Franco Cristaldi, a brave captain

“A producer can learn how to avoid a failure, but he has to risk it anyway. If he loves cinema, he can’t just think about the budget, he can’t just think about the products that are considered trendy.”

It was 1984 and Franco Castaldi was describing the profession of the producer. Born in Turin in 1924 he started to work with the acronym Vides. V as the name of his business partner, Victor De Santis, and as the famous Latin quote: Vides pascula, two Horace’s verses that he loves. Franco Cristaldi was “different” for his age. He was different for his original ideas, his personality, and for his new take on his great culture. With the Vides, then Cristaldi Film, he started a new adventure in cinema.
From the beginning, he decided to follow his philosophy. In a cinematographic world that was living its first crisis, he said: “We should look at the movies that we produce instead of producing movies that the audience wants.”

A revolutionary in the brave way he faced cinema in order to give back freshness and originality to a difficult period for the Italian cinema, Cristaldi is still an example we should admire for his ability to look forward, his awareness, for the courage only a few else had in the history of Italian cinema.
Franco Cristaldi is one of the greatest Italian producers. The “brave captain” produced some of the most memorable stories of the past 50 years of Italian cinema. A three time Oscar’s winner: 1962 for the screenplay of "Divorce-Italian Style" (directed by Pietro Germi), Best Foreign Film in 1974 with Federico Fellini's "Amarcord", and in 1991 with "Cinema Paradiso" (directed by Giuseppe Tornatore). He had a long successful career marked by unforgettable films like "Big Deal On Madonna Street", "Salvatore Giuliano", "The Organizer", "Seduced and Abandoned", "White Nights", and "The Name of the Rose" (Italian box office record in 1986).

The most gifted directors and actors have worked in the films produced by his Cristaldi Film until 1996, almost twenty years ago, when Cristaldi died, leaving alone a generation of new Italian talents.

Laura Delli Colli
Cinema Italian Style
curator