And he described the initial distribution 1 He recalled the postsynchronization of the film-the shooting script had somehow been mislaid in all the excitement-and the shaping of the release print. He reminisced to me about Sergio Leone’s fateful visit, with his wife Carla, to the Arlecchino Cinema in Rome in autumn 1963, to see Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which had been made in Japan a couple of years before about the casting of Clint Eastwood, his arrival in Rome, and the choice of locations in Spain for The Mysterious Stranger. Until then, I had assumed that the directors of Italian-Spanish Westerns in the 1960s tended to be hardened professionals who had worked their way up in the industry since the glory days of “Hollywood on the Tiber” Valerii was clearly an exception. It was a surprise to discover that he was a graduate of film school, CSC in Rome, and that he had studied under the distinguished veteran director Alessandro Blasetti. When we did meet, in a hotel foyer, I found him to be a well-informed, cultured, articulate filmmaker-not an extrovert or an ego-tripper-with clear memories of the period of 1963 to 1973 and a quietly forceful way of expressing them. But I had never met him face to face before Udine. I had researched and prepared an interview with Valerii, which had been filmed for the BBC television documentary Viva Leone! first broadcast in the year Sergio Leone died, in 1989. So he had been intimately involved in Leone’s working life during those crucial years, and had experienced it first-hand. After all, Tonino Valerii had worked for Jolly Film/Unidis as head of the editorial department-as the whole of the editorial department, actually-while Leone was preparing Ray the Magnificent or The Mysterious Stranger (later renamed Fistful of Dollars) he was involved in post-production on that film he was Leone’s assistant director on For a Few Dollars More and took part in early preparations for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly-plus he directed My Name Is Nobody, Sergio Leone’s first film as a producer.
Some of the Westerns Tonino Valerii had directed in the 1960s-notably Day of Anger (1967), with its classic rifle-loading duel on horseback-were prominently featured in the Festival, and I took the opportunity to interview him at length as part of the research for my biography of Sergio Leone.
In my presentation I tried to persuade the audience that “Spaghetti Westerns” was intended as a term of endearment-but opinions were still divided, especially among Italian film students. Saverio Marconi 175 Franco Nero 177 Pasquale Rachini 178 Beatrice Ring 180 Bud Spencer 184 Bo Svenson 185 Pamela Villoresi 186įoreword CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING I first met Tonino Valerii during a Festival of “Euro-Westerns” at Udine in April 1997 one of the reasons the organizers had called them “Euro-Westerns” was to get away from the phrase “Spaghetti Westerns” which they thought was a put-down. Forest Gianni Garko Giuliano Gemma George Hilton Peter Hooten Marco Leonardi Roberto Leoni The Naked Charm of the BourgeoisieĪppendix: Interviews Andy J. Childhood, Vocation and Early Experiences McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 Table of Contents Foreword by Christopher Frayling
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Front cover: United States movie poster for Day of Anger (1967) Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-6468-2 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-2618-5 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina Tonino Valerii The Films ROBERTO CURTI Foreword by Christopher Frayling Afterword by Ernesto Gastaldi Twilight’s Last Gleamings.Īfterword by Ernesto Gastaldi.ĪLSO BY ROBERTO CURTI AND FROM MCFARLAND Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957–1969 (2015) Italian Crime Filmography, 1968–1980 (2013) The Naked Charm of the Bourgeoisie.įourteen. Childhood, Vocation and Early Experiences.