Wednesday – Today’s proceedings started with Sergio
Sollima’s masterly ‘The Big Gundown’, with Lee Van Cleef and Tomás Milian, on
which I had to pass, having made a loose appointment to interview Sergio Donati
at yesterday’s press conference. Donati, who co-wrote ‘The Big Gundown’ with
Sollima, turned up at the screening with every intention of watching it again,
but when I explained that I would have to leave for another interview before
the movie ended, he very kindly agreed to give it a miss too, saying with a
smile, “It’s okay, I know the story.†He did, however, ask to watch the opening
credit sequence before we left. Was this an example of a screenwriter, even
forty-one years after the event, just wanting to make absolutely sure that, no,
he hadn’t been screwed out his screen credit, or just a tribute to the film’s
wonderful titles and Morricone’s great score? Quien sabe, hombre?
Anyway, we spoke for the best part of an hour, and needless
to say, it was fascinating, not least because Donati is highly intelligent,
witty, and doesn’t speak in soundbites. As it would be impossible, as well as
bad manners, to try to summarise his responses in the context of an on-line
interview, we’ll have to leave it there for now. But did you know that Jason
Robards, while working on ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’, heard of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, he
proceeded to drink the bars of AlmerÃa dry, telling anyone who’d listen that he
was sick of living in a country where such things could happen, and that he
wanted out? And that the next day, Robards arrived on the set and personally
apologised to everyone present for his behaviour? Nice story, don’t you think?
Jason Robards in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West
Thursday
3:00 p.m. For the Spaghetti Western
posse, the day started with a press conference for the official launch of Spaghetti
Western: The Secret History of Italian Cinema 4, overseen by Festival
chairman, Davide Croff, and the co-curators, Marco Giusti and Manlio Gomarasca.
The guest line-up was comprised of Franco Nero, Sergio Donati, and Tonino
Valerii, with American director Eli Roth, and New York Times film critic
Elvis Mitchell, also on hand. After Manlio had described the Spaghetti Western
as, “the Italian genre which most contributed to change in worldwide cinema,â€
Nero spoke with passion about the Western and its continuing importance: “No
male actor in the world doesn’t want to play in Westerns. Westerns were often
A-movies in America, but B-movies in Italy. But these B-movies paid for all the
auteur films. When I travelled to Japan and South America, in the hotel
registers, they would just write “Django†. . . So I say it is a mistake not to
make Westerns today, look at the worldwide sales of DVDs... To make Westerns
in the Seventies’ style is a good idea. Westerns are something mythical,
legendary.â€
.
He
recalled the great Sergio Corbucci, calling him, “an under-appreciated director
in the true sense of the word, like Tonino Valerii. They really are sound
directors who get the best out of a story.†He then told his anecdote about
Corbucci’s legendary sense of fun, in which, during the filming of the title
scene of Django, Corbucci told Nero to walk past the camera, pulling his
iconic coffin, and to keep going until they had enough footage and Corbucci
shouted “Cutâ€. Nero duly obliged, trudging on and on through the mud, the
coffin getting heavier and heavier, wondering when on earth Corbucci would be
satisfied. Eventually, having had enough, he stopped and looked back. There was
no one in sight; Corbucci had told the crew to pack up and leave as soon as
Nero was out of earshot. . . . Corbucci, he added, ‘would arrive on the set and
ask, “How many are we going to kill today? Ten? Twenty?†. . . I really miss
him.’
Valerii,
after giving a quick account of how he came to make his first film, Taste
for Killing, in 1966, mainly talked about the making of A Reason to
Live, a Reason to Die, and his comments would be best read in conjunction
with the report on that film.