Early life
Pontecorvo, born in Pisa, was the son of a wealthy secular Italian Jewish family. His father was a businessman. Gillo's siblings included brothers Bruno Pontecorvo, later an internationally acclaimed nuclear physicist and one of the so-called Via Panisperna boys, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1950; Guido Pontecorvo, a geneticist who settled in Britain; Paolo [Poli] Pontecorvo, an engineer who worked on radar after World War II; and Giovanni. Their sisters were Giuliana (m. Talbet); Laura (m. Coppa); and Anna (m. Newton).
Pontecorvo studied chemistry at the University of Pisa, but dropped out after passing just two exams. There he first became aware of opposition political forces, and first encountered leftist students and professors. In 1938, faced with growing antisemitism in Italy with the rise of Fascists, he followed his elder brother Bruno to Paris, where he found work in journalism and as a tennis instructor.
In Paris, Pontecorvo became involved in the film world, and began by making a few short documentaries. He became an assistant to Joris Ivens, a Dutch documentary filmmaker and well-known Marxist, whose films include Regen and The Bridge. He also assisted Yves Allégret, a French director known for his work in the film noir genre, whose films include Une si jolie petite plage and Les Orgueilleux. In addition to these influences, Pontecorvo began meeting people who broadened his perspectives, among them artist Pablo Picasso, composer Igor Stravinsky and political thinker Jean-Paul Sartre. During this time Pontecorvo developed his political ideals. He was moved when many of his friends in Paris packed up to go and fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1941, Pontecorvo joined the Italian Communist Party. He traveled to northern Italy to help organize Anti-Fascist partisans. Going by the pseudonym Barnaba, he became a leader of the Resistance in Milan from 1943 until 1945.
After the war, he coedited the weekly communist magazine, Pattuglia, with Dario Volari between 1948 and 1950. Pontecorvo broke ties with the Communist party in 1956 after the Soviet intervention to suppress the Hungarian uprising. He did not, however, renounce his dedication to Marxism.
In a 1983 interview with The Guardian, Pontecorvo said, "I am not an out-and-out revolutionary. I am merely a man of the Left, like a lot of Italian Jews."
