Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ugo Pirro died Friday in his Rome home. He was 87.
Pirro earned his Academy Award nominations for Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion in 1971 and Vittorio De Sica's Garden of the Finzi-Contini's in 1972.
Born in Salerno, Pirro began as an author but branched off into screenwriting after he was hired by Carlo Lizzani to pen his first feature film, Achtung, banditi, in 1951.
The film marked the start of a life-long collaboration between Pirro and Lizzani, seven films in all.
Their last collaboration, the 1996 film Celluloid about the making of Roberto Rossellini's Open City, won Pirro Italy's Oscar counterpart, the Davide di Donatello.
''He was an extraordinary travelling companion who wrote many of my films. He will remain a key pillar in the history of Italian cinema over the past 60 years,'' Lizzani said.
''His legacy is in the quality of his work, the writing. I suggest that young writers should learn his primary lesson: that in cinema the written word comes before the image''.
Rome's film-buff mayor, Walter Veltroni, lauded Pirro as ''one of the greatest screenwriters in cinema history''.
''He had extraordinary narrative talent, imagination, and an ability to read the dynamics and contradictions of modern society with profound civic commitment''.
Although Pirro failed to win an Oscar, Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the Oscar for best foreign film as well as the Cannes special jury prize the year before.
