Tinto Brass obituary

Italian director drawn to the erotic best known for his 1979 film Caligula, which is now regarded as a cult favourite

No matter how one defines the films of the director Tinto Brass, who has died aged 93, they manage, in most cases, to keep a distance, however narrowly, from pornography. Although the Italian maestro of erotica never objected to being called a pornographer, he made the distinction by claiming: “I develop the moments of lust and desire out of the stories themselves.”

There is no doubt that most of his two dozen features, the most notorious being Salon Kitty (1976) and Caligula (1979), could be variously labelled sexploitation (the female nude shown purely for sexual or commercial reasons), sexist, softcore (no erections or ejaculations), kitsch (bad taste) and camp…