Cinema Egzotik: The Night of Sergio Sollima
Aficionados of Cinema Egzotik will have encountered him before, the man who made the Italian Western famous next to Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Martino. To honour the director and screenwriter who died at the age of 94 on 1 July this year, Egzotik is screening two of his finest films, Face to Face (1967) and Violent City (1970) – both on 35mm –, with Gian Maria Volonté and Charles Bronson cast in the leads.
Egzotik programmer Martin Koolhoven explains: “Sollima was one of the four Sergios at the very top of the Italian genre film. Dutch viewers will perhaps best remember him for his television series Sandokan, but we will be screening his finest work. Violent City contains one of my favourite film endings ever.” Koolhoven, currently in the middle of shooting his western thriller Brimstone, is returning to the Netherlands especially for this evening in honour of Sollima.
Face to Face (Faccia a faccia) Sergio Sollima IT SP 1967 107” English spoken, no subtitles.History professor Brad Fletcher (Gian Maria Volonté) is on his way to Texas when he is taken hostage by outlaw Bennett. Brain and brawn join forces and shoot their way out of numerous scrapes, with Fletcher developing into a first-class bandit who likes to share his socio-political insights as the bullets fly past. “One violent soul is just an outlaw, a hundred are a gang but they're an army at a hundred thousand, that is the point.”
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Violent City (Città violenta) Sergio Sollima IT 1970 100” English spoken, no subtitles.Genre filmer Sollima chose Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas as each other”s opposites for his crime thriller about a professional hitman Jeff (Bronson) who wants to take revenge on his ex-girlfriend and her new lover, mafia boss Al (Savalas). Revenge comes out of the barrel of Jeff”s gun while Al loses himself in long tortuous monologues about love, marriage, fidelity and comradeship. No wonder that Jeff cuts it short: “I TOLD you I was not thirsty….”
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