Ugo Moretti (Orvieto, 1918 – Rome, 11 January 1991) was an Italian novelist, journalist, art critic and screenwriter. He was one of the leading figures of neorealism and postwar Roman intellectual life.
Ugo Moretti had an obscure career, despite a promising debut with Vento caldo (English title: Rogue Wind), which won the Viareggio Prize for Poetry in a tie in 1949 and was later translated in eight countries. This novel has been described as "the story of a Harlequin-like young man making a precarious living in Mussolini's Italy".
In the 1950s, Moretti headed the art gallery Il Pincio in Rome around Via Margutta and Via del Babuino and was "a key presence in the Roman bohemian "Dolce vita" of the 1950s".
His second work is the auto-biographic short story collection Gente al Babuino (1955). It was turned into the film Run with the Devil in 1960.
In the late 1950s, and alongside the novels published under his own name, Moretti wrote crime novels, so-called gialli, under pseudonyms such as Maurice Gouttier, Victor Drug and George Sherman,. The first, Nuda corre la morte (1957), originated from Moretti's bet with the publisher "that a writer can pen any kind of story, just like a painter can draw a battle scene or a fairy tale illustration; therefore, he could crank out a giallo novel with some predetermined elements (including a naked woman running in the street, hence the title) in one week", which resulted in him winning the bet.
His last giallo and masterpiece in this field was Doppia morte al Governo Vecchio, which was published under his own name in 1960. Roberto Curti noted its "witty depiction of a daydreaming, absent-minded cop who is intrinsically neurotic (to the point that, unbeknownst to his wife, he leads a double life as a painter to escape from his monotonous routine, mingling with the Roman lowlifes)". In 1977, this novel was turned into the film Double Murder directed by Stefano Vanzina. Moretti's authorship of the aforementioned gialli became known in 1990 following a revival of this novel.
Regarding his role in the cultural world of the 1960s and 1970s, Moretti has been described as a "countercurrent figure".
Peaking in the 1960s, but starting already in the 1950s and through till the 1980s, Moretti collaborated on numerous screenplays. In 1965, Moretti also had a small acting role in the film Con rispetto parlando. He wrote his last screenplay for Joe D'Amato's erotic drama film The Alcove in 1985.
Moretti also continued to write fiction and poetry up until the early 1990s both under pseudonyms and under his own name, some of it pornographic, such as Erosparty (1976).
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