Robert F. Boyle and Suso Cecchi D'Amico Obits

A tough day for the movies, as two giants in their respective cinematic fields passed away.

The LA Times obituary on Boyle talks about Boyle's career with some feeling.

Robert Boyle was a great production designer. He designed, among other incredible feats, the Mt. Rushmore scene in North by Northwest. Boyle began under the wing of Hans Dreier, one of Hollywood's legendary art directors. Nominated for 23 Academy Awards during his lifetime, Dreier won an Oscar for Sunset Boulevard. Twenty-three!

Suso Cecchi D'Amico's fingerprints were all over Italian post-war cinema. The Italian directors who worked with her form a Who's Who of that time. Her best known work was with Luchino Visconti, notably Il Gattopardo (The Leopard). At their best, her scripts displayed carefully conceived structure, a strong sense of human drama, brains, and useful insight into our shared condition. She was also the rare woman who successfully navigated the very male, very willful world of Italian movie making. In the photograph, she's talking to Anna Magnani; I believe Visconti is the bug-eyed man looking at D'Amico.