Biography
Pasqualino De Santis (also credited as Pasquale De Santis) was an Italian cinematographer. Born on 24 April 1927 in Fondi, Lazio, he trained at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome and began his career as an assistant camera operator on his brother Giuseppe De Santis’s film Non c’è pace tra gli ulivi (1950).
He succeeded Gianni Di Venanzo as director of photography on Francesco Rosi’s Il momento della verità (1965) and became a frequent collaborator with Rosi, Visconti and others. His work includes Romeo and Juliet (1968), Death in Venice (1971), Conversation Piece (1974), A Special Day (1977) and L’Argent (1983). He died of a heart attack on 23 June 1996 in Lviv, Ukraine, while filming Rosi’s La tregua.
De Santis won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Romeo and Juliet (1968) and a BAFTA for Death in Venice (1971).
