Otello Martelli

Otello Martelli

Birth : 1902-05-19, Rome, Italy

Death : 2000-02-20

Profile

Otello Martelli

Movies

Death Walks in Laredo
Director of Photography
Whitaker Selby, Lester Kato, and Etienne Devereaux, three eccentric gunmen, discover they are brothers. Their father left them all a mine located in Laredo, Texas. But they discover that Julius Caesar Fuller, the town's greedy landowner (who fancies himself Caesar) has taken control of their mine. They band together to fight Caesar and his black clad gunmen to repossess their mine and avenge their father. Source: SWDB http://www.spaghetti-western.net
Menage Italian Style
Director of Photography
In Italy in the 60's it is difficult to get a divorce. Carlo gets a visit from his Swedish wife, but he is already remarried. Every time he meets a new woman, he vanishes away from the last wife.
Location Hunting in Palestine
Director of Photography
In 1963, accompanied by a newsreel photographer and a Catholic priest, Piero Paolo Pasolini traveled to Palestine to investigate the possibility of filming his biblical epic The Gospel According to Matthew in its approximate historical locations. Edited by The Gospel‘s producer for potential funders and distributors, Seeking Locations in Palestine features semi-improvised commentary from Pasolini as its only soundtrack. As we travel from village to village, we listen to Pasolini’s idiosyncratic musings on the teachings of Christ and witness his increasing disappointment with the people and landscapes he sees before him. Israel, he laments, is much too modern. The Palestinians, much too wretched; it would be impossible to believe the teachings of Jesus had reached these faces. The Gospel According to Matthew was ultimately filmed in Southern Italy. Mel Gibson would use some of the same locations forty years later for The Passion of the Christ.
The Three Faces
Director of Photography
Italian comedy film made of three segments directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Mauro Bolognini and Franco Indovina. First segment: Il Provino; second segment: Gli amanti celebri; third segment: Latin Lover.
La donna è una cosa meravigliosa
Director of Photography
Italian episode movie
My Wife
Director of Photography
Five comedic episodes, all starring Alberto Sordi and Silvana Mangano.
Cyrano and d'Artagnan
Director of Photography
Duelist and poet Cyrano de Bergerac and musketeer d'Artagnan meet and team up to stop the conspiracy against King Louis XIII of France.
The Teacher from Vigevano
Director of Photography
Primary school teacher Mr. Mombelli, nevertheless satisfied with his life, is driven by his wife to resign and starting a new activity. He invest all his goodwill setting up a footwear little factory.
Cuba '58
Director of Photography
Three stories reconstructing the start of the triumphant Cuban revolution which deposed Batista.
Boccaccio '70
Director of Photography
An anthology of four adult tales: a young couple tries to hide their marriage and the wife’s supposed pregnancy from their place of employment; a billboard photo of a scantily clad woman comes to life to torment the local censor; an aristocratic couple comes to terms with life and marriage after the domineering husband is caught visiting sex workers by the press; a lottery is held in which the prize is to spend the night with a beautiful woman.
Girl in the Window
Director of Photography
A romantic drama partially set in Amsterdam, this standard tale starts out in a mining area in Holland where conditions are about as rough as they get. Two of the miners, Italians Federico and Vincenzo take off together for the city's red-light district, where the women pose in windows for prospective customers. There the duo meet Else and Carrel who are willing to leave their windows to spend a weekend at a resort with the two men. Soon Else has fallen in love with Vincenzo and the future of the two hookers, as well as the miners, seems to look brighter.
Stories of the Revolution
Director of Photography
A film about the Cuban Revolution told from three different perspectives.
La Dolce Vita
Director of Photography
Journalist and man-about-town Marcello struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
Second Look: Fellini
Self
A four-part documentary series about the Italian director Federico Fellini. Episode 1: His Childhood, His Beginnings; Episode 2: His First Films; Episode 3: His Films with Giulietta Masina; Episode 4: "La dolce vita" and Neorealism.
The Law
Director of Photography
A gorgeous housekeeper turns the tables on the men in a small Mediterranean coastal town by using their own vicious drinking game.
Holiday Island
Director of Photography
Intersecting lives on an island holiday: A lawyer anxious he caused a youth's death.An engineer suspecting his wife after being teased by pranksters.A young man falling for a nurse.A Frenchman seeing his wife wooed by a local.
This Angry Age
