Cinematographer · 1925–2004

Carlo Di Palma

4: briefs
13:00: average
52 min: in total

On film.briefs4

Divorce, Italian Style

Pietro Germi, Renzo Marignano · 1961

Divorce, Italian Style (1961) is a Sicilian black comedy in which an impoverished nobleman plots to murder his wife in order to claim leniency under Italy’s honour-killing statutes. Directed by Pietro Germi and written by Germi, Ennio de Concini, Alfredo Giannetti and Agenore Incrocci, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Ferdinando Cefalù, whose elaborate scheme exposes the contradictions between law, religion and social expectation in pre-divorce Italy. The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and remains a benchmark of satirical precision.

13:00

Identification of a Woman

Michelangelo Antonioni · 1982

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman (1982) follows a divorced film director in Rome and Venice as he navigates two relationships — one elusive, one immediate — while under an ambiguous surveillance. Shot by Carlo Di Palma, scored by John Foxx, and edited by Antonioni himself, it trades the formal rigour of his 1960s work for a quieter, more provisional tone. Its concerns — perception, identity, ageing, class — are embedded in atmosphere and gesture, not exposition. Reception was mixed on release, with later critics noting its autumnal modesty. It is a film of lingering glances, unresolved absences, and the quiet weight of what remains unseen.

13:00

Blowup

Michelangelo Antonioni · 1966

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 English-language debut follows a London fashion photographer who believes he has photographed a murder — only to find that each enlargement deepens uncertainty rather than clarifying truth. Shot on location across Swinging London, with Carlo Di Palma’s restrained cinematography and Herbie Hancock’s sparse jazz score, Blowup uses photographic process as metaphor for perception itself. It won the Palme d’Or, helped end Hollywood’s Production Code, and remains a touchstone for films about mediation, alienation, and the instability of the image.

13:00

Red Desert

Michelangelo Antonioni · 1964

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 colour debut follows Giuliana, a woman adrift in the industrial landscape of post-war Ravenna. Shot by Carlo Di Palma and starring Monica Vitti, it renders her disorientation not through exposition but through manipulated hues, flattened perspectives and layered industrial sound. A Golden Lion winner, it resists diagnosis, preferring to make perception itself the subject.