Dino De Laurentiis, at 91; producer of epic films, flops

In producing more than 500 wide-ranging films over six decades, he presided over an incredible mix of high and low. That the same filmmaker could be involved with Federico Fellini’s “Nights of Cabiria’’ and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Conan the Barbarian’’ would seem to contradict normal understanding of taste. Instead, he was irrevocably drawn to the spectacle of the movies.

“Our industry is a special one,’’ he told the Associated Press in 1998. “You deal every day with different people, creative people. Every day is different at work. To produce a movie, you have to create the star, you make script, you find director. You have to shoot the movie.’’

An entrepreneur, Mr. De Laurentiis, who died Wednesday night in Beverly Hills, pioneered the way films were sold internationally, and he did it all in grand style. The sprawling studio complex he built on the outskirts of Rome he dubbed Dinocitta (Dino City).

“The extraordinary thing that Dino taught all of us is the true figure of the independent producer,’’ his nephew, Aurelio De Laurentiis, a noted Italian film producer, said yesterday. “He always behaved in the US as a major studio, even though he was a one-man show.’’

Raised outside Naples and one of six children born into the family’s pasta-making business, Mr. De Laurentiis dreamed of being an actor but quickly realized that his destiny was in moviemaking. He was central to the rise of his native country’s film industry, which in the 1950s rose to international prominence as the Italian New Wave.

The serious success began after World War II, starting with “Bitter Rice,’’ in 1948, which launched the career of his first wife, Silvana Mangano.