DINO

The life of a great movie producer inevitably ends up being more about the movies than the man.

Born in a small Neapolitian village in 1919, son of a pasta maker, Agostino DeLaurentiis was later, and correctly, described as a sort of Italian Horatio Alger. Agostino (who would later christen himself “Dino” in an early display of showbiz smarts) went to Rome to study acting when still a teenager. There, he quickly threw himself into the world of film, producing his first one by the age of 22. A short, unwilling stint in the army—marked more by black comedy than heroism or tragedy—barely interrupted DeLaurentiis’s rise to prominence, which coincided with the postwar flowering of Italian cinema. His partnership with Fellini resulted in the classics La Strada and Nights of Cabiria while, at the same time, he was producing grand, popular epics like the Audrey Hepburn version of War and Peace. Working at a pace that seems close to compulsive, DeLaurentiis cut a swath through the jet-set film world, producing his eclectic mix of art and spectacle films, squiring his withdrawn actress wife Silvana Magano to festivals, building the massive Dinocittà film studio outside Rome and always dealing, dealing, dealing. He moved to New York in the 1970s and struck gold with hits like Serpico and Three Days of the Condor. Now in his early 80s, DeLaurentiis is producing the $150 million Baz Luhrmann saga Alexander the Great. Kezich and Levantesi, both Italian film critics, seem a bit cowed by their subject—there’s an occasional attempt to bring this larger-than-life, tall-tale–teller to the truth, but mostly they let their account explode with the man’s zest for life and movies. By the end, it’s hard not to be duly impressed as well by DeLaurentiis, who showed as much love for his ill-fated King Kong remake as he did for the little Bergman film The Serpent’s Egg. And who else would have fought to have David Lynch direct Dune?

A spirited, passionate account of a man who deserves his own film, starring Anthony Quinn.