Mario Landi (12 October 1920 – 18 March 1992) was an Italian director known for his giallo movies such as Giallo a Venezia and his television series Le inchieste del commissario Maigret.
[1] Born in Messina, Sicily, Landi attended the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, graduating in direction in 1944.
[2] He made his debut as a film director in 1950, with the musical film Canzoni per le strade, but soon his interests shifted to the new medium of his era, the television;[2] he is regarded as a pioneer of Italian television, for which he worked since 1952, when RAI started experimental broadcasting before starting the regular TV service.
[2][3] He was less active in cinema, in which he sporadically directed a number of low-profile genre films.
Paolo Mereghetti, author of Il Mereghetti, wrote of Maigret a Pigalle: "the direction is slovenly",[4] while of Giallo a Venezia he wrote that it:[5] "deserves (or perhaps does not deserve) to be remembered as one of the most idiotic Italian thrillers ever made, a collage of soft-porn sequences and dismemberments of rare brutality that fall into the void, in a childish attempt to astonish."