Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#26926
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Cesare Danova works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Cesare Danova appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cesare. Mean Streets is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with John Landis, Martin Scorsese, George Sidney and others, Cesare Danova helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Mean Streets (1973) as Giovanni Cappa · Animal House (1978) as Mayor Carmine DePasto · Cleopatra (1963) as Apollodorus
Career snapshot
Ranked #26926 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1963–1978
Career length
15 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Mean Streets
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Mean Streets
Most frequent director
John Landis
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With John Landis
Most common genre
Comedy
2 titles
Average runtime
2h 19m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.5
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1970s
7.0 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Animal House, Mean Streets — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Viva Las Vegas, Cleopatra.
Most productive era
1960s
2 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1960s | 1970s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.91 film | 7.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 6.91 film |
| Crime | — | 7.01 film |
| Romance | 6.62 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1963Cleopatra
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Apollodorus.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1973Mean Streets
7.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1978Animal House
The current state of the argument, as Mayor Carmine DePasto.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
4 of 4 films
as Giovanni Cappa
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Mayor Carmine DePasto
Directed by John Landis
as Apollodorus
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
as Count Elmo Mancini
Directed by George Sidney
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Giovanni Cappa
Mean Streets (1973)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Giovanni Cappa gives Cesare Danova a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mayor Carmine DePasto
Animal House (1978)
Performance score6.8
Animal House asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mayor Carmine DePasto is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Apollodorus
Cleopatra (1963)
Performance score6.8
Cleopatra asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Apollodorus is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Count Elmo Mancini
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Performance score6.7
Viva Las Vegas asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Count Elmo Mancini is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Giovanni Cappa
Start here. Mean Streets is the clearest statement of what Cesare Danova does — accessible, 112 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cesare at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Cleopatra (1963)
Keeps the drama register of Mean Streets but asks for a colder reading of it.
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Keeps the romance register of Cleopatra but asks for a colder reading of it.
Animal House (1978)
Keeps the comedy register of Viva Las Vegas but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mean StreetsJohn Landis
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Animal HouseJoseph L. Mankiewicz
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CleopatraGeorge Sidney
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Viva Las VegasSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Mean Streets
as Giovanni Cappa
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Cleopatra
as Apollodorus
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Mean Streets
as Giovanni Cappa
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Animal House
as Mayor Carmine DePasto
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Mean Streets
as Giovanni Cappa
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Cesare Danova has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
2 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Animal House
as Mayor Carmine DePasto
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mean Streets
as Giovanni Cappa
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Cleopatra
as Apollodorus
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mean Streets
as Giovanni Cappa
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Animal House
as Mayor Carmine DePasto
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Animal House
as Mayor Carmine DePasto
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Mean Streets
as Giovanni Cappa
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Viva Las Vegas
as Count Elmo Mancini
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Robert De Niro
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Mark Rolston
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Jack Nicholson
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Mark Wahlberg
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Have your say
Community
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Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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