Dario Di Palma

Birth : 1932-11-06, Rome, Italy

Death : 2004-10-24

Movies

Toxic Love
Director of Photography
The alienating and repetitive life of a group of heroin junkies in 1980s Rome.
Bello di mamma
Director of Photography
Domenico, known as Mimì, must prove to his parents that he is not impotent and homosexual, only this way will he be able to unlock himself and receive the rich family heritage.
I giorni cantati
Director of Photography
Pigs Have Wings
Cinematography
Rome, 70s. Rocco and Antonia, high school students, meet during a political rally. The two young people share age, political ideas, dissatisfaction with their parents. Moreover, by attending, they realize they have fallen in love. It is the discovery of sex and passion. After some time, however, their relationship goes into crisis.
Ugly, Dirty and Bad
Director of Photography
Giacinto lives with his wife, their ten children and various other family members in a shack on the hills of Rome. Some time ago he has lost his left eye while at work, and got a consistent sum of money from the insurance company, which he keeps hidden from the rest of the family. His whole life is now based on defending the money he sees as his own, while the rest of the family tries to kill him.
Blonde in Black Leather
Director of Photography
Two racy women decide to chuck their mundane lives and go on a wild adventure.
Il generale dorme in piedi
Director of Photography
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.
Teresa the Thief
Director of Photography
Teresa gets her first taste of crime -- and its consequences -- when, during World War II, she is nabbed for robbing an apartment. But being poor and perpetually starving, the pretty petty thief doesn't give up her quest for ill-gotten gains and soon turns to pick-pocketing. Despite her questionable thieving skills, the bumbling crook tries scheme after scheme, pilfering from strangers and dodging the law as she searches for a way to fund an adequate meal.
The Assassination of Matteotti
Director of Photography
How the Italian Fascist Party managed to turn the physical elimination of a political enemy into a test of strength fundamental for the ascent into the totalitarian regime.
Dear Parents
Director of Photography
An Italian woman who has not heard from her daughter for a while travels to London, where the daughter is living, and is shocked to be confronted with the young woman's world. During the brief days they spend together, the women come to acknowledge the insurmountable differences that exist between them despite the love they share.
Indian Summer
Director of Photography
In Italy, the gambler and professor of poetry Daniele Dominici arrives in the seaside town of Rimini and is hired to teach for four months in the local high school replacing another teacher. His relationship with his partner Monica is in crisis and he spends most of the time with his new acquaintances and gamblers Giorgio, Marcello and Gerardo. In classroom, he meets the gorgeous nineteen years old student Vanina Abati, who is Gerardo's girlfriend.
Pianeta Venere
Director of Photography
Arcana
Cinematography
A Sicilian widow earns her living as a clairvoyant, in Milan, but she hasn't got any power at all. Her son instead holds supernatural powers and with the help of his mother he becomes a strong sorcerer. But he fails perhaps to understand the real strength he possesses inside and unbinds uncontrolled forces that lead people that surround him to go mad.
The Seduction of Mimi
Director of Photography
Voting against the Mafia in what he thinks is a secret ballot costs Sicilian laborer Mimi his livelihood. He leaves his wife, flees to Turin and romances a Communist organizer - but he just can’t shake the Mafia. When they lure Mimi back to Sicily with a better job, he must keep his lover – and love child – under wraps. That’s when his wife announces she’s pregnant.
Stop the World... I Want to Get Off!
Director of Photography
This lysergically madcap Italian flick largely eschews any traditional plot. The most noticeable thread involves ventriloquist Ricky becoming a TV star, dressed up as a superhero with an “impish robot” dummy.
The Clowns
Director of Photography
Fellini exposes his great attraction for the clowns and the world of the circus first recalling a childhood experience when the circus arrives nearby his home. Then he joins his crew and travel from Italy to Paris chasing the last greatest European clowns still live in these countries. He also meets Anita Ekberg trying to buy a panther in a circus.
Lonely Hearts
Director of Photography
The marriage of a bored upper class couple gets in a crisis.
The Specialists
Director of Photography
Bret Dixon returns to his hometown when his brother is killed by a lynch mob.
