1° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Retrospettiva - Il cinema italiano che oggi ha vent'anni. Opere prime 1958-1967
Se sei vivo spara
by Giulio Questi
Country: Italy, Spain
Year: 1967
Duration: 115'
In order to attack a military wagon train loaded with gold, Oax and his outlaws make a deal with a group of Mexicans led by a half blood. After the robbery though, instead of sharing the loot, the outlaws kill all the Mexicans after making fun of them and head to the closes village to enjoy they earnings. Their gold causes the greed of two leaders of the village, Tembler the innkeeper and Acherman the hypocrite, who convince the crowd to massacre Oax and his men and then secretly share the gold. But then the arrival of some people: the half blood man, who was supposed to be dead, helped by two Native Americans who cured his wounds, and Zorro, a fierce local tyrant who demands the gold. In that complex situation, the first to pay with their lives are Tembler, his lover Florit and his son Evans, who kills himself after being imprisoned by Zorro and his cruel hit men. Then it is Acherman’s turn, he thought he could save himself by throw his wife into the mixed-race man in order to be protected from Zorro. The wife sets fire to their house, causing the death of her husband and hers, while the half blood man kills Zorro and his men.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala
Biography
film director
Giulio Questi
Giulio Questi (Bergamo, 1924), after his experience as a partisan, began to write short stories for various literary journals (including Vittorini’s “Il Politecnico); in the mid-1950s, he began working in cinema, as a documentary filmmaker (Giocare, 1957), an assistant director for Zurlini and Rosi, and an actor for Fellini in La dolce vita (1960). In 1961, he shot his first fiction film, Viaggio di nozze, an episode of Latin Lovers, and the next year he collaborated on the “mondo film” (a movie made with archival material that is deliberately shocking and offensive) Universo di notte. In 1963, he directed an episode of another collective move, Nudi per vivere, which he made with Elio Petri and Giuliano Montaldo under the pseudonym Elio Montesti; the movie was seized by the censors and was never distributed. In 1964, he directed Il passo, an episode for the film Amori pericolosi, and finally, in 1967, his first feature film: the western Django, Kill (If You Live, Shoot!), which was also seized because of explicit violence and was extensively re-edited (in 1975 it was re-released with the title Oro Hondo, in a longer but still incomplete version). In 1968, he directed A Curious Way to Love, an unsuccessful murder mystery starring Gina Lollobrigida and Jean-Louis Trintignant, and in 1972, Arcana, a surrealistic masterpiece which once again had distribution problems. He left cinema and in the 1970s and 1980s worked in television, directing works that include L’uomo della sabbia (1975), Vampirismus (1982) and Il segno del comando (1989), a remake of the tv film of the same title from 1971. Between 2003 and 2007, completely on his own, he made a series of seven experimental shorts (which were brought together in 2008 in the collection By Giulio Questi) in which he was the sole protagonist, as well as the director, screenwriter and editor. 2014 marked his debut as an author, when Einaudi published his collection of short stories Uomini e comandanti, for which he recently won the Piero Chiara literary award.
FILMOGRAFIA
Le italiane e l’amore (ep. La prima notte, coregia Marco Ferreri, Gian Vittorio Baldi, cm, 1961), Universo di notte (non accr./uncred., doc., 1962), Nudi per vivere (coregia Elio Petri, Giuliano Montaldo [Elio Montesti], 1963), Amori pericolosi (ep. Il passo, coregia Carlo Lizzani, Alfredo Giannetti, mm, 1964), Se sei vivo spara (conosciuto anche come/also known as Oro Hondo o/or Django Kill, 1967), La morte ha fatto l’uovo (1968), Arcana (1972), L’uomo della sabbia (tv, 1975), Vampirismus (tv, 1982), Quando arriva il giudice (tv, 1985), Il segno del comando (tv, 1989), Non aprire all’uomo nero (tv, 1994), Il commissario Sarti (tv, 1994), By Giulio Questi (serie di cortometraggi/short films series: Doctor schizo e Mister Phrenic, Lettera da Salamanca, Tatatatango, Mysterium Noctis, Vacanze con alice, Repressione in città, Vacanze con Alice, Visitors).
Declaration
film director
I had made an episode of Amori pericolosi, the third one, it was called Il passo (the others were by Alfredo Giannetti and Carlo Lizzani). (...)
After Il passo I got away. Ergas had failed. I worked as an actor for Germi in Signori e signore, I was the pharmacist. I came back and I had the idea of La morte ha fatto l’uovo while reading a book on a chicken farm. I started to make a schedule with Kim. A producer came, Jacovoni, who was previously related to Cervi, just out of a bad investment, while we were still working at La morte ha fatto l’uovo and said: “Giulio, you have to make a western film”. We had an idea, we put La morte ha fatto l’uovo aside and started working on Se sei vivo spara. It was a really tough work. (...)
Did you shoot it in Spain?
Yes, I did. In 1966 I went to Spain to shoot Se sei vivo spara. Kim came on set for a few days.
I thought it was your choice to make a western, but it was an on commission film. Anyway it is not an ordinary western, there is something crazy, a pop touch to the genre, don’t you think?
It was film on commission. The idea came from despair. We slipped the genre. There was a sense of manipulating the genres from a pop point of view. We were already in the dimension of La morte ha fatto l’uovo. We also thought about a psychoanalytic interpretation of the characters.
The music was by Ivan Vandor, why did you choose something so unusual for a western film?
Yes, here was Vandor as well, who had already composed the music for Il passo. Vandor was my friend, I have known him since he played jazz in Rome. I introduced him to Kim and he introduced me to Bruno Maderna, who made the music for La morte ha fatto l’uovo. (...)
La morte ha fatto l’uovo and Se sei vivo spara were the first attempts at making pop films, together with those of the same period by Tinto Brass with the deregulation of the genre, the use of a traditional one to build an ideological game on cinema. Did this operation also involve your style, maybe a certain type of editing, refined framings, willingly pop scenic designs or not?
No, we used to play on the genre, not on the style. But we were aware and the first ones to try it. We really showed off for making kitsch films. Making a thriller with a story about chickens and choose Mrs Lollobrigida as our protagonist was a kitsch operation, at the time. In those years we believed in a pop culture. We were happy for that pop discovery. They would make fun of us, not only the critics. We were out of the official cinema. As soon as you do something out of the box, you are marked.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala
Cast
& Credits
Director: Giulio Questi.
Soggetto e sceneggiatura: Franco Arcalli, Giulio Questi.
Director of photography: (techniscope, technicolor): Franco Delli Colli.
Editor: Franco Arcalli.
Music: Ivan Vandor.
Cast and characters: Tomas Milian (il mezzosangue), Marilù Tolo, Piero Lulli, Milo Quesada, Paco Sartz, Miguel Serrano, Angel Silva, Sancho Gracia, Mirella Panfili, Roberto Camardiel.
Production company: Cia Cinematografica Roma-Hispame Film Madrid.
Italian distribution: indipendenti regionali.
Soggetto e sceneggiatura: Franco Arcalli, Giulio Questi.
Director of photography: (techniscope, technicolor): Franco Delli Colli.
Editor: Franco Arcalli.
Music: Ivan Vandor.
Cast and characters: Tomas Milian (il mezzosangue), Marilù Tolo, Piero Lulli, Milo Quesada, Paco Sartz, Miguel Serrano, Angel Silva, Sancho Gracia, Mirella Panfili, Roberto Camardiel.
Production company: Cia Cinematografica Roma-Hispame Film Madrid.
Italian distribution: indipendenti regionali.
