Born in Rome by a Venetian family, his last name was Orcalli, but he was wrongly recorded as Arcalli by the officer of the Registry, and the error was never corrected. At fifteen, after the death of his father killed by the fascists, Arcalli moved to Venice where he collaborated with the partisans.
Arcalli stepped into the world of cinema in 1954 as an actor, playing a small role in Luchino Visconti's Senso. After starring in two more films, he started his career of screenwriter and editor thanks to his real life friend Tinto Brass, with whom he collaborated on a film installation, Ça ira - Il fiume della rivolta, which was screened at the Venice Film Festival in September 1964, and later on Chi lavora è perduto, where in addition to working on the script Arcalli starred in a role of weight as an ex-partisan named Kim.
Arcalli later moved to Rome, where in a few years he imposed himself as a "creative" editor, and even working in the employ of the film company Euro International Film he got the power of choice for the films to work on. In these years he started some critically acclaimed collaborations with directors Giulio Questi, Salvatore Samperi, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi and specially Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900) and Michelangelo Antonioni (Zabriskie Point, The Passenger).

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