Gillo Pontecorvo

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Gillo Pontecorvo
Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI
Born
Gilberto Pontecorvo

(1919-11-19)19 November 1919
Pisa, Italy
Died12 October 2006(2006-10-12) (aged 86)
Rome, Italy
Occupation(s)Film director, screenwriter, composer
Years active1953–2003
Notable work
SpouseMaria Adele "Picci" Ziino (m. 1964)
ChildrenMarco Pontecorvo
RelativesBruno Pontecorvo (brother)
Guido Pontecorvo (brother)

Gilberto Pontecorvo

filmmaker associated with the political cinema movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for directing the landmark war docudrama The Battle of Algiers (1966), which won the Golden Lion at the 27th Venice Film Festival, and earned him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay
.

His other films include

slave revolt in the Lesser Antilles; and Ogro (1979), a dramatization of the assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco by Basque separatists
. He also directed several documentaries and short films.

In 2000, he received the Pietro Bianchi Award at the Venice Film Festival. The same year, he was ascended as a Knight's Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Early life

Pontecorvo, born in Pisa, was the son of a wealthy secular Italian Jewish family. His father was a businessman. Gillo's siblings included brothers Bruno Pontecorvo, an internationally acclaimed nuclear physicist and one of the so-called Via Panisperna boys, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1950; Guido Pontecorvo, a geneticist; and Polì [Paul] Pontecorvo, an engineer who worked on radar after World War II; and David Maraoni; and sisters Giuliana (m. Talbet); Laura (m. Coppa); and Anna (m. Newton).

He studied

antisemitism
, he followed his elder brother Bruno to Paris, where he found work in journalism and as a tennis instructor.

In Paris, Pontecorvo became involved in the film world, and began by making a few short documentaries. He became an assistant to

Les Orgueilleux. In addition to these influences, Pontecorvo began meeting people who broadened his perspectives, among them artist Pablo Picasso, composer Igor Stravinsky and political thinker Jean-Paul Sartre. During this time Pontecorvo developed his political ideals. He was moved when many of his friends in Paris packed up to go and fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War
.

In 1941 Pontecorvo joined the Italian Communist Party. He traveled to northern Italy to help organize Anti-Fascist partisans. Going by the pseudonym Barnaba, he became a leader of the Resistance in Milan from 1943 until 1945. He coedited the weekly communist magazine, Pattuglia, with Dario Volari between 1948 and 1950.[1] Pontecorvo broke ties with the Communist party in 1956 after the Soviet intervention to suppress the Hungarian uprising.[citation needed] He did not, however, renounce his dedication to Marxism.[citation needed]

In a 1983 interview with the Guardian, Pontecorvo said, "I am not an out-and-out revolutionary. I am merely a man of the Left, like a lot of Italian Jews."[2]

Film career

Early films

After the Second World War and his return to Italy, Pontecorvo decided to leave journalism for filmmaking, a shift that appears to have been developing for some time. The catalyst was his seeing

Paisà (1946). He bought a 16mm camera and shot several documentaries, mostly self-funded, beginning with Missione Timiriazev in 1953. He directed Giovanna, which was one episode of La rosa dei venti
(1957), a film made of episodes by several directors.

In 1957 he directed his first full-length film,

Mar del Plata Film Festival awarded Susan Strasberg
for best actress.

The Battle of Algiers

Main article:
The Battle of Algiers (film)
Gillo Pontecorvo with his wife Picci and Saadi Yacef posing beside some guests at 27th Venice International Film Festival

Pontecorvo is best known for his 1966 masterpiece

Yacef Saadi
.) Pontecorvo's theme was clearly anti-imperialist. He later described the film as a "hymn ... in homage to the people who must struggle for their independence, not only in Algeria, but everywhere in the third world" and said, "the birth of a nation happens with pain on both sides, although one side has cause and the other not."

The Battle of Algiers achieved great success and influence. It was widely screened in the United States, where Pontecorvo received a number of awards. He was nominated for two Academy Awards for direction and screenplay (a collaboration). The film has been used as a training video by revolutionary groups, as well as by military dictatorships dealing with guerrilla resistance (especially in the 1970s during Operation Condor). It has been and remains extremely popular in Algeria, providing a popular memory of the struggle for independence from France.

The semi-documentary style and use of an almost entirely non-professional cast (only one trained actor appears in the film) was a great influence on a number of future filmmakers and films. Its influence can be seen in the few surviving works of West German filmmaker

Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity
and others draw from these techniques for less lofty purposes.

