Director Marco Bellochio was off to a swimming start when he debuted his feature Fists in the Pocket in 1965 and earned himself a Silver Sail award at the esteemed Locarno Festival later that year. The film is a study of the destructive tensions within an epileptic middle-class family set in a tiny provincial town with Colombian born actor Lou Castel as the hyper-neurotic murderous brother. His follow up La Cina e vicina (China is Near) in 1966 once again focuses on the familial theme, satirizing the political state of Italy and not even sparing the Marxists with whom Bellochio's own sympathies lay. 1971's In The Name of the Father used a Jesuit school to stand for the ills of society. Salta nel vuoto (A Leap In The Dark,1980) was yet another claustrophobic examination of family life, concentrating on the enigmatic relationship of a middle-aged brother and sister. Gli occhi, la bocca (The Eyes, the Mouth,1982) would form a long-delayed and none too satisfactory sequel to the superior Fists in the Pocket.
Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006) also a Marxist, was more concerned with the politics of public life. In Kapo (1960), a young Jewess becomes an overseer in a concentration camp. Battle of Algiers (1966) commemorates the early days of the Algerian fight for independence from the French, employing a semi-documentary style and making a meal out of the massive cooperation from the Algerian government and the people of the Casbah, who had lived through the events that were recreated so faithfully on the screen. Queimada (1969) again depicts the anti-colonialist struggle, this time set on a fictional Caribbean island, with Marlon Brando giving a potent performance as an aristocratic British agent provocateur.