Ugo Pirro

Ugo Pirro

Birth : 1920-04-26, Salerno, Campania, Italy

Death : 2008-01-18

History

Ugo Pirro (April 20, 1920 – January 18, 2008) was an Italian screenwriter and novelist. His screenplays include films Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and The Garden of the Fizi-Continis, which both won Academy Awards as Best Foreign Film.

Profile

Ugo Pirro

Movies

Elio Petri: Notes About a Filmmaker
Self
A documentary on the director’s career, featuring interviews with friends, collaborators, and filmmakers.
Investigation of a Citizen Named Volonté
Self - Interviewee
Documentary on actor Gian Maria Volonté
The Nymph
Writer
Set during the second world war, the sentimental education of a sensual adolescent girl, growing out of her childhood in a small, impoverished village in Southern Italy.
Celluloide
Screenstory
June 1944. In the newly liberated Rome, Roberto Rossellini and Sergio Amidei decide, against all odds, to make an unprecedented, true-to-life film on the tragic events that occurred during the Nazi occupation: Rome, Open City .
Celluloide
Screenplay
June 1944. In the newly liberated Rome, Roberto Rossellini and Sergio Amidei decide, against all odds, to make an unprecedented, true-to-life film on the tragic events that occurred during the Nazi occupation: Rome, Open City .
Celluloide
Novel
June 1944. In the newly liberated Rome, Roberto Rossellini and Sergio Amidei decide, against all odds, to make an unprecedented, true-to-life film on the tragic events that occurred during the Nazi occupation: Rome, Open City .
Law of Courage
Screenplay
The true story of Rosario Livatino, a young judge in Sicily in the early 1980s, who have been nicknamed 'The Boy Judge' from the President of the Republic. He's strictly incorruptible, working hard and refusing even to shake hands with suspects. He then starts a number of investigations that lead him to touch the mafia power in the area, and then to personal war with the hidden organization.
Funes, a Great Love
Writer
A group of musicians, prostitutes, gamblers, and laborers, react to the arrival of a tango pianist at a saloon.
A Boy from Calabria
Writer
Set in 1960, the year of the Rome Olympics, a 13 year-old boy with aspirations to become an athlete befriends an ageing, disabled bus driver who understands his ambitions.
Operation Ogre
Screenplay
Spain, 1973. Dictator Francisco Franco has ruled the country since 1939 with an iron fist; but he is now a very old and sick man. The future of the weakened regime is in danger. Admiral Carrero Blanco is his natural successor. The Basque terrorist gang ETA decides that he must die to prevent the dictatorship from continuing.
The Return
Writer
Despite the ongoing WW2, most of the people were just minding their own business. But everything changes when police arrests the group of youths under suspicion of being resistance sympathizers. Outraged townsfolk organize the siege of police station.
Child of the Night
Writer
Mystery thriller, based on a novel by G. J. Arnaud.
I Am the Law
Screenplay
Palermo, Sicily, November 1925. Cesare Mori, the new prefect of the city, soon to be known as the Iron Prefect, begins a ruthless war against the Mafia, a sinister organization that has subjugated the island for centuries, something that the dictator Benito Mussolini and the fascist authorities can no longer allow.
Goodnight, Ladies and Gentlemen
Screenplay
An episodic satire of the political and social status of Italy in the seventies, through the shows of one day of a television channel. An English language lesson turns into a killing of a black dignitary of an embassy by a CIA agent and then into his own killing by another colleague. In a television film, the police are befooled by a fake bomb and put a real one in order not to be derided by the public. In a film inquisition show, the bishop of Naples speaks highly of the importance of the family, but a child who lives a miserable family life kills himself. In the debate that follows it is proposed that they should eat the children, as Swift had said. In the next episode, a general who is in the toilet is called for the NATO parade, but the flasher breaks and in his effort to fix it, he dirts allover and kills himself. In a children's show an inspector finds excuses and delays the arrest of a powerful man...
Goodnight, Ladies and Gentlemen
Story
An episodic satire of the political and social status of Italy in the seventies, through the shows of one day of a television channel. An English language lesson turns into a killing of a black dignitary of an embassy by a CIA agent and then into his own killing by another colleague. In a television film, the police are befooled by a fake bomb and put a real one in order not to be derided by the public. In a film inquisition show, the bishop of Naples speaks highly of the importance of the family, but a child who lives a miserable family life kills himself. In the debate that follows it is proposed that they should eat the children, as Swift had said. In the next episode, a general who is in the toilet is called for the NATO parade, but the flasher breaks and in his effort to fix it, he dirts allover and kills himself. In a children's show an inspector finds excuses and delays the arrest of a powerful man...
The Inheritance
Screenplay
Rome, 1880. Gregorio Ferramonti (Anthony Quinn) has decided to close his bakery, the family business. Then he tells his sons Pippo (Gigi Proietti), Mario (Fabio Testi) and Teta that they will have to fend for themselves. But Irene (Dominique Sanda), the wife of Pippo, a beautiful, calculating and ambitious young woman, wants to take over the inheritance. Acting on intelligence, weighing every step and its consequences, she manages to convince the brothers that they must prevent at all costs that his father falls in love again to avoid the risk of losing their inheritance.