Director of Photography
Twenty-year-old Joseph and his sixteen-year-old sister Suzanne live in the merciless conditions of an intemperate foreign land with their widowed mother. Their mother attempts to exert a hold on her children by involving them in the family's run-down rice plantation. However the siblings seek liberation, and look for this in their romantic lives. Suzanne becomes involved with Michael and Joseph finds a love interest in Claude.
Guendalina
Director of Photography
Wealthy teenager Guendalina is a child of divorce. Oberdan, likewise a teenager, is a boy from a blue-collar family. Escaping from the tribulations of her home life, Guendalina creates a dream world of her own, casting Oberdan as her personal Prince Charming. Despite parental objections, girl and boy fall in love. Interestingly enough, the relationship between Guendalina and Oberdan remains pure and chaste throughout their film, which is more than can be said for their parents. their respective parents behave with marked laciviousness.
What a Woman!
Director of Photography
A photographer named Corrado snaps a picture of Antonietta. When it shows up on the front page of a magazine, she wants to take him to court over it.
The Swindle
Director of Photography
Aging small-time conman Augusto works with two younger men: Roberto, who desires to become the Italian Johnny Ray, and Bruno, nicknamed Picasso. Through a series of mishaps and personal entanglements, things go badly for Augusto.
Woman of the River
Director of Photography
When peasant girl Nives is deserted by smuggler Gino Lodi, she betrays him to the police. Police officer Enzo Cinti, who loves Nives, traces her to the Po River cane-fields, where she is working as a cutter to support herself and an infant son, and warns her that Gino has escaped from prison and is seeking revenge. She rejects his offer to protect her. Gino finds Nives, mourning the drowning death of their son. He surrenders himself to the police and then walks at Nives' side in the funeral procession.
Days of Love
Director of Photography
A man and a woman would like to get married, but lack the necessary funds for the traditional "big" wedding. Thus they plan to escape to the countryside and "live in sin".
La Strada
Director of Photography
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
We, the Women
Director of Photography
Five portraits of actresses in their "common" life, seen as women rather than movie stars.
Hanging meat
Director of Photography
On the XIX Century in Sierra Morena in Serranía de Ronda spread bandits thant cause panic in the cities robbing and killing travellers.
I Vitelloni
Director of Photography
Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.
A Husband for Anna
Director of Photography
Anna Zaccheo is a beautiful young woman from a working class Neapolitan family. Her main concern is to find herself a suitable husband. She meets a young sailor Andrea one day and gets engaged to him. But while she is waiting for Andrea to return from the navy she gets raped by her boss. Her life suddenly takes a downward spiral.
Rome 11:00
Director of Photography
The story of 5 girls among 200 who answer a wanted ad for a modest secretarial position, which leads overcrowding in the building and a tragic accident.
Anna
Director of Photography
Anna is a 1951 Italian drama film directed by Alberto Lattuada and starring the same trio as Bitter Rice: Silvana Mangano as Anna, the sinner who becomes a nun; Raf Vallone as Andrea, the rich man who loves her; and Vittorio Gassman as Vittorio, the wicked waiter who sets Anna on a dangerous path. Silvana Mangano's real sister, Patrizia Mangano, acts as Anna's sister on the film. Sophia Loren has got a small uncredited role as a nightclub assistant. Future film directors Franco Brusati and Dino Risi cowrote the script. [Wikipedia]
The Flowers of St. Francis
Director of Photography
In a series of simple and joyous vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of the People’s Saint: humility, compassion, faith, and sacrifice. Gorgeously photographed to evoke the medieval paintings of Saint Francis’s time, and cast with monks from the Nocera Inferiore Monastery, The Flowers of St. Francis is a timeless and moving portrait of the search for spiritual enlightenment.
Variety Lights
Director of Photography
In Italy, Checco Dal Monte manages a troupe of traveling performers with plenty of heart but minimal talent. At a small town engagement, he encounters the starry-eyed, gorgeous Lily Antonelli, and hires her as a dancer on the show. Vivacious Lily quickly sells out crowds and earns the resentment of Checco's mistress, Melina Amour, but the fledgling performer has far bigger ambitions and soon sets her sights on a higher-profile role.
Stromboli
Director of Photography
