Donati, Danilo

(1926-2001)

   Costume, art, and production designer. Widely regarded as the foremost costume designer of Italian postwar cinema, Donati studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence before beginning his career by designing the costumes of a dozen operas and plays directed by Luchino Visconti, including productions of La traviata and Arthur Miller's The Crucible, both staged in 1955. Only a few years later he moved into film with costumes for Mario Monicelli's La grande guerra (The Great War, 1960). He subsequently provided the period costumes for Roberto Rossellini's Vanina Vanini (1961) before beginning a long and fruitful collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini, all of whose major films he would work on, winning his first Nastro d'argento for the costumes for Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964). He also worked with Franco Zeffirelli, winning the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Zeffirelli's production of Romeo and Juliet (1968), but perhaps most closely with Federico Fellini, providing the costumes as well as art direction and production design for Satyricon (Fellini Satyricon, 1968), Roma (Fellini's Roma, 1972), Amarcord (1974), and Casanova (Fellini's Casanova, 1976), the last bringing him not only two Nastri d'argento for both Costume and Production Design but also two BAFTA awards and his second Oscar. Having also designed the costumes for the science fiction fantasy Flash Gordon (1980), which earned him a further two BAFTA awards, Donati crowned what had been a truly illustrious career with four more David di Donatello awards for costume and production design on Roberto Benigni's La vita e bella (Life Is Beautiful, 1997) and Pinocchio (Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio, 2003).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira