{"id":3423,"date":"2013-03-25T21:56:22","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T21:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3423"},"modified":"2015-07-27T12:32:25","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T12:32:25","slug":"pier-paolo-capponi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/performers-directors\/pier-paolo-capponi\/","title":{"rendered":"Pier Paolo Capponi"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pier<\/a>
Pier Paolo Capponi in The Boss<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Considering that he was in some of the most important genre films of the 1970s, amazingly little is known about the actor Pier Paolo Capponi.\u00a0 He appeared or starred in numerous giallos and poliziotteschi, usually playing committed cops or rather dour and\u00a0humorless\u00a0characters, and although he lacked the star quality of Franco Nero, Giuliano Gemma or George Hilton, he was perhaps a more accomplished actor, maintaining a very\u00a0successful\u00a0career in\u00a0theater\u00a0and television at the same time as he was appearing in the likes of Naked Violence<\/strong> and Cat O’Nine Tails<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Born in Subiaco, part of the province of Rome, in 1938, after leaving college Capponi attended\u00a0theater\u00a0school and made his film debut at the age of 27 with a small part in Vittorio De Seta’s Un uomo a meta<\/strong> in 1965.\u00a0 It was an acclaimed film,\u00a0successful\u00a0more with critics than audiences and it also kick-started his relationship with the kind of more prestigious productions that were held in much esteem at the time but have been rather forgotten today.\u00a0 He changed tack completely, appearing in a couple of spy films, Our Man in Casablanca<\/strong> and then, in his first starring role, the cine-fumetti Mister X<\/strong>.\u00a0 For the latter he used the pseudonym Normal Clark, which he recycled for his supporting role in Maurizio Lucidi’s decent spaghetti western My Name is Pecos<\/strong>.\u00a0 In between all these he also found the time to feature in films for Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (The Subversives<\/strong>) and Valerio Zurlini (Black Jesus<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

\"Pier<\/a>
Pier Paolo Capponi in Mister X<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1968 he starred for the first time in the genre with which he was possibly to have his greatest success, the poliziotesschi.\u00a0 Boche cucite<\/strong> was a kidnap film starring Lou Castel and directed by Pino Tosini; it had a limited release and remains hard to see today.\u00a0 There followed a small role in Carlo Lizzani’s superior The Violent Four<\/strong>, Emilio Miraglia’s under-rated The Falling Man<\/strong> (a film where practically everybody used an Americanised pseudonym) and Ferdinando Di Leo’s Naked Violence<\/strong>, a big success which bought him a certain degree of fame.\u00a0 More crime films followed: Camillo Bazzoni’s Black Lemons<\/strong> (72), Warren Kiefer’s Defeat of the Mafia<\/strong> (69, but not released until the seventies) and a couple more for Di Leo (The Boss<\/strong> and Blood and Diamonds<\/strong> (77)). \u00a0Among\u00a0all these there was also the cracking, unusual The Last Desperate Hours<\/strong> (74), in which a thief breaks into a research laboratory and accidentally becomes infected with the plague!\u00a0 Towards the end of the 70s the poliziotteschi genre went into rapid decline, and Capponi’s last contact with the genre was Giuseppe Ferrara’s The Bankers of God: the Calvi Affair<\/strong> (2002).<\/p>\n

\"Pier<\/a>
Pier Paolo Capponi in Naked Violence<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Outside the poliziotteschi, Capponi also had some success in other types of cinema as well.\u00a0 He starred for Dario Argento in his second film, Cat O’Nine Tails<\/strong> and followed it up with giallos for Umberto Lenzi (Seven Orchids Stained in Blood<\/strong>) and Mario Sabatini (Delitto d’autore<\/strong>).\u00a0 He was one of an ensemble cast in the relatively big-budget war films Commandos<\/strong> (68) and Sergeant Klems<\/strong> (71), not to mention Francesco Rosi’s Uomini contro<\/strong> (70).\u00a0 He was even in no less than three nunsploitation films (The Awful Story of the Nun of Monza<\/strong>, The Nuns of Saint Archangel<\/strong> (73) and La badessa di Castro<\/strong> (74).\u00a0 It’s fair to say, though, that he was less than prolific in the comedy genre (in fact, he never appeared in a single comedy film.<\/p>\n

By the mid 1970s Capponi moved into TV in a big way.\u00a0 He was kept busy in numerous mini-series, including the likes of Dov’e Ana<\/strong> and L’enigma della due sorelle<\/strong> (80).\u00a0 Although still with no shortage of acting offers, he decided to retire in 2003,\u00a0dedicating\u00a0himself to projects for the DSE (Dipartimento Scuola Educazione), which later became RAI Educational.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Considering that he was in some of the most important genre films of the 1970s, amazingly little is known about the actor Pier Paolo Capponi. He appeared or starred in numerous giallos and poliziotteschi, usually playing committed cops or rather dour and humourless characters…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[324,1212,7],"tags":[1070],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3423"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3423"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3435,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3423\/revisions\/3435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}