In Remembrance: Carlo Ponti

     Carlo Ponti, the Italian movie producer who discovered Sophia Loren and also carried on a highly publicized and controversial love affair with the actress, has passed away in Gevena, Switzerland on January 9, 2007. He was 94.

     Born on December 11, 1912 in Magenta, Italy, Ponti worked as a lawyer having studied law at the University of Milan before segueing into motion picture production in the 1940s. The first film he worked on as a producer was the 1941 period drama Old-Fashioned World. Although he received no screen credit, Ponti was briefly imprisoned by the Fascist Italian government who argued that the film was anti-German.

     Immensely prolific, Ponti is accredited as a producer on nearly 150 films over the 43 years of his career. Early in his career he produced a series of comedies for Italian comic Toto. He produced La Ciociara (Two Women, 1962) for director Jean-Luc Godard, a film credited as significantly developing the emerging French New Wave movement. Other important films Ponti produced include director Roberto Rossellini’s Europa 51 (1951), Vittorio de Sica’s anthology films Gold Of Naples (1955) and Boccaccio ’70 (1962).

     While continuing to produce films for Italian cinemas, Ponti also produced several English language films including War And Peace (1955), Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970), Roman Polanski’s What? (1972), Andy Warhol’s Flesh For Frankenstein (1973) and The Cassandra Crossing (1976).

     Twenty-five years her senior, Ponti met a fifteen year old Loren in 1950 when he was judging a beauty contest she had entered. They tried to keep the resultant relationship secret, but it was soon discovered by the Italian press. The couple married in 1957, but the Italian government did not recognize Ponti’s Mexican divorce from his first wife and he was charged with bigamy in 1962. Although ultimately acquitted, Ponti would become a French citizen in 1964.

     Ponti was determined to make Loren a star and had her cast in several films the second of which La Donna Del Fiume (Woman Of The River, 1955) earned the previously struggling actress her first critical notice for her role as a peasant girl who falls for a dashing smuggler. Despite being known for her sexpot image and the scandal surrounding her marriage, Loren would become the first actress to win an Academy Award for a performance in a foreign language for her role in La Ciociara. Other Ponti-produced films that Loren was featured in include the Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (1963), Marriage, Italian Style (1964), Lady L (1965), Sunflower (1970) and Il Viaggio (The Journey, 1974).

     Although several films he produced were nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award – with La Strada (1954) and Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow won – Ponti only received a Best Picture Oscar nomination once, for the 1965 epic Doctor Zhivago.

     The final film Ponti produced was the 1978 crime caper The Squeeze. In 1998, he came out of retirement to produced the short Liv, which was directed by his son Edoardo Ponti.