Mauro Bolognini; Italian Film Director Honored at Festivals

Mauro Bolognini, 78, a prolific Italian director admired for his skill at adapting works by such writers as Alberto Moravia and Pier Paolo Pasolini, died Monday in Rome.

A familiar figure at international film festivals, Bolognini won the top prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain in 1966 for his film “Mademoiselle de Maupin,” based on a work by the French novelist Theophile Gautier. The director also won best director at the Montreal World Film Festival in 1987 for “Farewell Moscow,” and was twice nominated for directing honors at Cannes.

One of the best-known of Bolognini’s 41 films is the 1960 “Beautiful Anthony,” a biting commentary on the role of women in Sicily, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale.

When his 1961 film “Senilita” (“Careless”) was screened in Los Angeles at the Tiffany’s Neglected Foreign Classics series in 1981, Times reviewer Kevin Thomas pronounced it “gravely beautiful” and said it was “so carefully modulated and textured . . . that it has the exquisite look of steel engravings.”