San Babila-8 P.M.
Writer
A quartet of young neo-Fascists terrorise the Milanise locals while the Police mostly look the other way.
Paolo Barca, maestro elementare, praticamente nudista
Writer
The Milanese nudist professor Paolo Barca moved to the province of Catania; there he will succeed in changing something both in the school and in his character.
Il generale dorme in piedi
Writer
A colonel in the Army has a problem: when resting lying starts screaming anarchist and antimilitarist phrases. Because of his fitful sleep is therefore forced to sleep standing up.
Somewhere Beyond Love
Story
Two factory workers living in Northern Italy form a romantic connection. The woman, torn between the freedoms of the North and her traditional Sicilian values, slowly allows herself to love...
Somewhere Beyond Love
Screenplay
Two factory workers living in Northern Italy form a romantic connection. The woman, torn between the freedoms of the North and her traditional Sicilian values, slowly allows herself to love...
Blood Brothers
Screenplay
In this period piece set in Italy, Nicola Bellizzi dreams of becoming a lawyer. However, when he seeks the reason that people are reluctant to help him in his goals, he discovers that some of his blood relations are high-ranking members of the Mafia. He tries to break away from his family obligations, but falls into a life of crime and violence.
Blood Brothers
Story
In this period piece set in Italy, Nicola Bellizzi dreams of becoming a lawyer. However, when he seeks the reason that people are reluctant to help him in his goals, he discovers that some of his blood relations are high-ranking members of the Mafia. He tries to break away from his family obligations, but falls into a life of crime and violence.
Property Is No Longer a Theft
Story
A young bank teller, literally allergic to paper money, becomes the worst nightmare of his best customer, a wealthy butcher who manages his business unscrupulously.
Property Is No Longer a Theft
Screenplay
A young bank teller, literally allergic to paper money, becomes the worst nightmare of his best customer, a wealthy butcher who manages his business unscrupulously.
The Battle of Sutjeska
Writer
The headquarters of the Marshal Tito's Liberation Army are surrounded by Axis forces. The Partisans have no choice but to fight their way out of the encirclement and face the enemy on the plains of Sutjeska.
Chronicle of a Homicide
Story
Roma.During a clash between demonstrating laborers (whose fight the students have joined) a policeman and a student are both killed. The investigating magistrate - in charge of the case with two commissioners - wants to believe to the version of the police: the student was killed by one of the laborers, while the policeman would have been killed by Massimo Trotti.
Chronicle of a Homicide
Screenplay
Roma.During a clash between demonstrating laborers (whose fight the students have joined) a policeman and a student are both killed. The investigating magistrate - in charge of the case with two commissioners - wants to believe to the version of the police: the student was killed by one of the laborers, while the policeman would have been killed by Massimo Trotti.
The Working Class Goes to Heaven
Story
A conscientious factory worker gets his finger cut off by a machine. The accident causes him to become more involved in political and revolutionary groups.
The Working Class Goes to Heaven
Screenplay
A conscientious factory worker gets his finger cut off by a machine. The accident causes him to become more involved in political and revolutionary groups.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
Screenplay
In late 1930s Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Continis are a leading family: wealthy, aristocratic, and urbane; they are also Jewish. Their adult children, Micol and Alberto, gather a diverse circle of friends for tennis and parties at their villa with its lovely grounds, and try to keep the rest of the world at bay. But tensions between them all grow as anti-Semitism rises in Fascist Italy, and even the Finzi-Continis will have to confront the Holocaust.
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Story
Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Screenstory
Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Screenplay
Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.
Metello
Screenplay
Metello struggles to escape from the poverty that led to the premature death of his parents, and that is the lot of the working class in northern Italy during the second half of the 19th century. Metello fights his way out from his condition through hard work, a determined will to resist oppression inherited from his father, but also by taking advantage of his good looks when dealing with women. Metello progressively assumes an important role in the organization of an emerging workers movement, and attempts to conciliate his risky political activities with his private life.
Ipotesi sulla morte di G. Pinelli
Screenplay
After a wave of arrests in 1969, Italian anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli allegedly falls out of a police building window while being interrogated. The circumstances leading to his death are re-enacted in three hypothetical versions in this attempt at counter-investigation.
Documenti su Giuseppe Pinelli
Screenplay
The film examines the death of the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, who fell from the fourth floor of the police headquarters in Milan December 15, 1969, after being stopped following the Piazza Fontana bombing.
The Battle of Neretva
Writer
In January 1943 the German army, afraid of an Allied invasion of the Balkans, launched a great offensive against Yugoslav Partisans in Western Bosnia. The only way out for Partisan forces and thousands of refugees was the bridge on the river Neretva.
