Day of Anger
Like the thrilling genre it identifies, the term "spaghetti western" has steadily gained in esteem and sympathy. Born in the mid-1960s, the Italian Western is a universe in its own right, whose cinematic language, anarchic tone and spectacular iconography have had a considerable impact. Presented in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal, this cycle brings together the must-see films of the "three Sergios" (Leone, Corbucci, Sollima) and a diverse selection of films by the main directors of the period. It's an opportunity to grasp the richness of a genre whose stylistic beauty is matched only by the dirtiness of its protagonists, and which has managed to be alternately irreverent and lyrical, funny and violent, bon-vivant and political, dark and luminous. The versions presented have been chosen on the basis of elements such as language (all these films were dubbed, so there is no single "original" version), complete editing and recent restorations.
An ace gunman takes under his wing the son of a prostitute who is the whipping boy of the local notables, and leads him to seek revenge. Tonino Valerii reunites two stars of the genre, Lee van Cleef and Giuliano Gemma, in this film with a remarkable sense of storytelling, and re-uses some of the sets from And for a Few Dollars More. As in Leone's film, Lee Van Cleef continues to excel in the role of an elder and mentor with secret motivations, but darker this time - a type of character he also played the same year in Giulio Petroni's Death Rides a Horse. Unusually, the unforgettable score is not by Ennio Morricone, but by Riz Ortolani.
Tonino Valerii
Born in 1934 in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Tonino Valerii studied cinema and started out as a scriptwriter. Then Sergio Leone offered him the position of assistant director on the set of his first two westerns, For a Fistful of Dollars and And for a Few Dollars More. Valerii then moved on to directing, with his first western, Per il gusto di uccidere, in which the influence of his mentor is evident. His second film, Day of Anger, is a masterstroke that reveals his talent as a filmmaker and his particular style within the genre, blending psychological finesse with raw violence. In the years that followed, Valerii also explored other genres, such as erotic drama and giallo. In 1973, he filmed My Name is Nobody, based on an idea by Sergio Leone, a magnificent tribute to the Western and the legends of both the West and cinema, at a time when the Italian Western genre was coming to an end.
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