# Vittorio Storaro

Vittorio Storaro, A.S.C., A.I.C. (born 24 June 1940), is an Italian cinematographer widely recognized as one of the best and most influential in cinema history, for his work on numerous classic films including The Conformist (1970), Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Last Emperor (1987). In the course of over fifty years, he has collaborated with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen, and Carlos Saura.
He has received three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography for the films Apocalypse Now, Reds (1981), and The Last Emperor, and is one of three living persons who has won the award three times, the others being Robert Richardson and Emmanuel Lubezki.

## Early life

Storaro was born in Rome. The son of a film projectionist, Storaro began studying photography at the age of 11. He went on to formal cinematography studies at the national Italian film school, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, when he was 18.

## Career

Storaro is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential cinematographers of all time. He has worked with many important film directors, in particular Bernardo Bertolucci, with whom he has had a long collaboration. His philosophy is largely inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's theory of colors, which focuses in part on the psychological effects that different colors have and the way in which colors influence our perceptions of different situations.
He first worked with Bertolucci on The Conformist (1970). Set in fascist Italy, the film has been described as a "visual masterpiece".
Also in 1970, he photographed The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, the directorial debut of Dario Argento and a landmark film in the giallo genre.
The first American film that Storaro worked on was Apocalypse Now (1979). Director Francis Ford Coppola gave him free rein on the film's visual look. Apocalypse Now earned Storaro his first Academy Award.
He worked with Warren Beatty for the first time on Reds (1981), and ended up winning his second Academy Award.
Storaro won a third Academy Award for The Last Emperor (1987), directed by Bertolucci. Three years later he received a nomination, but did not win, for the Beatty film Dick Tracy.
In 2002, Storaro completed the first in a series of books that articulate his philosophy of cinematography.
He was the cinematographer for a BBC co-production with Italian broadcaster RAI of Verdi's Rigoletto over two nights on the weekend of 4 and 5 September 2010.
Woody Allen's Café Society (2016) was the first film that Storaro shot digitally; he used the Sony F65 camera.
In 2017, Storaro was honored with the George Eastman Award. The same year he also attended the New York Film Festival at which he debated with Ed Lachman on cinematography and its transition to digital.
His other film credits include 1900, Last Tango in Paris, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, One from the Heart, Bulworth, The Sheltering Sky, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Ladyhawke, Tango, and Goya en Burdeos.
With his son Fabrizio, he created the Univisium format system to unify all future theatrical and television movies into one respective aspect ratio of 2.00:1. As of 2023, this unification has not happened, and the universal replacement of 4:3 televisions by large, wide-screen displays greatly reduces the need to modify scope-ratio films for home theater presentation.

## Personal life

Storaro is known for stylish, fastidious, and flamboyant personal fashion. Francis Ford Coppola once noted, "Vittorio is the only man I ever knew that could fall off a ladder in a white suit, into the mud, and not get dirty."

## Filmography
### Short film

| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1961 | Etruscologia | Giancarlo Romitelli | |
| 1963 | Un Delitto | Luigi Bazzoni | |
| 1966 | L'urlo | Camillo Bazzoni | Also writer |
| 1966 | Rapporto segreto | Camillo Bazzoni | |
| 1966 | Il Labirinto | Silvio Maestranzi | Documentary short |
| 1966 | Sortilegio | Luigi Bazzoni | |
| 1966 | Sirtaki | Luigi Bazzoni | |
| 1982 | Arlecchino | Giuliano Montaldo | |
| 1989 | Life without Zoe | Francis Ford Coppola | Segment of New York Stories |
| 2005 | Ciro | Stefano Veneruso | Segment of All the Invisible Children |

### Feature film

| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1962 | Attack of the Normans | Giuseppe Vari | With Marco Scarpelli |
| 1969 | Giovinezza giovinezza | Franco Rossi | |
| 1969 | Delitto al circolo del tennis | Franco Rossetti | |
| 1970 | The Bird with the Crystal Plumage | Dario Argento | |
| 1970 | The Conformist | Bernardo Bertolucci | |
| 1970 | The Spider's Stratagem | Bernardo Bertolucci | With Franco Di Giacomo |
| 1971 | The Fifth Cord | Luigi Bazzoni | |
| 1971 | 'Tis Pity She's a Whore | Giuseppe Patroni Griffi | |
| 1972 | Last Tango in Paris | Bernardo Bertolucci | |
| 1973 | Malicious | Salvatore Samperi | |
| 1973 | Brothers Blue | Luigi Bazzoni | |
| 1973 | Corpo d'amore | Fabio Carpi | |
| 1973 | Revolt of the City | Giuliano Montaldo | |
| 1974 | Identikit | Giuseppe Patroni Griffi | |
| 1975 | Footprints on the Moon | Luigi Bazzoni Mario Fanelli | |
| 1975 | Orlando Furioso | Luca Ronconi | |
| 1976 | 1900 | Bernardo Bertolucci | |
| 1976 | Submission | Salvatore Samperi | |
| 1979 | Agatha | Michael Apted | |
| 1979 | Apocalypse Now | Francis Ford Coppola | |
| 1979 | Luna | Bernardo Bertolucci | |
| 1981 | Reds | Warren Beatty | |
| 1982 | One from the Heart | Francis Ford Coppola | With Ronald Víctor García |
| 1985 | Ladyhawke | Richard Donner | |
| 1987 | Ishtar | Elaine May | |
| 1987 | The Last Emperor | Bernardo Bertolucci | |
| 1988 | Tucker: The Man and His Dream | Francis Ford Coppola | |
| 1990 | Dick Tracy | Warren Beatty | |
| 1990 | The Sheltering Sky | Bernardo Bertolucci | |
| 1992 | Tosca | Brian Large | |
| 1993 | Little Buddha | Bernardo Bertolucci | |
| 1996 | Taxi | Carlos Saura | |
| 1998 | Bulworth | Warren Beatty | |
| 1998 | Tango | Carlos Saura | |
| 1999 | Goya in Bordeaux | Carlos Saura | |
| 2000 | Mirka | Rachid Benhadj | |
| 2000 | Picking Up the Pieces | Alfonso Arau | |
| 2004 | Zapata: el sueño del héroe | Alfonso Arau | |
| 2004 | Exorcist: The Beginning | Renny Harlin | |
| 2005 | Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist | Paul Schrader | |
| 2008 | The Trick in the Sheet | Alfonso Arau | |
| 2009 | I, Don Giovanni | Carlos Saura | |
| 2010 | The Trick in the Sheet | Alfonso Arau | |
| 2012 | Parfums d'Alger | Rachid Benhadj | |
| 2015 | Muhammad: The Messenger of God | Majid Majidi | |
| 2016 | Café Society | Woody Allen | |
| 2017 | Wonder Wheel | Woody Allen | |
| 2018 | A Rose in Winter | Joshua Sinclair | |
| 2019 | A Rainy Day in New York | Woody Allen | |
| 2020 | Rifkin's Festival | Woody Allen | |
| 2021 | The King of All the World | Carlos Saura | |
| 2023 | Coup de chance | Woody Allen | |
| TBA | Bach | Carlos Saura | |

