Carlo Ponti dies, taking with him a part of film history
Italian producer Carlo Ponti passed away last night at the age of 94 in a hospital in Geneva, where he had been admitted ten days earlier for pulmonary complications. Married to Sofia Loren since 1957, he worked with world-renowned directors, from Federico Fellini to Jean Luc Godard.
Born in 1912 in Magenta, in the province in Milan, Ponti began his career with Mario Soldati’s Old-Fashioned World, then produced, for the Lux production company, Pietro Germi’s Lost Youth and The Mill on the Po by Alberto Lattuada, before creating a partnership in 1950 with Dino de Laurentis, with whom he made, among others, Roberto Rossellini’s No Greater Love and The Gold of Naples by Vittorio De Sica.
In 1965, Ponti achieved tremendous success with David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, which won five of its ten Oscar nominations. The over 150 films he produced since 1941 include masterpieces such as Fellini’s La strada (1954), A Special Day (1977) by Ettore Scola and Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970) and The Passenger (1975) by Michelangelo Antonioni.
(Translated from Italian)
Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.
