Tutorials Video

Vittorio Storaro: From Rome Film School to Three Academy Awards

By Infinite Creation · Profile

At a Glance

Vittorio Storaro (born 1940) trained at Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy's national film school, after an apprenticeship in still photography, going on to shoot Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and winning three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography.

Where to Start: The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), Reds (1981)

Career

Formal training at Italy's national film school

Storaro apprenticed in still photography as a teenager before enrolling at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, Italy's leading state film school, where he began developing the systematic, theory-driven approach to color and light that would define his entire career. It was a formal education grounded as much in painting and color theory as in camera technique.

Early studio apprenticeship as camera operator and assistant

Before becoming a director of photography in his own right, Storaro worked his way up through the Italian film industry's camera department as an operator and assistant cinematographer, gaining hands-on technical experience on numerous productions before earning his first solo cinematography credits.

The Bertolucci partnership: The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris

Storaro's collaboration with director Bernardo Bertolucci on The Conformist (1970) and Last Tango in Paris (1972) established him as a major international cinematographer, known for architecturally composed frames and a highly symbolic, theorized use of color tied closely to each film's psychological and political themes.

Hollywood breakthrough: Apocalypse Now and three Oscars

Storaro's work on Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), shot under famously difficult production conditions in the Philippines, won him his first Academy Award for Best Cinematography, followed by wins for Reds (1981) and The Last Emperor (1987), making him one of a small number of cinematographers to win the Oscar three times.

Known For

A published, systematic personal theory of color. Storaro has written extensively about associating specific colors with specific psychological and narrative meanings, applying the theory consistently across entire films rather than scene by scene.
Painting-influenced, highly composed framing that treats each shot as a deliberately constructed image, drawing on his formal training in art history and color theory alongside camera technique.
Collaborating closely with directors during pre-production to develop an overall visual and color strategy for an entire film before shooting begins, rather than solving lighting problems shot by shot on set.
Adapting his controlled, theory-driven visual approach to the famously chaotic production conditions of Apocalypse Now, demonstrating that a rigorous personal method can survive extreme production disruption.

Knowledge Base

What You'll Learn

Storaro's formal training at Italy's national film school, combined with a lifelong, published theory of color psychology, produced one of the most intellectually systematic bodies of work in cinematography history, recognized with three Academy Awards.

Awards & Recognition

Storaro won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography three times, for Apocalypse Now (1979), Reds (1981), and The Last Emperor (1987), placing him among the most-awarded cinematographers in Oscar history.

Why Storaro Still Matters

His insistence on treating color as a systematic, theorized storytelling language rather than an intuitive or purely technical choice gave subsequent cinematographers a rigorous intellectual framework for planning a film's visual strategy at the whole-project level.

Where This Fits

Storaro built a theory of colour and light, and Cinematography Fundamentals covers the practical base under any such theory: lens, exposure, ratio and movement.

FAQ

Q: What film school did Vittorio Storaro attend?
A: He trained at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, Italy's national film school, after an earlier apprenticeship in still photography, and has often credited that formal training in art and color theory as foundational to his later work.

Q: How many Academy Awards has Vittorio Storaro won?
A: He has won three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, for Apocalypse Now (1979), Reds (1981), and The Last Emperor (1987), making him one of the most-honored cinematographers in the award's history.

Sources

Credits and awards on this page have not been checked against an institutional record. Checked 26 August 2026.

The records that would settle them are the American Society of Cinematographers and the British Society of Cinematographers membership rolls, which also carry the post-nominal letters used in screen credits, and the Academy's own awards database for any nomination named above. Neither could be read when this page was reviewed. Where a film is named, the print itself carries the credit, which is the record that cannot be edited. The films named at the top of this page, The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), each carry the credit on the print.