But he deserves to be remembered for many other films, made in his native Italy and beyond, and covering the spectrum from international blockbusters to modestly budgeted art films.

The Ponti-Loren marriage was a glamorous union of different talents, exuding something of a whiff of sulphur in its early years especially, for being regarded as bigamous in their native Italy, until Ponti solved that problem by taking French citizenship. The marriage triumphantly survived periodic reports of strains, separations and Loren's relationships with other men.

Carlo Ponti was born in 1912 in Magenta in Lombardy, 20 kilometres west of Milan. He was educated at the University of Milan, where he took a degree in law.

After qualifying he worked at first in the office of a Milan barrister before, in 1938, going into the cinema. In the early years of the Second World War he worked in the cinema in Milan, before joining the Lux Film company in Rome. He produced a series of films featuring the comedian Totò, and after the Second World War he was associated with leading directors such as Alberto Lattuada, Luigi Zampa and Mario Camerini.

In 1950 he went into partnership with another rising producer, Dino De Laurentiis. Together they were responsible for some of the most important Italian films of the period such as Roberto Rossellini's Europa 51 (1951), Federico Fellini's poetic-realistic La Strada (1954) and Vittorio de Sica's collection of six sketches of Neapolitan life, Gold of Naples (1955).

They were also involved in such large-scale international productions as the violent historical romp Attila the Hun (1954) directed by Pietro Francisci (and starring Anthony Quinn and Loren); the Homeric saga Ulysses (1955), featuring Quinn again and Kirk Douglas; and the glamorous Italian-American screen version of Tolstoy's War and Peace (1955) directed by King Vidor, and including among its formidable array of stars Audrey Hepburn as Natasha Rostov, Herbert Lom as Napoleon, Henry Fonda as Pierre Besukhov and Anita Ekberg as his faithless first wife Helene.

In 1957 Ponti ended his association with De Laurentiis and from then on headed his own production company, working in Italy, France, Britain and Hollywood.

In the same year, in Mexico, he married Sophia Loren. They had met when he was judging a beauty contest and he had encouraged her to take part.

Determined to make her a star, he lined up several films for her, including the one that first made her reputation, Woman of the River (1955). Indeed, this frothing melodrama, from a story by Alberto Moravia, in which a peasant girl falls for a handsome smuggler, existed largely as a showcase for the abundant charms of Ponti's new star.

Ponti's divorce from his first wife, Giuliana Fiastri, whom he had married in 1946, was not, however, recognised in Italy and in 1962 he was committed for trial, in his absence, on a bigamy charge. The case dragged on for several years before he was finally acquitted, and as a result of it he decided to become a French citizen in 1964. He was remarried to Loren in a civil ceremony by the Mayor of Sèvres in April 1966.

Ponti's later career as a film producer was largely devoted to furthering the reputation of Loren, and he chose many of his projects with her in mind. One of the most successful was Two Women (1960), directed by Vittorio de Sica, and based on the Moravia novel La Ciociara, which depicts a mother and daughter in flight through war ravaged Italy and their attempt to build their lives after being raped by invading troops.

For her splendidly luminous performance as the mother who has to try to help her daughter come to terms with their horrific experience, Loren became the first actress to win an Oscar for a film not in the English language.

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