Tonino Cervi
Production
Biography
Born on June 14, 1929, in Rome, Italy, Tonino Cervi was a prominent film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was the son of renowned actor Gino Cervi. Cervi began his career as a film producer in 1952 with Sergio Corbucci's La Peccatrice dell'isola. He produced works by esteemed directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Transitioning to directing, Cervi made his debut with the spaghetti Western Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! (1968), starring Bud Spencer. He achieved box office success with films like The Miser (1990) and Il malato immaginario (1979), both featuring Alberto Sordi. Cervi passed away on April 1, 2002, in Rapolano Terme, Italy.
Known For

In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.
Red Desert

An anthology of four comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy: frothy young love and office politics in the big city; milk advertisements that begin to haunt an aging prude; a trophy wife enduring her husband's very public affairs; a lucky ticket-holder at a small town fair.
Boccaccio '70

A man, released after a jail term for a crime he did not commit, raises a gang to go after the man who framed him.
Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die!

A masked serial killer with psychosexual issues strangles female coeds with scarves before dismembering them. When a wealthy student identifies one of the scarves and thinks she has a lead on a suspect, she becomes the killer's next target, retreating to her family's remote cliffside villa with three of her girlfriends.
Torso

Refusing an arranged marriage, young aristocrat Carmela is sent to a convent. Her arrival intensifies the power struggle between the debauched nun Elizabeth and the stern Mother Superior, as both are smitten by Carmela's beauty.
Story of a Cloistered Nun

It's 1577. The Mother Superior at the convent of Archangel is seriously ill. The determined and calculating Mother Giulia plots to become the next Mother Superior. She receives tough competition from tormented lesbian Sister Chiara and the lusty Sister Carmela.
The Nun and the Devil

A background of rising fascism in Venice in 1930s. A music-student, Matthias, mixes with the town's bourgeoisie and falls in love with a mature teacher, Carla, the mother of his friend Renato, and then with his young colleague, Elena.
Nest of Vipers

When a good-natured factory supervisor living in Milan with his Northern wife returns to his native Sicily, a decades' old oath forces him to fulfill a nightmarish obligation.
Mafioso

A young hippie kills a man, and seeks refuge at the lakeside house of three beautiful sisters, who seem to be hiding a dark secret.
Queens of Evil

A young professor travels to Budapest to locate a lost colleague. Once there, he gets tangled up in a supernatural mystery.
The Spider Labyrinth

Roman police detectives interrogate a series of potential perpetrators in their struggle to determine whom to arrest for the brutal murder of a beautiful prostitute whose body is discovered in a park on the day of a torrential rainstorm. One by one, the prime suspects -- girl-crazy teenager Nino, pickpocket Canticchia, a soldier on leave, a tourist and a pimp -- recount the events of the day to the police, each insisting he is innocent.
La Commare Secca

Gerard, a young man from a "good family" dreams of becoming an actor. To do this, he follows everywhere his sister Frédérique who is infatuated with cinéma vérité.
Sweet and Sour

1943. The affair between Anna, unhappily married to wheelchair-bound Pino, and deserter Franco unfolds in foggy Ferrara, intertwining with the power struggle taking place within local Fascist ranks that culminates in a massacre of civilians, including Franco's father – Pino sees it all from his window, but will he tell anyone?
Long Night in '43

The exploits of three young Roman criminals are chronicled in this socially conscious drama. The young men commit petty crimes all day, beginning with arms theft, leading to an encounter with three streetwalkers. After their pleasure, the boys try to cheat the hookers, but the ladies are smarter than that and have stolen their cash ahead of time. It's back to the city for the boys, where they continue their destructive games...
The Big Night

Misery money-lender Arpagone is looking to arrange three weddings simultaneously - to cut down on costs. One for himself and the others for his two children. Of course he doesn't approve of the choices his son and daughter have made and conspires to arrange more well to do spouses against their will. However, fate will prove itself to be on the side of true love, not of the greedy.
The Miser

Maigret is about to leave for the holidays but a colleague asks him for help in investigating the mysterious murder of a stripper and a noblewoman, both of which took place in Pigalle.
Maigret at the Pigalle

A tale on the Italian upper class of the '60s and their ways to kill time.
I ragazzi dei Parioli

Film in five episodes on the female universe. Among the women portrayed, neglected wives who become prostitutes, a worker who improvises a sexy bomb and a priestess who gives herself as wife to an emigrant.
Chi dice donna, dice donna

During the year 1673, Rome was besieged by poverty and violence. The rich Mr. Argante has two servants to look after him, while his wife is only waiting to see him dead to inherit.
Hypochondriac

Two Milanese girls meet in a toilet where a distracted bourgeois forgets a valuable ring. They take it and go in search of someone to sell it to, helped by a southern taxi driver.