Late career

Pontecorvo with Gabriel García Márquez

Pontecorvo's next major work, Queimada! (Burn!, 1969), deals with a fictional slave revolt, this time set in the Lesser Antilles. This film (starring Marlon Brando) depicts an attempted revolution in a fictional Portuguese colony. Pontecorvo continued his series of highly political films with Ogro (1979), which addresses the occurrence of Basque terrorism at the end of Francisco Franco's dwindling dictatorship in Spain. He continued making short films into the early 1990s and directed a follow-up documentary to The Battle of Algiers entitled Ritorno ad Algeri (Return to Algiers, 1992). In 1992, Pontecorvo replaced Guglielmo Biraghi as the director of the Venice Film Festival and was responsible for the festivals of 1992, 1993 and 1994. In 1991, he was a member of the jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival.[4]

In an interview that Pontecorvo gave in 1991, when asked why he had directed so few feature films, his response was that he could only make one with which he is totally in love. He also stated that he had rejected many other film concepts for the lack of interest.[citation needed]

Death

In 2006, he died from

congestive heart failure in Rome at age 86.[5]

Filmography

Feature films

Title Year Functioned as Notes
Director Writer Composer
The Wide Blue Road (La grande strada azzurra) 1957 Yes Yes No Nominated - Crystal Globe (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)
Kapo
 (Kapò) 		1960 Yes Yes Yes Nominated - Great Jury Prize (Mar del Plata International Film Festival)
The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri) 1966 Yes Yes Yes Golden Lion (Venice Film Festival)
Nastro d'Argento for Best Director
Nominated - Academy Award for Best Director
Nominated - Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
Nominated - Nastro d'Argento for Best Score
Burn!
(Queimada) 		1969 Yes Story No David di Donatello for Best Director
Ogro (Operación Ogro) 1979 Yes Yes No

Documentary films

Title Year Functioned as Notes
Director Writer Composer
Missione Timiriazev[6] 1953 Yes No No
Porta Portese 1954 Yes No No
Festa a Castelluccio 1954 Yes No No
Uomini del marmo 1955 Yes No No
Cani dietro le sbarre 1955 Yes No No
Pane e zolfo 1959 Yes No No
Gli uomini del lago 1959 Yes No No
Paras 1963 Yes No No
Addio a Enrico Berliguer 1984 Yes No No
Un altro mondo è possibile 2001 Yes No No
Firenze, il nostro domani 2003 Yes No No

Short films

  • Giovanna (1957, segment of Die Windrose)
  • Udine (1984, segment of 12 registi per 12 città)
  • Gillo Pontecorvo's Return to Algiers (1992)
  • Danza della fata confetto (1996)
  • Nostalgia di protezione (1997)

Further reading

  • Bignardi, Irene (1999). Memorie estorte a uno smemorato. Vita di Gillo Pontecorvo. Feltrinelli.
  • Celli, Carlo (2005). Gillo Pontecorvo: From Resistance to Terrorism. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.
  • Ebert, Roger. Pontecorvo: 'We Trust the Face of Brando' Chicago Sun-Times. (April 13, 1969)
  • Fanon, Frantz (2001). Pour la revolution africaine: Essais politiques. Paris: La Decouverte.
  • Mellen, Joan; Pontecorvo, Gillo (Autumn 1972). "An Interview with Gillo Pontecorvo". Film Quarterly. 26 (1): 2–10.
    doi:10.1525/fq.1972.26.1.04a00030 (inactive 2024-02-28).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2024 (link
    )
  • Mellen, Joan (1973). Filmguide to 'The Battle of Algiers'. Indiana University Publications.
  • Said, Edward W. (2000). "The Quest for Gillo Pontecorvo". Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 282–292.
    ISBN 9780674003026
    .
  • Solinas, Franco (1973). Gillo Pontecorvo's 'The Battle of Algiers'. New York: Scribner’s.

References

  1. S2CID 144399337
    .
  2. ^ quoted by Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: A Postcolonial Exhibition Project in Five Acts, (24 March - 25 November 2006), curated by Kuratorisk Aktion for NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art.
  3. ^ "The 33rd Academy Awards (1961) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  4. ^ "Berlinale: 1991 Juries". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
  5. ^ Peary, Gerald. "Talking with Gillo Pontecorvo".
  6. ^ Thompson, Bordwell, Kristin, David (2010). Film History: An Introduction, Third Edition. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

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