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Gian Maria Volonte:Programme Notes.Qxd Operation Ogre / Ogro Spain / France / Italy | 1979 | 115 minutes Credits In Brief Director Gillo Pontecorvo As 1973 winds down, Franco is still governing Spain with an iron hand. Screenplay Giorgio Arlorio, Ugo Pirro, Gillo Opposition parties are forbidden; labor movements are repressed; and Pontecorvo (novel byJulen Aguirre) Basque nationalists are mercilessly hunted down. The caudillo is aging, though, and the continuity of the régime is in question. One man has the Music Ennio Morricone trust of Franco, enough authority and experience to assume the leadership, Photography Marcello Gatti and an impeccable track record as to dealing with enemies of the State: admiral Carrero Blanco. For the embattled clandestine Basque organization Cast ETA, Carrero Blanco must be brought down. Daring plans are made, requiring Izarra Gian Maria Volonté a meticulous execution... Amaiur Ángela Molina Eduardo Casais, IMDB Luque Saverio Marconi Iker José Sacristán Ogro (1979) is the third Gillo Pontecorvo film I've seen, after the brilliant Battle of Algiers and the disappointing Burn! Pontecorvo again deals with the politics and harsh realities of terrorism and revolution, but in a more subdued manner than above-named films. Unfortunately, Ogro is also a bit too obvious and slow compared to his previous works, and suffers as a result. In 1973, Spain is still under the thumb of Generalissmo Francisco Franco, the Fascist dictator who has ruled the country since 1939. Still, most knowledgable Spaniards know he hasn't long to live, and his equally repressive right-hand man Carrero Blanco (Agapito Romo) is in line to take over. A cell of the ETA, a Basque terrorist organization, has decided to kidnap Blanco and hold him for ransom. The hot-headed revolutionary Txabi (Eusebio Poncela) strongly urges assassination; the more cool- headed Izarra (Gian Maria Volonte) argues that Blanco is worth more dead than alive. When their leader Yoseba (Feodor Atkine) is gunned down by Spanish police, and when Blanco is promoted to Prime Minister, kidnapping is no longer feasible; they must assassinate him. Ogro does a fine job of examining the role and importance of terrorism in a revolutionary movement. Spain was a country that, despite its repressive government, was fairly prosperous under Franco's rule; thus, there was little popular call for revolution, and it took the actions of extremists like the ETA, working for their own cause (independence for the Basque minority) to affect social change. Certainly the ETA cannot claim to be acting for the majority of Spaniards, and yet their actions positively benefit the country as a whole. The assassination of Blanco arguably opened the door for Spain's post-Franco democratization, so it can certainly be seen as justified, even heroic. But with one goal - the removal of Franco's chief henchman - achieved through terrorism, should it be used for another - Basque independence? Pontecorvo shows a degree of thoughtful nuance in dealing with this issue. Terrorism may be the only way to fight against a Fascist dictatorship, but is it the right way to act in a democratic society? In this regard, Pontecorvo seems to have mellowed from the Marxism of his earlier films; although he acknowledges the shortcomings of violence in those movies, he ultimately embraces the violence as a necessary evil. Here, he questions whether it is always necessary - that in a pluralistic society, patience and peaceful protest are more likely to succeed. To be fair, though, French Algeria and Quemada were not regimes where peaceful protest was likely to bear fruit. Unfortunately, Pontecorvo's film lacks the visceral power of Algiers, for a number of reasons. The film's pace often flags during the preparation scenes, which is interesting at times, but occasionally tedious. The Txabi-Izarra conflict is underdeveloped and pretty rote, and the supporting cast are virtually non-existent as characters. Perhaps more of a problem are the overly-obvious political sentiments. The lame flashback device, with Txabi continuing his violence ways while Izarra has moved on to peaceful protest, is a waste; its message about peaceful versus violent methods is obviously stated, and seems tacked on and underdeveloped. Indeed, the film's message is generally stated less elegantly than in Algiers, even though the message - that terrorism is only useful up to a point - is certainly one worth considering. Gian Maria Volonte Pontecorvo's direction is on a larger scale than Algiers, although it retains the basic cinema verite style. The movie's shots of the meticulous terrorist preparations put one in mind of Day of the Jackal - and the climax is certainly a highly suspenseful sequence. Ennio Morricone contributes a fairly low-key and unremarkable music score. Gian Maria Volonte, Eusebio Poncela, Feodor Atkine, Jose Sarcristan and Saverio Marconi all give strong performances as the ETA men. If Ogro lacks the immediacy of Algiers, it's still far superior to the muddled Burn!, and worth a look for anyone who enjoyed Pontecorvo's other