### Documentary film

| Year | Title | Director |
| 1994 | Roma Imago Urbis: Parte II - L'immortalità | Luigi Bazzoni |
| 1994 | Roma Imago Urbis: Parte I - Il mito | Luigi Bazzoni |
| 1994 | Roma Imago Urbis: Parte V - I volti | Luigi Bazzoni |
| 1994 | Roma Imago Urbis: Parte III - Gli acquedotti | Luigi Bazzoni |
| 1994 | Roma Imago Urbis: Parte VI - Le gesta | Luigi Bazzoni |
| 1995 | Flamenco | Carlos Saura |
| 2010 | Flamenco Flamenco | Carlos Saura |

### Television

| Year | Title | Director |
| 1971 | Eneide | Franco Rossi |
Miniseries
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1974 | Orlando furioso | Luca Ronconi | With Arturo Zavattini |
| 1983 | Wagner | Tony Palmer | |
| 1986 | Peter the Great | Marvin J. Chomsky Lawrence Schiller | |
| 2000 | Frank Herbert's Dune | John Harrison | |
| 2007 | Caravaggio | Angelo Longoni | |
TV movies
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1992 | Tosca: In the Settings and at the Times of Tosca | Brian Large | |
| 1992 | Writing with Light: Vittorio Storaro | David M. Thompson | Documentary film |
| 2000 | La traviata | Pierre Cavassilas | |
| 2010 | Rigoletto a Mantova | Pierre Cavassilas | |

## Awards and nominations

Academy Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1980 | Best Cinematography | Apocalypse Now | Won |
| 1982 | Best Cinematography | Reds | Won |
| 1988 | Best Cinematography | The Last Emperor | Won |
| 1991 | Best Cinematography | Dick Tracy | Nominated |
British Academy Film Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1980 | Best Cinematography | Apocalypse Now | Nominated |
| 1983 | Best Cinematography | Reds | Nominated |
| 1989 | Best Cinematography | The Last Emperor | Nominated |
| 1991 | Best Cinematography | The Sheltering Sky | Won |
American Society of Cinematographers
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1988 | Outstanding Cinematography | The Last Emperor | Nominated |
| 1991 | Outstanding Cinematography | Dick Tracy | Nominated |
| 2001 | Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in a Limited Series | Dune | Nominated |
| 2001 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Lifetime Achievement Award | Won |
European Film Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result | Ref. |
| 2000 | Best Cinematography | Goya en Burdeos | Won | |
Primetime Emmy Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1986 | Best Cinematography for a Miniseries or Special | Peter the Great | Nominated |
| 2001 | Best Cinematography for a Miniseries or Special | Frank Herbert's Dune | Won |
Cannes Film Festival
| Year | Category | Title | Result | Ref. |
| 1998 | Technical Grand Prize | Tango, no me dejes nunca | Won | |
International Film Festival of India
| Year | Category | Result | Ref. |
| 2020 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Won | |
British Society of Cinematographers
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1979 | Best Cinematography | Apocalypse Now | Nominated |
| 1988 | Best Cinematography | The Last Emperor | Won |
| 1990 | Best Cinematography | Dick Tracy | Nominated |
National Society of Film Critics
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1972 | Best Cinematography | The Conformist | Won |
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1987 | Best Cinematography | The Sheltering Sky | Won |
| 1990 | Best Cinematography | The Last Emperor | Won |
Los Angeles Film Critics Association
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1981 | Best Cinematography | Reds | Won |
| 1988 | Best Cinematography | The Last Emperor | Won |
George Eastman Award
| Year | Category | Result |
| 2017 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Won |
Goya Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1996 | Best Cinematography | Flamenco (de Carlos Saura) | Nominated |
| 1999 | Best Cinematography | Tango, no me dejes nunca | Nominated |
| 2000 | Best Cinematography | Goya en Burdeos | Won |