Legendary Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, died last night at 86 in Rome. No cause of death has yet been given. Pontecorvo was the director of the monumental Battle Of Algiers, a film that looked at the guerilla war between the Algerian’s and French with a documentary level of realism, and with almost complete neutrality.
It’s a stunning film, both purely as a work of art, and also as a hauntingly realistic look at modern terrorism and its counters. The film has hardly aged a day, it mapped out with stunning specifity the world of cells, suicide bombs, and state sponsored torture forty years before anyone heard the words Al Queda. But as a simple tract against either side this film would have been a failure, but the sympathy that Pontecorvo extended to both sides, the Imperialist French who after fighting fascism are shocked to find themselves labeled as such, and the revolutionary terrorists, who do what they do out of necessity and with crippling remorse.
Pontecorvo followed up Algiers with the Marlon Brando film Burn!. The film was labeled a disaster, and to be fair it pretty much was. Still it is a glorious sort of disaster, and has since become a cult favorite.
Pontecorvo was quiet for the next couple of decades, Burn! effectively destroyed any interest Hollywood had left in him, Pontecorvo continued to make films in Europe, but nothing of any special note. He did resurface bizarrely for a small roll in the Tom Arnold vehicle The Stupids. Yes that The Stupids.
Pontecorvo was a great artist of great conviction. He will be missed.
