Carlo Mazzacurati left us in January 2014. His cinema was elegant and infused with a poetics distinctive for its creative depth and variety of genres, from comedy to noir. He told stories of seldom- frequented and marginal parts of Italy, creating microcosms traversed by an ethics of the gaze full of pietas—like his characters, anchored to the dignity of concrete gestures, akin to the environments they inhabit.