Akademik

(1927-1996)

   Cinematographer. Brother of director Giuseppe De Santis, Pasquale (or Pasqualino, as he was most often known) studied at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia before working as assistant cameraman for Piero Portalupi on a number of Giuseppe De Santis's films during the early 1950s. He then worked as camera operator for Gianni Di Venanzo until Di Venanzo's death in 1966. His first solo film as director of photography was Francesco Rosi's Once upon a Time . . . (More Than a Miracle, 1967) but only a year later he received an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo e Giulietta (Romeo and Juliet, 1968).

   In the years that followed he worked again with Rosi on all Rosi's major films, including Il caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair, 1972), Lucky Luciano (1974), and Cadaveri eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses, 1976) and photographed Federico Fellini's Blocknotes d'un regista (Fellini: A Director's Notebook, 1969). However, he appeared to provide the best proof of his brilliance as a cinematographer in the films he did with Luchino Visconti: La caduta degli dei (The Damned, 1969), Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice, 1971), Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (Conversation Piece, 1974), and L'Innocente (The Innocent, 1976). Internationally he also worked on a number of films with Robert Bresson, including Lancelot du Lac (1974) and Le diable, probablement (The Devil, Probably, 1977), and with Joseph Losey on The Assassination of Trotsky (1972). In 1995, together with his brother, Giuseppe, and fellow cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci, De Santis founded the Nuova Universita del Cinema e della Televisione with a special scholarship established for cinematography. After a successful and prolific career, crowned with many prizes and awards, including the Nastro d'argento four times and two David di Donatello, De Santis died in Ukraine in 1996 on the set of Francesco Rosi's La tregua (The Truce, 1996).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira