Film Festival at which he debated withEdward Lachman on cinematography and its transition from film to digital.[18]
With his son Fabrizio, he created theUnivisium format system to unify all future theatrical and television movies into one respective aspect ratio of 2.00:1.[19] As of 2023, this unification has not happened, and the universal replacement of 4:3 televisions by large, wide-screen displays greatly reduces the need to modify scope-ratio films for home theater presentation.
Storaro is known for stylish, fastidious, and flamboyant personal fashion. Francis Ford Coppola once noted, "Vittorio is the only man I ever knew that could fall off a ladder in a white suit, into the mud, and not get dirty."[20]
Documentary film
| Year | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Roma imago urbis | Luigi Bazzoni |
| 1995 | Flamenco | Carlos Saura |
| 2010 | Flamenco Flamenco |
| Year | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|
| 1971 | Eneide | Franco Rossi |
Miniseries
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | Orlando Furioso | Luca Ronconi | WithArturo Zavattini |
| 1983 | Wagner | Tony Palmer | |
| 1986 | Peter the Great | Marvin J. Chomsky Lawrence Schiller | |
| 2000 | Frank Herbert's Dune | John Harrison | |
| 2007 | Caravaggio | Angelo Longoni |
TV movies
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | Tosca: In the Settings and at the Times of Tosca | Brian Large | |
| Writing with Light: Vittorio Storaro | David M. Thompson | Documentary film | |
| 2000 | La traviata | Pierre Cavassilas | |
| 2010 | Rigoletto a Mantova |
| Year | Category | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Best Cinematography | Apocalypse Now | Won | [21] |
| 1982 | Reds | Won | ||
| 1988 | The Last Emperor | Won | ||
| 1991 | Dick Tracy | Nominated |
| Year | Category | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Best Cinematography | Apocalypse Now | Nominated | [22] |
| 1983 | Reds | Nominated | [23] | |
| 1989 | The Last Emperor | Nominated | [24] | |
| 1991 | The Sheltering Sky | Won | [25] |
American Society of Cinematographers
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | Outstanding Cinematography | The Last Emperor | Nominated |
| 1991 | Dick Tracy | Nominated | |
| 2001 | Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in a Limited Series | Dune | Nominated |
| Lifetime Achievement Award | Won | ||
| Year | Category | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Best Cinematography | Goya en Burdeos | Won | [26] |
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | Best Cinematography for a Miniseries or Special | Peter the Great | Nominated |
| 2001 | Frank Herbert's Dune | Won |
| Year | Category | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | Technical Grand Prize | Tango, no me dejes nunca | Won | [27] |
International Film Festival of India
| Year | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Won | [28] |
British Society of Cinematographers
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | Best Cinematography | Apocalypse Now | Nominated |
| 1988 | The Last Emperor | Won | |
| 1990 | Dick Tracy | Nominated |
National Society of Film Critics
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Best Cinematography | The Conformist | Won |
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Best Cinematography | The Sheltering Sky | Won |
| 1990 | The Last Emperor | Won |
Los Angeles Film Critics Association
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1981 | Best Cinematography | Reds | Won |
| 1988 | The Last Emperor | Won |
| Year | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Won |
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Best Cinematography | Flamenco (de Carlos Saura) | Nominated |
| 1999 | Tango, no me dejes nunca | Nominated | |
| 2000 | Goya en Burdeos | Won |
