Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo is best known for “La battaglia di Algeri” (The Battle of Algiers), but directed several movies before its release in 1966, such as the drama “Kapo” (1960), which takes place in a World War II concentration camp.

He was nominated for Best Director Oscar in 1969 and in that same year won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1969, both for Battle of Algiers. In 2000, he received the Pietro Bianchi Award at the Venice Film Festival.

Life and Work

Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo was born in Pisa, Italy on November 19, 1919. The son of a wealthy Jewish businessman, Pontecorvo grew up surrounded by his nine siblings. Pontecorvo was the younger brother of Bruno Pontecorvo, the internationally known scientist. Gillo Pontecorvo career spanned from directing, screen writing, and composing music scores. He studied science in school and attended the University of Pisa, earning a degree in chemistry. It was there that he first became of opposing political forces, coming into contact with leftist students and professors for the first time. Shortly after his graduation in the late 1930s, in the face of growing anti-Semitism, he fled to France, where he was able to find work in journalism as a correspondent for Italian newspapers.

In Paris, 1953, Pontecorvo immediately involved himself in the film world, where he made a few short documentaries. He became an assistant to Joris Ivens, whose films include Regen and The Bridge, and also to a Dutch communist documentarian, as well as Yves Allegret, a French director known for his work in the film noir genre, whose films include Une Si Jolie Petite Plage and Les Orgueilleux. In addition to these influences, Pontecorvo began meeting people that broadened his perspectives, among them Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky and Jean-Paul Sartre. It was during this time that Pontecorvo truly developed his political ideals. He was particularly affected when many of his friends in Paris packed up to go fight in the Spanish Civil War.

Pontecorvo joined the Communist Party in 1941. He traveled to northern Italy to help organize anti-Fascist partisans and going by the pseudonym Barnaba, was a leader of the Resistance in Milan from 1943 until 1945. Pontecorvo broke ties with the party in 1956 after the Soviet intervention in Hungary. He didn’t, however, renounce his dedication to Marxism and has said, “I am not an out-and-out revolutionary. I am merely a man of the Left, like a lot of Italian Jews.”

After World War II and his return to Italy, Pontecorvo made the decision to leave journalism for filmmaking, a move that seems to have been in the making for some time, but was set in motion after he saw Roberto Rossellini’s “Paisa.” He bought a 16mm camera and shot several documentaries, mostly funded on his own, beginning with “Missione Timiriazev” in 1953. He then directed “Giovanna,” which was one episode of “La rosa dei venti” (1956), a film made with several directors. In 1957 he directed his first full length film, “La grande strada azzurra”,about a fisherman and his family on the small island off the Dalmatian coast of Italy. Because of the scarcity of fish in nearby waters, the fisherman, Squarciò, is forced to sail out to the open sea to fish illegally with bombs. The film won a prize at the Karlovy Vary Festival. (The Wide Blue Road), which foreshadowed his mature style of later films. He spent months, and sometimes years, researching the material for his films in order to accurately represent the actual social situations he commented on. In the next two years, Pontecorvo directed Kapò, a drama set in a Nazi death camp. The plot of the film is about an escape attempt from a concentration camp by a young Jewish girl. In 1961 the film was nominated by the Academy Awards for an Oscar for best foreign language film. Also in this same year the film won two awards, the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists awarded Didi Perego a Silver Ribbon for best supporting actress, and the Mar del Plata Film Festival awarded Susan Strasberg for best actress.

“The Battle of Algiers,” a portrayal of the Algerian resistance during the First Algerian War, follows in the footsteps of neorealist pioneers such as De Santis and Rossellini, employing the use of newsreel-style footage and non-professional actors and focusing primarily on the disenfranchised population that seldom receives attention from the general media. Pontecorvo was clearly reading Frantz Fanon while making “The Battle of Algiers,” as many of Fanon’s notions are echoed in the film, though often simplified. When the film achieved mass screening in the United States, Pontecorvo received a number of awards, and was also nominated for two Academy Awards for direction and co-writing. The film has been used as a training video by government strategists as well as revolutionary groups. It has been and remains extremely popular in Algeria, providing a popular memory of the struggle for liberation.

Pontecorvo’s next major work, “Queimada!” (Burn!, 1969), starring Marlon Brando, is another anti-colonial film, this time set in the Antilles. This film also depicts an attempted revolution of the oppressed, but it’s strong anti-colonial message is undermined by Pontecorvo’s choice to use a non-professional actor opposite the commanding performance of the seasoned Brando. Whereas in “The Battle of Algiers,” the Algerian actors represented themselves in a staging of events they had taken part in and were very closely involved at all steps of the production, “Queimada!,” by failing to incorporate adequate Caribbean participation, provides a very shallow portrayal of the colonized figures it aims to support.

Pontecorvo continued his series of highly political films with “Ogro” (1979), which addresses the occurrence of terrorism at the end of Franco’s dwindling regime. 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 directed the festival in 1992, 1993 and 1994.

Selected Bibliography

1. Celli, Carlo. Gillo Pontecorvo: From Resistance to Terrorism. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2005.
2. Mellen, Joan. “An Interview with Gillo Pontecorvo”. Film Quarterly. Vol. 26, No. 1 (Autumn, 1972), pp. 2-10. Pontecorvo answers questions pertaining to technical, creative and political aspects of “La battaglia di Algeri.”
3. Mellen, Joan. Filmguide to ‘The Battle of Algiers.’ Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1973.
4. Fanon, Frantz. Pour la revolution africaine: Essais politiques. Paris: La Decouverte, 2001. A collection of Fanon’s pieces on Algeria, dating from 1956 to 1961.
5. Said, Edward W. “The Quest for Gillo Pontecorvo,” in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000. pp. 282-292. Said expresses his disappointment that Pontecorvo did not produce more films, arguing that his “films leave us with a lot of questions. Questions like, can empires be defeated, or, is there a possibility for relationships between Western societies and non-Western that are not based on oppression and discrimination?”
6. Solinas, Franco. Gillo Pontecorvo’s ‘The Battle of Algiers.’ Ed. PierNico Solinas. New York: Scribner’s, 1973. Solinas wrote the original screenplay for “La battaglia di Algeri,” and this is his translated version.

Filmography as Director

1. Firenze, il nostro domani (2003)
2. Altro mondo e possibile, Un (2001) (aka Another World is Possible)
3. Corti italiani, I (1997) (segment “Nostalgia di protezione”)
4. Nostalgia di protezione (1997)
5. Danza della fata confetto (1996)
6. 12 registi per 12 citta (1989) (segment “Udine”)
7. Addio a Enrico Berliguer, L’ (1984)
8. Ogro (1980) (aka Operation Ogre)
9. Queimada (1969) (aka Burn!)
10. Battaglia di Algeri, La (1965) (aka The Battle of Algiers)
11. Paras (1963)
12. Kapo (1959)
13. Pane e zolfo (1959)
14. Grande strada azzurra, La (1957) (The Wide Blue Road)
15. Cani dietro le sbarre (1955)
16. Giovanna (1955)
17. Festa a Castelluccio (1954)
18. Porta Portese (1954)
19. Missione Timiriazev (1953)

External links

1919 births | Living people | Italian film directors | Natives of Pisa

Gillo Pontecorvo | Gillo Pontecorvo