Brizzi, Anchise

(1887-1964)

   Cinematographer. Brizzi began his career as a director of photography in the mid-1920s working on two of the later Maciste films, Maciste e il nipote d'America (Maciste and the American Nephew, 1924), directed by Eleuterio Rodolfi, and Guido Brignone's Maciste nella gabbia dei leoni (Maciste in the Lions' Cage, 1926). He first distinguished himself, however, with his cinematography on Alessandro Blasetti's Risorgimento epic, 1860 (also known as Gesuzza, the Garibaldian Wife, 1933). Three years later Brizzi collaborated with fellow cinematographer Ubaldo Arata on Carmine Gallone's ill-fated Roman epic, Scipione I'Africano (Scipio, the African, 1937), before photographing two of Mario Camerini's finest films of the 1930s, Il signor Max (Mister Max, 1937) and I grandi magazzini (Department Store, 1939). In the early 1940s he worked with Mario Soldati on his first solo film, Dora Nelson (1939), and on several of Carmine Gallone's musical films.

   In the immediate postwar period, Brizzi achieved what was perhaps the greatest success of his career with the grainy newsreel feel he gave to Vittorio De Sica's neorealist classic, Sciuscia (Shoe-Shine, 1945). In the following years he collaborated with Russian American actor-director Gregory Ratoff on several minor films, the most interesting of which was Black Magic (1949), a fictional biography of the 18th-century magician-adventurer Cagliostro that starred Orson Welles in the lead role. Brizzi then went on to photograph Welles's own The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1952). He subsequently worked mostly on popular genre films including two of the Don Camillo films, Il ritorno di Don Camillo (The Return of Don Camillo, 1953) and Don Camillo e l'onorevole Peppone (Don Camillo's Last Round, 1955), as well as one of the most popular of the Toto films, Toto, Peppino e le fanatiche (Toto, Peppino and the Fanatics, 1958). Perhaps rather appropriately for someone who had begun his career working on the Maciste films, Brizzi's last credited cinematography was for the peplum Ursus e la ragazza tartara (Ursus and the Tartar Princess, 1962).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira