Ponzi, Maurizio

(1939-)

   Film critic, director, screenwriter. After working as a film critic and regular writer for journals such as Film-critica and Cinema 60, Ponzi graduated to making documentaries for the Corona Cinematografica company in the mid-1960s before serv-ing as assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini on his episode of the omnibus film, Amore e rabbia (Love and Anger, 1967). A year later Ponzi wrote and directed his first feature, I visionari (The Visionaries, 1968), a film inspired by the writings of Robert Musil that was awarded the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. This was followed by Equinozio (Equinox, 1971), an adaptation of a futuristic novel by Anna Banti, and Il caso Raoul (The House of Raoul, 1975), based on a clinical case study from R. D. Laing's Self and Others. Ponzi then worked for a number of years in television, where he directed, among other things, a version of Henrik Ibsen's 19th-century play Hedda Gabler, and a documentary on Cinecitta. He returned to the big screen in the early 1980s with a series of light comedies featuring ex-cabaret actor (and future director) Francesco Nuti: Madonna che silenzio c'e stasera (What a Ghostly Silence There Is Tonight, 1982), Io, Chiara e lo Scuro (The Pool Hustlers, 1982), and Son contento (I'm Happy, 1983). These were followed by the family melodrama Qualcosa di biondo (Aurora by Night, 1984), which marked Sophia Loren's return to the screen after a significant absence; Il Volpone (The Big Fox, 1988), loosely based on Ben Jonson's caustic 17th-century comedy; and Volevo i pantaloni (I Wanted Trousers, 1990), the adaptation of a best-selling novel by Lara Cardella that denounced the continuing oppression of women in southern Italian families. After the porn-movie spoof Vietato ai minori (Forbidden to Minors, 1992), and the more sociologically inspired Italiani (Italians, 1996), Ponzi's most recent effort was A luci spente (With Lights Out, 2004), a film about the making of a film during the last years of World War II that fictionally recreates the events surrounding Vittorio De Sica's direction of La porta del cielo (The Gate of Heaven) in 1944.