--- name: "Ninetto Davoli" canonical: "https://film.one/person/ninetto-davoli" fi1m_id: "ninetto-davoli" imdb_id: "nm0205793" tmdb_id: 23367 wikidata_id: "Q372481" roles: ["Actor"] born: "11 October 1948" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_as: "actor" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-10-07T13:57:53.606176+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Ninetto Davoli ## Identity Ninetto Davoli - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/ninetto-davoli - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** ninetto-davoli - **IMDb ID:** nm0205793 - **TMDB ID:** 23367 - **Wikidata ID:** Q372481 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninetto_Davoli, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q372481, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0205793/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/23367 Actor. Born 11 October 1948 in San Pietro a Maida, Italy. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 11 October 1948, San Pietro a Maida, Italy - **Also known as:** Giovanni Davoli, Nenetto Davoli, Nino Davoli - **Titles on Fi1m:** 2: 1 acting, 1 other - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1960s 88 (1), 1970s 55 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninetto_Davoli, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q372481, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0205793/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/23367 ## Streaming the US now - **The Roku Channel:** [*The Canterbury Tales*](https://film.one/film/the-canterbury-tales.md) (55) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Ninetto Davoli > Pasolini found him as a teenager and put him in nine films as the same grinning, wide-eyed boy from the Roman borgate. It is a presence rather than a performance, and it only works when the director knows what it is for. Perkin walks through *The Canterbury Tales* (1972) in a bowler hat with a cane, sacked from every job and chased by constables through the mud, and the walk is Chaplin's. We laughed at it, and then felt slightly ashamed, because the joke is only that Ninetto Davoli is doing Chaplin in a Chaucer film and nobody on either side of the camera seems to know why. That is Davoli in one scene: a body that is funny before it has done anything, and a director who is not always sure what to do with it. Pier Paolo Pasolini discovered him as a teenager from the borgate, with no training at all, and gave him a non-speaking part as a shepherd in *The Gospel According to St. Matthew* (1964). Two years later he was co-starring with Totò in *The Hawks and the Sparrows* (1966), and the persona was set: the innocent, the messenger, the boy who laughs at things the adults have stopped noticing. He is the angel in *Oedipus Rex* (1967), the messenger in *Theorem* (1968), Andreuccio in *The Decameron* (1971), Aziz in *Arabian Nights* (1974). Nine films with one director, and in all of them he is more or less the same person, which was the point. Pasolini wanted faces rather than technique, and Davoli has said himself that he does not consider himself an actor, because in every film he simply played himself as he is in life. It works when the film has a use for him. Next to Totò, or to Franco Citti, the untrained laugh sits beside a trained comic's timing and the difference between the two is the joke. In the medieval and eastern settings he is the ordinary life the stories claim to be about, cheerful, physical, frank about sex, and those films are warmer wherever he happens to be standing. The trouble is that a presence cannot hold a scene the writing has given up on. Perkin is funny for a minute and then he is simply there, in a hat, and the 111 minutes around him are a slog. After Pasolini's death in 1975 the work got lighter: popular Italian comedies, television and a long-running advertising campaign, a string of films for Sergio Citti, and now and then something heavier, such as *Uno su due* (2006). The returns to serious cinema, Abel Ferrara's *Pasolini* (2014) among them, have been occasional rather than a second career, and we do not think that is a failing. Davoli never built a part; he was a boy a director looked at and decided to film. Watch him with Totò if you can, and with Chaucer only if you have the patience for everything else in the frame. ## Biography Ninetto Davoli, also credited as Giovanni Davoli, is an Italian actor. Born on 11 October 1948 in San Pietro a Maida, Calabria, he was discovered by Pier Paolo Pasolini and made his screen debut in a non-speaking role in *The Gospel According to St. Matthew* (1964). Davoli appeared in nine of Pasolini's films, often in comic or naïve roles alongside performers such as Totò. These include *The Hawks and the Sparrows* (1966), *Oedipus Rex* (1967), *Theorem* (1968), *Pigsty* (1969), *The Decameron* (1971), *The Canterbury Tales* (1972) as Perkin, and *Arabian Nights* (1974). He married in 1973 and has continued to work in film and television since Pasolini's death in 1975. