Carlo Ponti

Production

Carlo Ponti

Born 1912-12-11 · Magenta, Lombardy, Italy

Carlo Fortunato Pietro Ponti Sr. Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (11 December 1912 – 10 January 2007) was an Italian film producer with more than 140 productions to his credit. Along with Dino De Laurentiis, he is credited with reinvigorating and popularizing Italian cinema post-World War II, producing some of the country's most acclaimed and financially-successful films of the 1950s and 1960s. Ponti worked with many of the most important directors of Italian cinema of the era, including Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Vittorio De Sica, as well as many international directors. He helped launch the career of his wife, international film star Sophia Loren. He won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film for La Strada (1954) and was nominated for Best Picture for producing Doctor Zhivago (1965). In 1996, he was ascended as a Knight Grand Cross to the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Description above from the Wikipedia article Carlo Ponti, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Ulysses poster
6.5

A retelling of Homer's The Odyssey, focusing on Ulysses's ten-year journey home to Ithaca following the Trojan War, where he faces various mythical challenges while his wife Penelope fends off suitors.

Ulysses

1954

Doctor Zhivago poster
7.6

The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.

Doctor Zhivago

1965

Contempt poster
7.0

Art film producer Jeremy Prokosch, unhappy with the work of his director, hires Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb, he brings in a screenwriter to energise the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.

Contempt

1963

Cléo from 5 to 7 poster
7.7

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

Cléo from 5 to 7

1962

Sunflower poster
7.5

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

Sunflower

1970

Blow-Up poster
7.3

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

Blow-Up

1966

Flesh for Frankenstein poster
5.8

Within the decadent walls of the Frankenstein mansion, the Baron and his depraved assistant Otto have discovered the means of creating new life. As the Baron's laboratory begins to fill up with stitched body parts, the Baroness dallies with the randy new manservant and soon the decadent, permissive household is consumed by an outrageous, bizarre and hilarious combination of death and dismemberment.

Flesh for Frankenstein

1973

The Cassandra Crossing poster
6.2

Passengers on a European train have been exposed to a deadly disease, and nobody will let them off the train.

The Cassandra Crossing

1976

Two Women poster
7.8

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

Two Women

1960

Marriage Italian Style poster
7.7

During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.

Marriage Italian Style

1964

A Special Day poster
8.1

Two neighbours — a persecuted journalist and a resigned housewife — forge a strong bond on the day of Adolf Hitler's historic 1938 visit to Rome.

A Special Day

1977

Boccaccio '70 poster
6.9

An anthology of four comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy: frothy young love and office politics in the big city; milk advertisements that begin to haunt an aging prude; a trophy wife enduring her husband's very public affairs; a lucky ticket-holder at a small town fair.

Boccaccio '70

1962

Lola poster
7.1

A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.

Lola

1961

La Strada poster
7.9

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

La Strada

1954

Gun Moll poster
5.2

A happy-go-lucky prostitute gets mixed up with the Mafia.

Gun Moll

1975

Zabriskie Point poster
7.0

Anthropology student Daria, who's helping a property developer build a village in the Los Angeles desert, and dropout Mark, who's wanted by the authorities for allegedly killing a policeman during a student riot, accidentally encounter each other in Death Valley and soon begin an unrestrained romance.

Zabriskie Point

1970

The Passenger poster
7.2

David Locke is a world-weary American journalist who has been sent to cover a conflict in northern Africa, but he makes little progress with the story. When he discovers the body of a stranger who looks similar to him, Locke assumes the dead man's identity. However, he soon finds out that the man was an arms dealer, leading Locke into dangerous situations. Aided by a beautiful woman, Locke attempts to avoid both the police and criminals out to get him.

The Passenger

1975

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow poster
7.4

Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

1963

Woman of Rome poster
6.1

During the fascist era, Adriana a beautiful young model, becomes a prostitute after a love affair gone wrong. She meets Mino, a partisan who falls in love with her and wants to redeem her.

Woman of Rome

1954

Operation Crossbow poster
6.7

Allied agents infiltrate the Nazi rocket complex at Peenemunde in order to obtain their secrets and sabotage the plant. The film alternates between German developments of the V-1 missile and V-2 rocket (with a German cast speaking their own language) and discovery by British Intelligence of the weapon.

Operation Crossbow

1965

The Firemen's Ball poster
7.1

The firemen of a provincial Czechoslovakian town throw a ball in honor of the old chief's retirement. There will be music and dancing, a beauty pageant and a raffle. The whole town will be in attendance. However, the proceedings are dogged by difficulty at every step. Workplace injuries, stolen prizes, a shortage of pretty girls... and fire.

The Firemen's Ball

1967

I tre corsari poster
7.0

The castle of the counts of Ventimiglia is conquered by the spanish Van Gould, who kills the count and sends his three sons in the Antilles. The ship is attacked by pirates and the three brothers are liberated. They decide to join the pirates to have revenge on Van Gould, who has also moved to the Antilles on the command of the viceroy.

I tre corsari

1952

Without Pity poster
5.9

A struggling woman and a black American soldier fall in love in post-World War II Italy.

Without Pity

1948

A Breath of Scandal poster
5.5

A European princess jeopardizes her crown when she falls for an American millionaire.

A Breath of Scandal

1960