Italian film producer whose credits included Last Tango in
Paris and The Good, the Bad and the UglyThe producer Alberto Grimaldi, who has died aged 95, worked with most of the giants of Italian cinema, including Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci. Fittingly for someone who began his career as a lawyer, he seemed to spend almost as much time in court, defending the films he had developed and financed, as he did on set. Hardly surprising when his credits included Bertolucci’s erotic chamber piece Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Pasolini’s remorseless study of fascism, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). These were among eight of his films that Italian censors and prosecutors accused of offending public decency.
After a three-year legal battle over Last Tango in Paris, Grimaldi received a suspended
prison sentence in 1976, along with the director and the film’s stars, Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, for “concurring to produce an obscene spectacle”. The movie remained banned in
Italy until 1987.