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Dino De Laurentiis Biography

(1919–)

Related Works

1939 Troppo tardi t'ho conosciuta
1941 L'amore canta
1949 Riso amaro

1954 La Strada
1954 Ulysses
1956 The Nights of Cambria
1956 War and Peace
1966 The Bible . . . In the Beginning
1968 Romeo and Juliet
1968 Barbarella
1972 The Valachi Papers
1973 Serpico
1975 Mandingo
1976 Drum
1976 King Kong
1977 Casanova
1977 The Serpent's Egg
1980 Flash Gordon
1981 Ragtime
1981 Conan the Barbarian
1984 Conan the Destroyer
1984 Firestarter
1984 Dune
1985 Red Sonja
1985 Year of the Dragon
1986 Tai-Pan
1993 Body of Evidence
1996 Unforgettable
2001 Hannibal
2002 Red Dragon
2007 Hannibal Rising
2007 The Last Legion
2007 Virgin Territory

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The Dino De Laurentiis Company

Producer. Born on August 8, 1919, in Torre Annunciata, Italy. From horror to art house, Dino De Laurentiis has produced a variety of films during his more than six-decade long career. The son of a pasta maker, he went to Rome to study at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia while in his teens. De Laurentiis then began gaining hands-on experience in film. Taking on nearly very task involved in filmmaking, he was a prop handler, an extra, an actor, and an assistant director.

At the age of 20, De Laurentiis produced his first picture, Troppo tardi t’ho conosciuta (1939). This was soon followed by L’amore canta (1941), but his work was soon affected by World War II. He scored his first international success with Riso amaro in 1949. It was later released in the United States as Bitter Rice. The drama starred Silvana Mangano as a beautiful peasant woman who works in the rice fields and gets tangled up in a difficult situation. Love blossomed between Di Laurentiis and Mangano, and the couple married that same year. They became a super couple in the Italian film world.

In the early 1950s, De Laurentiis joined forces with another legendary Italian filmmaker, Carlo Ponti (who also the husband of screen siren Sophia Loren). They established the Ponti-De Laurentiis production company and made several notable films together. Two of their most critically acclaimed projects were La Strada (1954) starring Anthony Quinn and The Nights of Cambria (1956), both of which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and were directed by Federico Fellini.

The pair also created elaborate film epics, such as Ulysses (1954), which starred Kirk Douglas and Silvana Mangano. The film tackled the ancient saga about the sailor Ulysses and his journey home after the Trojan War, which was written by the Greek poet Homer. De Laurentiis and Ponti also produced an adaptation of the classic Russian novel War and Peace (1956) by Leo Tolstoy. Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Mel Ferrer played the lead roles in the film, which earned an Academy Award nomination for its director King Vidor.

After ending his partnership with Ponti in the late 1950s, De Laurentiis continued to work on a variety of projects. He even built a huge production facility, Dinocittà, near Rome for his work in the early 1960s. Parts of The Bible . . . In the Beginning (1966) were filmed there, which was directed by John Huston. Featuring a huge cast of film stars, the film had such actors as George C. Scott, Richard Harris, Ava Gardner, and Peter O’Toole portraying biblical figures. Another big success for De Laurentiis during this period was Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1968). Always interested in a diverse mix of films, he also produced the science fiction cult classic, Barbarella (1968), featuring Jane Fonda as a futuristic sex kitten. It was directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim.