Andrea Crisanti, set designer for Antonioni,Taviani, Tornatore and Tarkovskij, has passed away

by Camillo De Marco

08/05/2012 - Andrea Crisanti, headmaster and teacher for many years of the Set Design course at the Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, died last night after a brief illness.

Crisanti has worked with some of the greatest masters of Italian cinema. In the early 50s, he worked as a second assistant to Mario Garbuglia for the film The Great War (1959) by Mario Monicelli, so starting his cinematographic adventure. Soon enough in fact he also worked with Mario Chiari and Enzo Del Prato on the sets of important productions and co-productions such as Mario Bonnard's Gastone (1960), Martin Ritt's 5 Branded Women (1960), Antonio Pietrangeli's Ghosts of Rome(1961), John Huston's The Bible: in the beginning (1966).

In 1969 he was then called by Francesco Rosi to work on Uomini contro (1970), a film which marked the beginning of a fruitful artistic bond between the two, from which sprung a collaboration of over twenty years. After the important work of the 70s with Rosi and Sergio Leone on Duck, You Sucker! (1971), the 80s saw him working alongside the other great masters: Marco Bellocchio for A Leap in the Dark (1980) and Devil in the Flesh (1986), Damiano Damiani for L'avvertimento (1980) and Michelangelo Antonioni for Identification of a Woman(1982), Andrej Tarkovskij for Nostalghia(1983) and Franco Zeffirelli for Young Toscanini(1988).

In the 90s he continued his work as a set designer with several interesting films. He was in fact called by Giuseppe Tornatore for Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988), who wanted him again for Everybody's Fine (1990) and A Pure Formality (1994) - with which he won the David di Donatello - ; he subsequently worked with Gianni Amelio for The Stolen Children (1992), Emidio Greco for Il consiglio d'Egitto (2002) for which he was awarded the Nastro d'Argento.

More recent years saw him working with directors Ferzan Ozpetek- Facing Windows [trailer] (2003), Sacred Heart (2005), another David di Donatello for Best Set Designer, and Loose Cannons [trailer](2010) - , Michele Soavi - Arrivederci amore, ciao! [trailer] (2005) and Blood of the Losers [trailer] - , Paolo and Vittorio Taviani - The Lark Farm [trailer] (2006) -, Theo Anghelopulos, The Dust of Time [trailer] (2008).

(Translated from Italian)