Marcello Colizzi, born in Rome in 1929 and died in 2022, was one of the most brilliant painters of Italian cinema, author of around three hundred posters for national and international films. Born into an artistic family, he brought a rare quality to the film poster: irony. Raised in the world of satirical illustration, he was able to combine a taste for the visual gag with the solid craft of a painter and graphic designer, moving with the same ease between Italian comedy, Hollywood spectacle and auteur cinema. His images, always recognisable for the elegance of their composition and a touch of lightness, accompanied into cinemas some of the most celebrated titles of the 1960s.

Born into art: from Attalo's satire to the cinema

Marcello was the son of Gioacchino Colizzi, the celebrated caricaturist known by the pseudonym Attalo, a historic name of humorous magazines such as Marc'Aurelio, the workshop from which many of the great Italian humorists and screenwriters emerged. In that household of pencils and jokes he absorbed from boyhood the culture of rapid drawing, of synthesis and of the comic vein, which would remain his most personal signature. It is no coincidence that many of his posters retain that strong humorous streak typical of the writers and illustrators of the 1950s: an irony never gratuitous, able to condense the tone of a film into a single detail. It was this inheritance that set him apart from his more dramatic colleagues and made him especially sought after for comedies.

Decameron (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971)

The "locandina" (Italian small format) for Il Decameron, the first film in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, assembles several episodes of Boccaccio's tales into a single scene. In the background, under the arcades of a Renaissance square with ochre and yellow buildings, a crowd of characters in medieval costume moves about. In the foreground three figures stand out: on the left a dark-haired young man, crouching, from whom a large pointing hand extends; on the right an old man in a black cap raising his hand to his face; and at the centre a couple of half-naked youths wrapped in a coarse sackcloth bound by a rope. The title is in red, beneath the line "un film di Pier Paolo Pasolini". The composition, at once choral and theatrical, conveys the earthy, sensual tone of the film.

A recognisable hand

Colizzi's hand stands out for the balance of its composition, the cleanness of its line and a rare sense of the scene. He could alternate the full, soft colour of the portrait with the most modern graphic solutions and organise many elements within a single image without ever creating confusion. Whether it was an intense close-up or a choral scene, his aim was always the same: to guide the viewer's eye with clarity, letting a detail, a colour or a visual idea set the tone of the film. It is a versatility that brings him close to a many-sided author like Averardo Ciriello, at ease both in the glamour portrait and in the adventure scene, but which Colizzi bends to a sensibility all his own, more ironic and graphic. It is this compositional clarity, together with the lightness of his touch, that makes his work instantly recognisable.

Il sorpasso (Dino Risi, 1962)

The poster for Il sorpasso, Dino Risi's masterpiece starring Vittorio Gassman, is one of the most famous graphic inventions in Italian cinema. Against a black ground, a young Catherine Spaak in a striped outfit is painted with her long legs drawn up and a teasing gaze, while at the centre stands a no-overtaking road sign: inside the red disc, in place of the two cars of the signal, is set a black-and-white photograph of Vittorio Gassman laughing. At the bottom, the title in yellow. The pairing of the painted figure and the photographic insert, of seduction and gag, sums up at a glance the irreverent spirit of the film and that ironic vein which is Colizzi's signature.

Italian comedy and the ironic vein

It is in comedy that Colizzi gave the best of his verve. He worked on bright titles such as Crazy Desire, moving within the sparkling atmosphere of early-1960s comedy and it was precisely in this genre that the irony inherited from his father turned into disarming visual ideas, playing with the codes of the road sign, of advertising and of the illustrated magazine. It is a way of conceiving the poster not as a mere lure, but as a small authorial invention, surprisingly modern even today

The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)

The poster for The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epic, here in the Italian edition of 1959, stakes everything on the contrast between the two leads and on the great set piece. At the bottom, two large portraits face each other: on the left the bearded, white-haired face of Charlton Heston as Moses, on the right the shaven, severe face of Yul Brynner as the pharaoh, with his Egyptian collar. Between them opens the immense wall of water of the Red Sea, with the people crossing on the dry seabed and the tiny figure of Moses in his red cloak raising his arms. The red border and the monumental lettering heighten the epic breadth. It is a poster of grand spectacle, in which the dramatic portrait and the choral scene coexist in perfect balance.

Grand spectacle: Paramount and Hollywood

Alongside comedy, Colizzi was the illustrator chosen for the Italian releases of Paramount and for Hollywood spectacle. His hand gave shape to the Italian image of American classics such as John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the ensemble comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, as well as of historical and epic blockbusters. In these works the ironic vein gives way to a more dramatic and monumental painting, made of intense portraits and spectacular scenes, a terrain on which specialists of the genre poster such as Enzo Nistri also measured themselves in those years. Yet Colizzi always brings to it his compositional rigour, able to hold many elements together without confusion.

Becket (Peter Glenville, 1964)

The poster for Becket, the historical drama with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, is built on the face-off between the two leads. In the foreground, side by side, the intense face of Burton as Thomas Becket and that of O'Toole as King Henry II, wearing a gold crown set with blue stones. Around them, smaller scenes populate the composition: two young women leaning out of a window, a scuffle between men, and two costumed riders galloping. The title is in red on a pale ground. Colizzi organises the many elements without ever crowding the image, keeping the psychological drama of the two faces at the centre and relegating the action to the margins, in a balance worthy of true graphic direction.

Adventure and the large format

Colizzi also took on costume adventure and the more demanding formats, including the large horizontal posters designed for the wide screen. In these works his painting becomes warm and dynamic, able to distribute many figures and different planes across a broad surface without losing the thread of the story, and to convey in a single glance the sense of exoticism and epic.

Marco Polo (Hugo Fregonese, 1962)

The large horizontal poster for Marco Polo, an adventure film in CinemaScope, spreads the epic of the Venetian traveller across a broad panoramic format. At the centre, standing with his sword and red doublet, the young Marco Polo; behind him, on the left, Chinese junks and the large face of an Oriental woman with a fan, on the right a walled fortress and a charge of horsemen sweeping across the desert. The palette is dominated by yellows and ochres, which give the whole a sandy, exotic warmth. The title, in large blue letters, runs from one end of the sheet to the other. It is an example of the Colizzi devoted to grand adventure spectacle, able to fill an unusual format with dynamism and a sense of narrative.

A versatile talent

Versatility is perhaps Colizzi's most surprising quality. From exotic adventure to auteur cinema, from comedy to historical drama, his hand was able to adapt to the most distant registers, at times weaving many figures into a single crowded scene, both in the large posters and in the small-format locandine and elsewhere isolating a single face in close-up. It is this ability to move from the choral fresco to the essential portrait, from satire to grand spectacle, that makes Marcello Colizzi one of the most complete, and unjustly overlooked, protagonists of the golden age of the Italian cinema poster.