Director's career journey shifted from avant-garde films to erotic cinema, courting controversy along the way.Italian film director Tinto Brass, widely regarded as the master of the country’s erotic cinema, died in Rome on Wednesday at the age of 93. His wife, Caterina Varzi, and his children, Bonifacio and Beatrice, announced that he died at around 10.30. The family has said the funeral will be strictly private."It is a difficult moment, of deep sadness and sorrow," Varzi said. She married Brass in 2017, as his second wife, and stayed by his side until the end. Brass, who also worked as a screenwriter, editor and writer, had been in poor health for some time. He suffered a stroke in 2010, and his condition worsened again in May this year, when prompt rescuers helped to avert a more serious outcome. Earlier in the year, Varzi had said her husband was stranded in the family home in Isola Farnese, on Rome’s northern outskirts, where he had lived for about 50 years. Two landslides had made the access road impassable, and the 141 steps up to the house made it hard for him to reach medical care. Early career Born Giovanni Brass in Milan on 26 March 1933, he grew up in Venice in a family of lawyers, but chose cinema over the law. His maternal grandfather was the Venetian painter Italico Brass, from whom he inherited much of his strong visual sense. Brass nonetheless graduated in law, then spent two years in the late 1950s as an archivist at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, where he met the artists of the emerging radical art cinema movement Nouvelle Vague. Back in Italy, he worked as assistant director to Roberto Rossellini and Alberto Cavalcanti. His directorial debut, In capo al mondo (1963), the story of a young anarchist struggling to fit into society, was rejected by the censors, who made him reshoot it. In protest, he changed only the title, to Chi lavora è perduto. Over the next decade he made films in several genres, including the thrillers Col cuore in gola (1967), L’urlo and Nerosubianco. La vacanza (1971) was his last non-erotic film. Erotic cinema Brass turned to erotic cinema with La chiave (1983), based on the novel by Japanese writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and starring Stefania Sandrelli. It was a success with audiences and critics, though less so with feminists, who accused him of treating women as objects. It made him known outside Italy and earned him the title of master of screen eroticism.   Further films, each accompanied by controversy, followed. They included Miranda (1985) with Serena Grandi, a reworking of Goldoni’s play La locandiera, and Capriccio (1987) with Francesca Dellera. His most successful period came with Paprika (1991), which launched Debora Caprioglio, and Così fan tutte (1992), with newcomer Claudia Koll. The controversy around his films helped make his leading actresses famous.   Public interest waned after L’uomo che guarda (1994), loosely based on a novel by Alberto Moravia. His later films included the autobiographical Fermo posta Tinto Brass (1995), Monella (1998), Tra(sgre)dire (2000) and Senso ‘45 (2002), an erotic reworking of Camillo Boito’s story Senso, set in Venice in 1945, which Luchino Visconti had adapted in 1954.   Critics have seen his films as an attack on bourgeois conventions and social taboos, and as a celebration of sensuality free of guilt. His trademark was a lingering focus on the female form. His films also launched or revived the careers of actresses including Anna Ammirati.   Photo credit: Denis Makarenko / Shutterstock.com

Brass, who also worked as a screenwriter, editor and writer, had been in poor health for some time. He suffered a stroke in 2010, and his condition worsened again in May this year, when prompt rescuers helped to avert a more serious outcome. His directorial debut, In capo al mondo (1963), the story of a young anarchist struggling to fit into society, was rejected by the censors, who made him reshoot it. In protest, he changed only the title, to Chi lavora è perduto. Over the next decade he made films in several genres, including the thrillers Col cuore in gola (1967), L’urlo and Nerosubianco. La vacanza (1971) was his last non-erotic film.