Baby Doll
Director of Photography
A bachelor attorney with a roving eye for beautiful women stets his sights on a Young student for his next amorous conquest.
Death Laid an Egg
Director of Photography
A love triangle develops between three people who run a high tech chicken farm. It involves Anna (who owns the farm), her husband Marco (who kills prostitutes in his spare time) and Gabriella (the very beautiful secretary). Marco continues to kill as jealousy becomes more prevalent on the farm.
The Oldest Profession
Director of Photography
A collection of sketches that tells the story of prostitution through the ages.
Rita the Mosquito
Cinematography
Rita, a vivacious co-ed is in love with her music teacher, a man who leads a double life - bespectacled professor by day and composer of rock songs by night. Will Rita win his heart?
Almost a Man
Director of Photography
A young writer descends into madness. Alienated, neurotic, and plagued by guilt, Michele retreats from reality, loses interest in work, and comes to the brink of suicide before being sent to an asylum for shock therapy. Escaping from the asylum, Michele returns to his boyhood home, where he learns the reasons for his present mental state.
The Queens
Director of Photography
Four unrelated short comedies by four different directors. "Queen Sabina"chronicles the sexual misadventures of a teenage girl on the road home. "Queen Armenia" centers on a self-serving opportunistic gypsy babysitter who uses her employer's kids for her own gain. The third episode, "Queen Elena" centers on a husband who learns a lesson about the perils of infidelity after he succumbs to the wiles of the seductive wife next door. The last vignette, "Queen Marta" centers on a wealthy woman who, when drunk, uses her butler as an outlet for her lust.
Seasons of Our Love
Cinematography
Vittorio is a 40-year-old journalist who reaches a mid-life crisis. His wife nags him constantly for ignoring her and their child. After his mistress dumps him, Vittorio returns to the town where he spent his childhood to reflect on the state of his life. Flashbacks are used to tell of Vittorio’s relationship with his parents as a child and the effects World War II had on his development.
Red Desert
Camera Operator
Amid the modern wastelands and toxic factories of Italy, wife and mother Giuliana desperately tries to conceal her tenuous grip on reality from those around her, especially her successful yet neglectful husband, Ugo. Ugo's old pal, Corrado, shows up in town on a business trip and is more sensitive to Giuliana's anxieties. They begin an affair, but it does little to quell Giuliana's existential fears, and her mental state rapidly deteriorates.
Love in Four Dimensions
Director of Photography
Young Italian writers and directors express themselves in four episodes about sex and love. "Love and Language," the first tale, centers on the difficulties of a Sicilian immigrant who is unable to master proper Italian. the second tale "Love and Life" centers on a jealous and unhappy wife who becomes so desperate to be free of her constantly philandering husband she takes on a lover of her own. "Love and Art" a nearly exhausted screenwriter hires a secretary to help manage his typing. She's a pretty lass and this makes his insecure wife crazy until he fires the female and hires a male secretary. "Love and Death," the final episode centers on the love affair between a middle-aged widower and the grieving young widow he meets at the cemetery. Unfortuantely for his bank statement, the young, impoverished beauty isn't as bereaved as she seems.
Son of Hercules vs. Medusa
Director of Photography
To avenge his father's death and free the people of Seriphos from the evil King Galinor of Argus, the noble Perseus must defeat a dragon -- and the monster Medusa, whose steely gaze has cast the kingdom's best soldiers into stone.
Paris, My Love
Camera Operator
Parigi O Cara is probably the most camp in the history of Italian cinema, certainly a favourite with the GLBT community who quote its lines by heart. Unique as it's the only film where Franca Valeri (now 90) is the unquestioned star, in the role of Delia, a snobbish, stingy prostitute who is moving to Paris looking for greener and more lucrative pastures. An anti-neorealist, amoral, almost abstract comedy, which anticipates Almodóvar, a ferocious, though gentle, non-moralistic portrayal of the 60's boom and its broken dreams. The dialogue between Delia and her brother (played by Fiorenzo Fiorentini), when he does (or does not) tell her he is a homosexual, is memorable, a primordial coming-out, a masterpiece of allusions. But what makes it one of the first examples of a film with a "gay point of view" is the approach: perceptive, non-conformist, caustically witty. A film ahead of its times, still unbeaten.
