Gillo Pontecorvo, an Italian of the world

“There are hardly any Italian actors in his filmography, nor are there any Italian themes: in this respect, he was something of a citizen of the world.” Marco Pontecorvo, director and director of photography, explains why his father Gillo, who died on 12 October 2006, is celebrated in America but “a little more forgotten” in Italy. Five feature films were all it took: in 1966, La battaglia di Algeri won the Golden Lion at Venice, and between that film and Kapò, he received four Oscar nominations. Twenty years after his death, the Rome Film Festival dedicated a retrospective to him, featuring a screening of the restored version of La battaglia di Algeri and an award bearing his name. Marco got to know his father on film sets too, first as a child and later as a colleague.

He does not recall his first film set. He was in Colombia during the production of Queimada, and the rest he knows from family stories: “Mum used to tell me that we often went to the set and that Marlon Brando was always ever so lovely to me and my brother. He remembers far more; he was older: he told me about fishing trips out on those seas.” His first clear memory comes from the set of Ogro, when Marco was thirteen: “I was surprised by the orange gelatine filters used to filter the light. I didn’t understand why; it seemed like a very strange, fairy-tale world to me.” From the same set comes an episode that has stayed with him. In one scene, a teacher was supposed to tap some children on the hands with a stick, but on set they were wearing protective pads and didn’t react. “So Dad said reluctantly: ‘Don’t hit them too hard, but just this once, take the protective gear off.’ My brother and I felt a bit guilty.”

The two brothers often ended up on set, even as actors: their father used them in the Caroselli adverts he was filming. “I remember one particularly well – it was for the Rex washing machine advert. My brother and I had to roll about on the ground and get ourselves completely covered in dirt. I’ve got loads of stories like that, but anyway, it was good fun.”

As an adult, Marco worked with his father as director of photography on "Nostalgia di protezione", the episode directed by Gillo for the anthology film "I corti italiani". “You carry some family dynamics over into those typical of the film set. It was interesting and exciting – and certainly different – to learn how to manage this relationship. But it’s difficult to keep things separate.”

His upbringing also included a second father figure, an artistic one: Pasqualino De Santis, the Oscar-winning director of photography who had worked with Luchino Visconti and many other great directors. De Santis died whilst filming Francesco Rosi’s La Tregua, and Marco was told to take over in his place. “When I found myself on my own on the first day, everything came naturally to me, because I’d absorbed it without realising. It’s the same with Dad: without realising it, so many things he used to tell me come back to mind, sometimes even very technical ones.” More than the technical aspects, however, something else has stayed with him: “The seriousness, the intellectual honesty with which you must approach every project, the passion that must guide your choices, and the principles you must defend in the face of countless pressures. It is a duty both out of respect for your role and towards the audience: directors carry social and cultural weight. I believe I’ve inherited all of this – this sense of responsibility, this attention to detail, this almost obsessive care.”

Gillo Pontecorvo’s cinema combined the power of the documentary with radical choices, both in form and in production. According to his son, this kind of cinema struggles to survive today: “All the political cinema that existed in those years is difficult to make today. Thank goodness there are still filmmakers like Ken Loach and Michael Winterbottom, though it really is a tiny niche.” He himself began in that field, with Pa-ra-da, “a film tackling a difficult subject”, and later brought social issues to television as well. He cannot say whether it is a lack of courage. Certainly, the system was different back then: “Once upon a time, even a producer like Franco Cristaldi made blockbusters, of course, but he also made other kinds of films. There was Rosi, there was Germi, there was the whole tradition stemming from Neorealism: they made deeply political and socially conscious films, even if they weren’t always box-office hits”.

His father’s limited filmography, on the other hand, was entirely his own choice. “It depended solely on him. He was a perfectionist, and wouldn’t work unless he found projects he felt were right. It’s an indelible memory: by the door there were piles of film proposals he’d turned down.” Gillo stayed at home, discussing stories with friends and writing screenplays. His son would read all the scripts that came in, and it was over one of these that the two clashed more than over any other: Mission. “In my opinion, it was the perfect script for him, but he had many doubts and in the end turned it down. It was a huge mistake, because that film was in Dad’s DNA.” Roland Joffé directed it, and in 1986 it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Gillo would never tackle a story that didn’t stir him deep down, and it was often music that stirred him. “He always loved it, he even composed some himself, and he used to say that if he were born again, he’d be a musician. Sometimes he’d fall in love with a film simply because of a theme tune that touched him deeply.” She recites a phrase from her father Marco by heart: “Music, for me, is like a handrail on a staircase in the dark.”

This also led to his collaboration with Ennio Morricone, with whom Pontecorvo composed the score for *The Battle of Algiers*. “They were two prominent figures, but they loved and respected each other immensely. Ennio was one of Dad’s closest friends, and there was a rapport between them that stemmed partly from the intellectual honesty they shared in their approach to things. Perhaps they also shared the same kind of perfectionism, as well as, of course, a love of music. Ennio wrote most of the music, though one of the main themes – Ali’s, if I’m not mistaken – was actually composed by Dad himself.”

The anniversary also prompted tributes outside Rome. Alberto Barbera dedicated this year’s Venice Film Festival to Pontecorvo, with a video wall outside the venue showcasing photographs tracing his relationship with the festival, from the Golden Lion in ’68 with Pasolini. “I first saw him by chance, whilst I was walking. When he appeared, it was quite moving.” In Turin, an exhibition is on display featuring the director’s papers, reorganised by the Gillo Pontecorvo Association when Francesco Rutelli was Minister of Culture; the archival work was overseen by his brother Simone. Marco hasn’t seen it yet: “Everyone’s told me it’s very good, and that makes me happy.”

In the United States, where Marco worked for ten years as a director of photography, the memory of his father is quite different: “Over there, Dad is seen as a god; they study him in depth.” He was struck by a video he found on YouTube in which Stanley Kubrick says that to understand the power of cinema, one must have seen "La battaglia di Algeri". Paul Thomas Anderson said he was deeply influenced by Pontecorvo upon the release of One Battle After Another; among his admirers, Marco mentions Alfonso Cuarón, Steven Soderbergh and Clive Owen, who told him so in person not long ago. “It’s incredible how highly he’s regarded over there.” Then there’s Steven Spielberg, who took to the stage at the 50th Venice Film Festival to present him with an award and recounted how he’d bought the Golden Lion from La battaglia di Algeri at auction, which had been put up for sale as part of a campaign by Martin Scorsese to preserve cinema from the past. “Now it’s time for it to return to Pontecorvo,” he said.

A director who depicted conflicts far from home – from Algeria to the colonial West Indies and the Basque Country – was perhaps destined to find a home elsewhere. “His filmography, after all, isn’t entirely Italian,” says Marco. “And in America, he was wholeheartedly embraced.”

Over these twenty years without him, cinema has transformed once again: streaming platforms, TV series that are increasingly cinematic, and films that are increasingly serialised. Marco does not believe his father would have been daunted by this. “He was never particularly afraid of change – quite the opposite, in fact. He always tried to steer it, to understand it and to find a way to implement it whilst maintaining high standards. He recognised the value of commercial cinema, but believed there should always be a counterbalance.” Even in the competition between cinema and television, he concludes, “he would have sought a solution that would raise standards, not lower them”.