works. http://nothingiswrittenfilm.blogspot.co.uk/ Gillo Pontecorvo The controversial yet brilliant Italian-born director Gillo Pontecorvo is perhaps best known for a series of historically-themed dramas, including The Battle of Algiers and Burn!, that successfully combined docudrama techniques with striking photography, to revolutionary effect. Born in Pisa, Italy, on November 19, 1919, to a Jewish family (with nine brothers and sisters and an industrialist father), young Gillo cut against the grain of familial tradition; the rest of the children followed the prompting of their parents, who sought an education in the sciences for their sons and a literary education for their daughters. Initially, Gillo followed suit, attending the University of Pisa as a chemistry student, but inner dissatisfaction reigned. In the long term, he felt this ennui tempered somewhat by two factors: the technical insights gained from scientific studies, which became indispensable to his filmmaking activities later on, and the university environment, where Pontecorvo's professors and fellow students engendered in him a staunch anti-Fascist stance. Pontecorvo planned to build a career in journalism after graduation and moved to Paris, where he served as a correspondent for the Paese Sera and Repubblica newspapers, but during an assignment reporting on a mining strike, he suddenly understood that images delivered greater emotional impact than words ever could, and drifted in the direction of photojournalism. By this time, the war was afoot. An intense barrage of military and political activities followed in Pontecorvo's life, including official "party" enlistment in 1941, contributions to the Garibaldi Brigade, and extensive resistance operations in Northern Italy, under the pseudonym "Barnaba." He ultimately became a full-time member of the Communist Party, working heavily in its newsreel archives. With the concurrent rise of neorealism at the hands of such directors as De Sica, Visconti, and Rossellini, Pontecorvo began to grasp the political possibilities of filmmaking and accepted a position as third assistant director on Aldo Vergano's Il Sole Sorge Ancora (aka Outcry, 1947), doubling up as an actor with a bit part in the film. Numerous assistantships followed, for such directors as Yves Allégret, Mario Monicelli, Gian Carlo Menotti, and others. Pontecorvo imbibed many of his aesthetic tendencies through extensive reading of the theorists Georg Lukacs and Umberto Barbaro, and acquired the preponderance of his technical know-how from Monicelli. Starting in his early thirties (1950-1955), Pontecorvo purchased a 16 mm camera and began shooting documentaries aggressively and tirelessly, cranking out one after another, the social concerns and aesthetic principles of neorealism evident throughout. These include Missione Timiriazev (The Timiriazev Mission, 1953), about a flood in the Polesine region of Italy; Cani Dietro le Sbarre (Dogs Behind Bars), about a municipal dog pound; Uomini del Marmo (Men of Marble, 1955), about the workers on the Alpi Apuane; and between 12 and 17 others (the exact number is undocumented). He debuted as a fiction director in 1956, with the film-a-sketch The Windrose. Made under the aegis of Joris Ivens and financially backed by the Women's International Democratic Federation, this film depicts the social problems that women experience in multiple cultures. Pontecorvo's episode, "Giovanna," dramatizes the plight of a young female textile worker torn in half between her desire to strike in her factory, and loyalty to her husband, who discourages her from participation. French journalists at the 1956 Venice Film Festival hailed "Giovanna" as one of the more unadulterated examples of neorealist theory and technique. Pontecorvo followed this up with The Wide Blue Road (aka La Grande Strada Azzurra, 1957). Adapted from Franco Solinas' novel {- Squarcio}, the picture dramatizes the burgeoning political awareness of a bunch of fishermen from Sardinia. Unfortunately, the production was laden with one compromise after another, from the externally imposed requirement of shooting in color to the studio's insistence of using the glossy celebrity actors Yves Montand and Alida Valli. Pontecorvo understandably all but dismissed the final Gian Maria Volonte product, but he won Best Director at Karlovy Vary for it. The internationally co-produced feature Kapo followed three years later, which Pontecorvo scripted with Solinas -- the belletrist who would become his lifelong collaborator. The picture stars Susan Strasberg (daughter of Lee and Paula) as Nicole, a Jew imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps who sells herself out by denying her own Jewish heritage, feigning an identity as a political prisoner, and -- ultimately -- torturing her fellow prisoners. She falls in love with a Soviet prisoner, then finds redemption (<i>limited</i> redemption) by assisting with a Russian prisoner escape, and is promptly shot by the SS. Pontecorvo's finest contribution to this work was undoubtedly the use of patchy, grainy, newsreel-like black-and-white to create a unique aesthetic.
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