After the end of World War II Karen, a young displaced woman from Lithuania, marries Italian fisherman Antonio to get away from her internment camp. But the life on Antonio's island, Stromboli, threatened by its volcano, is a tough one and Karen cannot get used to it.
Bitter Rice
Director of Photography
Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.
Black Magic
Director of Photography
A hypnotist uses his powers for revenge against King Louis XV's court.
Tragic Hunt
Director of Photography
Immediately after the war, bandits attack a truck that is transporting newlyweds Michele and Giovanna and the accountant of an agricultural cooperative charged with bringing four million lire into office.
The Great Dawn
Director of Photography
Paisan
Director of Photography
Six vignettes follow the Allied invasion from July 1943 to winter 1944, from Sicily north to Venice.
In High Places
Director of Photography
In High Places is a 1943 Italian comedy film directed by Mario Soldati and starring Adriana Benetti, Massimo Serato and Nerio Bernardi. It is based on a play by Jean Anouilh. The film portrays the rise into high society of an immoral young man.
The Gorgon
Director of Photography
1017 AD. The Republic of Pisa is organizing a fleet to drive out the Saracens who are infesting the Mediterranean. While the forces are away "The Gorgon," the young daughter of a Pisan nobleman who has been heroically killed, comes to be solemnly invested as the figurehead virgin who will maintain a lantern to celebrate the men's victorious return. In charge of the home guard is an ambitious young Florentine who feels deprived of the forthcoming honour and glory, and who seeks revenge by violating the sacred person of the virgin. He gains access to her well guarded quarters, but when the Gorgon falls helplessly in love with him, his desire for vengeance falls away. His plot exposed, he commits suicide rather than invoke the wrath of the Pisans. The Gorgon too takes her life by throwing herself from a high tower. Meanwhile, the victorious Pisan vessels return.
Tragic Night
Director of Photography
Released from jail, Nanni punches prison guard Stefano who has denounced him. In order to take revenge, Stefano suggests the suspicion that, during his absence, his wife has had business with the Count Paolo. A few days later, at night, a deadly ambush will be prepared. Based on the novel The Trap (1928) by Toscan Delfino Cinelli.
Il bravo di Venezia
Director of Photography
Lucrezia Borgia
Director of Photography
Allegri masnadieri
Director of Photography
Papà per una notte
Director of Photography
I, His Father
Director of Photography
An ex-boxer has trained his own son and leads him on to win the middle-weight championship of Italy. But the boy falls easy prey to a woman of light morals and renounces the hard work of sport to follow her to a winter luxury resort and at a certain moment, offers to marry her but she, not wanting to give up an advantageous connection, turns him down, advising the youth to not change the nature of their relationship. Then, the boy feeling the entire baseness of his situation, returns home to his parents who welcome him back with joy and takes up again a commitment to sport.
Jeanne Doré
Director of Photography
Hands Off Me!
Director of Photography
In his first feature, great Italian clown Totò plays a carefree tramp moving from job to job, in order to provide for himself and his young Shirley Temple-like protégée.
Gli uomini non sono ingrati
Director of Photography
Marcella
Director of Photography
Arma bianca
Director of Photography
L'antenato
Director of Photography
I'll Give a Million
Director of Photography
A comedy about a hobo and a millionaire who swap roles after the millionaire rescues the hobo from a suicide attempt.
Old Guard
Director of Photography
There were very few commercial feature films made during the Italian fascist era that were as openly propagandistic as this famous (notorious?) dramatic paean to the Blackshirts. The story takes place in a small village in Italy in October of 1922, on the eve of the fascist "March on Rome", in which King Victor Emanuel III was persuaded to consign power to Benito Mussolini. Gianfranco Giachetti is Dr. Cardini, a doctor at the local psychiatric hospital, where a strike has been called by the local socialists. Cardini turns to the fascists to help avert the strike. His son Roberto (Mino Doro) rounds up fascist friends to fight those aligned with the strikers and the town's socialists.
Il Natale a Roma
Director
Norge
Director
Norge follows the first airship flight over the North Pole piloted by Umberto Nobile (the second two years later would be a disaster): desolate Svalbard, mammoth icebergs and expanses of ice are a wonder to behold. The perfect setting for an adventure that is not shy of using Méliès-style tricks to appear even more daring. Then the acclaimed heroes return to their homeland, Mussolini appears and we do not feel like dreaming any more. (Andrea Meneghelli)
La donna nuda
Director of Photography