Camillo Mastrocinque Biography
Camillo Mastrocinque was born in Rome in 1901. From a young age he approached the world of cinema, working as an assistant architect on Fred Niblo's blockbuster Ben Hur (1926) produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. However, his true passion was theatre, so much so that he founded the Italian Marionette Theatre, with which he performed on numerous international tours. After obtaining a degree in architecture, Mastrocinque remained in France for a long time, where he worked as a theater set designer and newspaper illustrator, while at the same time following a film apprenticeship as assistant to Augusto Genina. Upon his return to Italy, he worked with many well-known directors such as Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, Marco Elter, Raffaello Matarazzo and Mario Mattoli, before making his directorial debut with the musical film Regina della Scala (1937), made in collaboration with Guido Salvini. After the war, Mastrocinque continued to work with great intensity, alternating musical films with remakes of silent classics, detective stories and mafia-related melodramas with Western-like cadences, often drawing inspiration from Pietro Germi. His favorite film genre, however, was comedy, which marked much of his subsequent activity. Among the comedians with whom he collaborated, the name of Totò stands out with whom he made some of his most significant films, such as La banda degli honest (1956) and Totò Peppino e... la malafemmina (1956), which became a true cult movie for the scene of the dictation of the letter which saw the couple Totò and Peppino triumph in terms of scenic harmony and comic timing.
