Johnny Hamlet
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.
The prolific Enzo G. Castellari (Keoma) directs here a free adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, transposed to the end of the American Civil War, hence the English title Johnny Hamlet. The film stands out for its dreamlike theatricality. It was Sergio Corbucci (Django, The Great Silence) who first had the initial idea of adapting Hamlet into a Western.
Enzo G. Castellari
Born in 1938 under the name Enzo Girolami, Castellari was the son of director Marino Girolami, and was introduced to the world of cinema as a child. He worked in a variety of on-set professions (scriptwriter, production assistant, assistant director) before moving into directing with the highly successful spaghetti western Je vais, je tire et je reviens. He then made a series of westerns before moving on to other genres, from war films to crime films to giallo. In 1976, just as the period of the spaghetti western seemed to be over, he signed Keoma, a kind of swan song for the genre. From the late 1970s to the 1990s, he made his mark in a variety of B-movie , from poliziotteschi to post-apocalyptic films, where he stood out for his directing of action scenes.
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