Gillo Pontecorvo: Gillo Pontecorvo, who has died aged 86, was a gentle man with kind, twinkling eyes who, among innumerable achievements, directed the classic film The Battle of Algiers (1965). Edward Said said that The Battle of Algiers and Queimada (1969), Pontecorvo's next film, were the two greatest political films ever made. He also said that Pontecorvo's political work for the cinema made it possible for directors such as Costa-Gavras to emerge, as well as influencing other film-makers in the Third World.
During the 1960s, Pontecorvo became convinced that the anti-colonialist wars of the time were an important theme for a film. In 1962, he and fellow director Franco Solinas went to Algeria - as its war of independence against France was concluding - armed with false papers and the idea of building a story around a former paratrooper during that war. Franco Cristaldi, the producer, did not want to make the film, not least since the French extreme right-wing group, the OAS, was planting bombs against those who supported the Algerian cause.
Then, in 1964, after independence, former Algerian guerrilla Salah Baazi visited Italy in search of a director to make a film on the independence struggle. He met Pontecorvo, whose idea for "Para", as the film was going to be called, did not appeal. Baazi did not want a film that treated the subject from a European point of view. Pontecorvo eventually proposed an alternative scenario, offering to work for nothing in case the film did not please the Algerians.
The Algerian general strike of 1957 was the focus of the black and white film. Pontecorvo co-wrote the score with Ennio Morricone and he continued to write scores for his films, maintaining they were structured with music in mind (he regarded The Battle of Algiers as having a "symphonic structure").
When The Battle of Algiers was screened at the Venice Film Festival in 1966, it received a great ovation. Pontecorvo maintained it was the most emotional moment of his life. He won the Golden Lion, but the French delegation left in protest and the film was not distributed in France until 1971.
Pontecorvo was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Pisa, the fifth of eight children. His brothers, Guido and Bruno, found fame as scientists, but in 1950, Bruno, who had been involved in the British atom programme, decamped to the Soviet Union.
Pre-war, Pontecorvo had studied chemistry at the University of Pisa - in between competing in tennis tournaments. Then, with the advent of Mussolini's race laws, his siblings left Italy, but Gillo remained. But in the late 1930s, Bruno, by then working in a laboratory in Paris, sent Gillo tickets to join him. There, the brothers' world embraced the Italian anti-fascist movement.
With the German occupation of Paris, Pontecorvo and Henriette, his girlfriend, migrated to St Tropez, where they married.
In 1942, by then a clandestine member of the Italian Communist party, he went to Milan on courier and news-gathering missions. Living between Italy and France and working as a journalist, he saw Paisa (1946), directed by Roberto Rossellini (who was to become a good friend). Pontecorvo's love affair with cinema now centred on neo-realism.
In the mid-1950s, he left the Communist party, broke up with Henriette, and began living with Picci, whom he eventually married. He also met Franco Solinas, with whom he co-wrote Giovanna, an episode in Rose of the Winds (1957), co-ordinated by Joris Ivens, and then his first feature, La Grande Strada Azzura (1957, The Wide Blue Road).
In 1959, Pontecorvo was asked to make a film on the Nazi concentration camps in which he concentrated on the systematic destruction of human dignity, particularly that of the "kapos" who had the role of keeping their fellow prisoners in order, thus saving their own lives. It received rapturous applause at the Venice Film Festival.
After The Battle of Algiers came Queimada, a film based on the character of the adventurer, William Walker, who supports a slave rebellion in the Spanish Caribbean on behalf of British interests. It was 10 years before Pontecorvo made his next film, Ogro (Operation Ogre, 1979).
Throughout his later life, Pontecorvo tended his tropical plants, added to his collection of glass paintings, composed music, played tennis and took up scuba diving.
He is survived by Picci and three sons, Ludovico, Simone, and the film-maker Marco.
Gillo (Gilberto) Pontecorvo: born November 19th, 1919; died October 12th, 2006