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) ### Performed in (1) — the average rests on these - *The Canterbury Tales* (1972), Fi1m 55, as Perkin — [page](https://film.one/film/the-canterbury-tales.md) ### Also credited (1) — thanks, archive footage, uncredited - *The Gospel According to St. Matthew* (1965), Fi1m 88, as Pastore con Bambino (uncredited) — [page](https://film.one/film/the-gospel-according-to-st-matthew.md) ## Complete filmography (95) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Totò e il Principe De Curtis - L'uomo oltre la maschera* (2023), Actor - *Bellezza, addio* (2023), Actor - *Ritorno al crimine* (2021), as Er Saetta - *L’Ultima Partita di Pasolini* (2020), Actor - *Agony* (2017), as Rudolfo - *Christman in London - God Save the Queen* (2016), as Er Duca - *The Isle of Medea* (2016), Actor - *È arrivata la felicità* (2015), series, as Giuseppe Camilli - *Uno, anzi due* (2015), as Nando - *Una casa nel cuore* (2015), as Alberto - *Pasolini maestro corsaro* (2015), Actor - *Mio papà* (2014), as Orso - *Pasolini* (2014), as Epifanio - *Senza nessuna pietà* (2014), as Mr. Santili - *Happy to Be Different* (2014), Actor - *Fiabeschi torna a casa* (2013), as Papà Giuseppe - *All at Sea* (2011), as Alfredo - *Clash of civilization over an elevator in Piazza Vittorio* (2010), as Riccardo - *Romanzo Criminale: The Series* (2008), series, as Gerardo il Barbaro - *Rino Gaetano - Ma il cielo è sempre più blu* (2007), as Barone - *Rino Gaetano - Ma il cielo è sempre più blu* (2007), series, as Barone - *Concrete Romance* (2007), as Pompo - *Nuevo / Otro Cine Español - Un Lugar En El Cine* (2007), Actor - *One Out of Two* (2007), as Giovanni - *Crimes* (2006), series, as The Pirate - *Vite a perdere* (2004), as Enrico Feroci - *Salò: Yesterday and Today* (2002), Actor - *La banda* (2001), as Sor Umberto - *Una vita non violenta* (1999), as il pescatore - *Ninetto the Messenger* (1997), Actor - *L'avvocato Porta* (1997), series, as Remondino - *We Free Kings* (1996), as Comparsa - *L'anno prossimo... vado a letto alle dieci* (1995), as Liutenant - *Le rose blu* (1990), as La guardia carceraria - *Main pleine* (1989), as Gino - *La ragazza del metrò* (1989), as Donato - *The Roman* (1988), series, Actor - *Metropolitan Animals* (1988), as Spartaco Scorcelletti - *L'altro enigma* (1988), as Il barbone - *Momo* (1986), as Nino - *Sogni e bisogni* (1985), series, as ladro - *Cinecittà Cinecittà* (1985), series, as Agle International's Man - *Occhei, occhei* (1983), as Prete - *Count Tacchia* (1982), as Ninetto - *The Tyrant's Heart, or Boccaccio in Hungary* (1981), as Filippo - *The Soup* (1981), as Giovanni - *The Persian Lamb Coat* (1980), as Uno dei ladri - *Good News* (1979), as Fattorino - *Male, Female, Flower, Fruit* (1979), Actor - *How to Seduce Your Teacher* (1979), as Arturo - *Two Pieces of Bread* (1979), Second Assistant Director - *Malabestia* (1978), as Filippo Diotallevi - *Beach House* (1977), as Fotografo - *Death Hunt* (1977), as Mario - *Crazy, Crazy Love* (1977), as Ninetto De Terenzi - *Love in 4 Easy Lessons* (1976), as Pietro, Thief (Segment "L'armadio Di Troia") - *And Agnes Chose to Die* (1976), as La Disperata - *Frankenstein: Italian Style* (1975), as Igor - *Reflections in Black* (1975), as Sandro Lucetti - *Blonde in Black Leather* (1975), as Il saltimbanco / l'angelo / il diavolo - *Il lumacone* (1974), as Ginetto - *Arabian Nights* (1974), as Aziz - *Appassionata* (1974), as Ciccio, garzone del macellaio - *Pasqualino Cammarata... capitano di fregata* (1974), as Otello Meniconi - *Pasolini and the Form of the City* (1974), Actor - *Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia* (1974), as Giuseppe - *The Lady Has Been Raped* (1973), as Palla, il fattorino - *Bawdy Tales* (1973), as Bernardino - *Il maschio ruspante* (1973), as Walter - *Storia de fratelli e de cortelli* (1973), as Riccetto - *What the Chambermaid Saw* (1973), as Romolo - *La Tosca* (1973), as Ussano Nero - *The Canterbury Tales* (1972), as Perkin — Fi1m 55, [page](https://film.one/film/the-canterbury-tales.md) - *Story of Fear and a Knife* (1972), as 'Totarello' Meniconi - *S.P.Q.R.* (1972), Actor - *Even If I Wanted to Work, What Do I Do?* (1972), as Riccetto - *Shadows Unseen* (1972), as Giorgio - *The Story of Romance and Knife* (1971), as Antonio "Totarello" Cerino - *The Decameron* (1971), as Andreuccio of Perugia - *Ostia* (1970), as Fiorino - *Pigsty* (1969), as Maracchione - *Love and Anger* (1969), as Riccetto (segment "La sequenza del fiore di carta") - *The Sequence of the Paper Flower* (1969), as Riccetto - *Partner* (1968), as Student - *Theorem* (1968), as Angelino, the Messenger - *Caprice Italian Style* (1968), as Othello - *What Are the Clouds?* (1968), as Otello - *Oedipus Rex* (1967), as Angelo - *Kill and Pray* (1967), as El Niño - *The Witches* (1967), as Baciu Miao (segment "La Terra vista dalla Luna") - *The Earth As Seen from the Moon* (1967), as Basciù Miao - *The Hawks and the Sparrows* (1966), as Ninetto Innocenti / Frate Ninetto - *Notes from a Critofilm* (1966), Actor - *Here I Read* (1966), Actor - *The Gospel According to St. Matthew* (1965), as Pastore con Bambino (uncredited) — Fi1m 88, [page](https://film.one/film/the-gospel-according-to-st-matthew.md) ## Gallery - ![Ninetto Davoli in una scena del film italiano Appassionata (1974)](https://film.one/media/person/3911065/gallery-30e19d32f459.png) Ninetto Davoli in una scena del film italiano Appassionata (1974) — Film diretto da Gianluigi Calderone e prodotto da P.A.C., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Appassionata_%28film_1974%29_Ninetto_Davoli.png/1280px-Appassionata_%28film_1974%29_Ninetto_Davoli.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Ninetto Davoli](https://film.one/media/person/3911065/gallery-1218edbdeca0.jpg) Ninetto Davoli — Image via TMDB --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/ninetto-davoli