Two Against All
Director of Photography
Two brothers, Bull and Jonathan Bullivan, witness the murder of bandit Black Boy who had been terrorizing Golden City. The bandit had been put in place by the city mayor, who wants the local residents to leave so that he can keep their land, where there is oil. The two brothers eat a chicken that has been fed with a strong tonic and they become sort of invincible for a few minutes. The mayor, pressured by the villagers, appoints the Bullivan Brothers as sheriffs and tasks them with the arrest of Black Boy.
Duel of the Titans
Second Unit Director of Photography
Twin brothers were raised by wolves, revolt against tyranny in pre-Roman Italy and then come to a parting of the ways as they lead their people toward the founding of a new city, the founders of Rome.
The Assassin
Camera Operator
Suave antiques dealer Alfredo Martelli is picked up by the police with no justification. At the precinct, Martelli realizes what the investigation is all about-- that he is the main suspect in the killing of his wealthy ex-lover. Is he guilty, or is he just a sleaze?
He Who Hesitates Is Lost
Camera Operator
After their boss' death, two clerks eagerly await the arrival of the next one, each one of them hoping to become the apple of his eye. They compete in every possible way to impress him, which causes lots of trouble and many misunderstandings.
Le Olimpiadi dei mariti
Camera Operator
It Happened in '43
Camera Operator
1943. The affair between Anna, unhappily married to wheelchair-bound Pino, and deserter Franco unfolds in foggy Ferrara, intertwining with the power struggle taking place within local Fascist ranks that culminates in a massacre of civilians, including Franco's father – Pino sees it all from his window, but will he tell anyone?
L'impiegato
Camera Operator
Nando is dissatisfied with his repetitive and mortifying work. He manages to escape from daily mediocrity only at night, when he enters his fantasy world.
The Last Days of Pompeii
Assistant Camera
Based on the Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel. Set in the shadows of Mt. Vesuvius just before its famous eruption, the film begins with Glaucus, a Roman legionnaire, returning to his home from far-off wars. Upon arriving, however, he discovers that his father has been murdered by a gang of black-hooded looting bandits. Glaucus vows revenge against the killers, but just how high up are those involved?
The Law Is the Law
Assistant Camera
Assola is an imaginary village on the border between Italy and France and the borderline crosses the village itself. The French customs agent Ferdinand is always trying to catch the Italian smuggler Giuseppe. Giuseppe discovers that Ferdinand was actually born in Italy and therefore he can't be a French customs agent.
Il Grido
Assistant Camera
A sugar-refinery worker flees his Northern Italy town after a woman refuses his marriage proposal.
The Awakening
Assistant Camera
Directed by the incredibly prolific Mario Camerini, Suor Letizia was released in English-speaking regions as When Angels Don't Fly and The Awakening. In her first film appearance since The Rose Tattoo, Anna Magnani plays a feisty nun named Sister Letizia. Believing herself above such earthly trivialities as a maternal instinct, Sr. Letizia changes her way of thinking when an abandoned child is placed in her care. Unofficially adopting the boy, the good sister eventually comes to realize that even she cannot provide the care and guidance of a biological mother. Carefully constructed to accommodate all the surefire box-office elements inherent in Camerini's earlier films, Suor Letizia was almost guaranteed to be a hit.
The Bachelor
Assistant Camera
Paolo Anselmi is a happily single man. He lives in a flat with a friend but is forced to leave when the friend gets married. He then goes to a boarding house where he flirts with a girl but ditches her when she proposes marriage. When he goes and visits his mother he finds out that she is also trying to find the right girl for him. Is he going to surrender this time?
Chronicle of Poor Lovers
Assistant Camera
In 1925, young Florentine typographer Mario moves to via del Corno to be near his girlfriend Bianca. Here befriends Maciste, his landlord, and Ugo, anti-fascists both of them. After a resident is beaten by the fascists, Mario meets her wife Milena at the hospital, falling in love with her and leaving Bianca. Maciste is killed, again by fascists, while Ugo is wounded and he seeks shelter in a nearby house. Here he falls in love with Gesuina and the two marry. Milena's husband dies, but she and Mario part ways. Later, Mario is arrested by the police.