The Bandit
Writer
Sicily, 1865. Two peasants, Gramigna and his father are tricked by Baron Nardò and robbed of their field, which then the baron lets to Assunta, her daughter Gemma and her fiancé Ramarro. Determined to take revenge, Gramigna begins to hunt down Nardò's complicit mediators. Unbeknownst to Gramigna, Gemma, to escape her arranged marriage, goes after him. Love and violence will follow all till their desperate ends.
Sardinia Kidnapped
Screenplay
Christina Fisher arrives in Sardinia to spend a holiday with her university friend, Francesco. As they are touring the island, they are trapped by mountain terrorists. Francesco is kidnapped, but Christina is permitted to leave. She is determined to contact the police, but is persuaded not to by Francesco's best friend, Gambino. Together they try to find the kidnappers, but she becomes suspicious of everyone including Gambino. Confused and paranoid, she sets out alone to contact the police.
Sardinia Kidnapped
Story
Christina Fisher arrives in Sardinia to spend a holiday with her university friend, Francesco. As they are touring the island, they are trapped by mountain terrorists. Francesco is kidnapped, but Christina is permitted to leave. She is determined to contact the police, but is persuaded not to by Francesco's best friend, Gambino. Together they try to find the kidnappers, but she becomes suspicious of everyone including Gambino. Confused and paranoid, she sets out alone to contact the police.
The Day of the Owl
Screenplay
Set in Sicily, this violent crime drama tells the tale of an Italian cop who heads to a small island town to look into the death of a construction supplier. Once there he is shocked by the influence the Mafia has over the people and even himself.
The Wild Eye
Story
A film documentarian stops at nothing to record unusual and supposedly true-to-life situations.
We Still Kill the Old Way
Screenplay
A leftist professor wants the truth about two men killed during a hunting party; but the mafia, the Church and corrupt politicians don't want him to learn it.
Navajo Joe
Story
The sole survivor of a bloody massacre vows revenge on his attackers and on the men who killed his wife.
Wake Up and Die
Screenplay
A petty hoodlum pulls jewellery store heists in broad daylight. The cop on his tail knows he has accomplices and focuses on the gangster's girl friend is his attempt to catch him.
The Camp Followers
Novel
In WWII, Lieut. Martino and his men are assigned to lead a group of prostitutes through the mountainous ways to serve in brothels for Italian soldiers in Albania.
The Verona Trial
Screenplay
This film is the moving story of Edda Ciano, the daughter of Italian dictator Mussolini, who was unable to prevent the atrocious assassination of her husband by fanatics of her father.
The Verona Trial
Story
This film is the moving story of Edda Ciano, the daughter of Italian dictator Mussolini, who was unable to prevent the atrocious assassination of her husband by fanatics of her father.
Warriors Five
Writer
World War II Italy...1943. After parachuting behind enemy lines on an espionage mission, an American soldier is imprisoned by the enemy. He escapes with four Italian prisoners, enlisting their aid in exploding a bridge.
Italienisches Capriccio
Writer
The Hunchback
Screenplay
Alvaro Cosenza, also known as the Hunchback from Quarticciolo, during Rome's occupation by Nazis in 1943, decides to revolt.
Five Branded Women
Novel
Five Yugoslav women who consorted with the German occupiers are publicly humiliated and banished by the Yugoslav partisans but they take up arms to fend for themselves.
The Apartment
Writer
A building instructor cheats on his wife with a young fashion model.
Cerasella
Story
Cerasella escapes just before his marriage with Alfredo and meets Bruno, the son of a wealthy industrialist.
L'uomo dai calzoni corti
Screenplay
Salvatore, known as "bread loaf", escapes from Caltanissetta's brewery to find his mother he never met. Before arriving in Venice, he stays in a small sea village where he meets people of various kinds.
The Most Wonderful Moment
Screenplay
Pietro is in love with a nurse; they keep their affair secret until she falls pregnant. Worried that marriage will affect his career, she prepares for the upcoming childbirth
Men and Wolves
Screenplay
Two young hunters of wolves are involved in a conflict. Besides the dangerous wild wolves, beautiful Teresa is the center of attention.
Songs from all over Italy
Screenplay
Empty Eyes
Screenplay
A young and shy girl Celestina arrives from her small home village to Rome to become a housemaid. Her inexperience and naivety causes her to change her employers quite frequently. As she is moving from one family to another she makes friends with other Roman maids and falls desperately in love with a handsome plumber Fernando. But Fernando isn't telling Celestina that he is already engaged to another woman.
Attention! Bandits!
Story
During the winter of 1944, the partisans stationed in the Ligurian Apennines must go to a factory in Genoa, in order to pick up a delivery of weapons. Meanwhile, there's a strike in the city and the Nazis are trying to suppress it violently. The factory becomes the scene of fighting between the Germans and the partisans but the latter, aided by the workers, will be able to get the better.
Attention! Bandits!
Screenplay
During the winter of 1944, the partisans stationed in the Ligurian Apennines must go to a factory in Genoa, in order to pick up a delivery of weapons. Meanwhile, there's a strike in the city and the Nazis are trying to suppress it violently. The factory becomes the scene of fighting between the Germans and the partisans but the latter, aided by the workers, will be able to get the better.