He was descended from a long line of Italian patriots; his great-uncle General Ferdinando Pinelli quashed the bandit revolt in Calabria following Italian unification.

He met Fellini in a Rome kiosk in 1946 while they were reading opposite pages of the same newspaper. "Meeting each other", explained Pinelli, "was a creative lightning bolt. We spoke the same language from the start... We were fantasizing about a screenplay that would be the exact opposite of what was fashionable then: the story of a very shy and modest office worker who