The Big Gundown
| The Big Gundown | |
|---|---|
US theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Sergio Sollima |
| Produced by | Alberto Grimaldi |
| Screenplay by |
Sergio Donati Sergio Sollima |
| Story by |
Franco Solinas Fernando Morandi |
| Starring |
Lee Van Cleef Tomas Milian Walter Barnes |
| Music by | Ennio Morricone |
| Cinematography | Carlo Carlini |
| Edited by | Gaby Peñalba |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | PEA (Italy) Regia Films Arturo González (Spain) Columbia Pictures (USA) |
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Release date
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29 November 1966 (Spain) 3 March 1967(Italy) 21 August 1968 (USA) |
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Running time
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110 minutes 89 minutes (US, theatrical) 95 minutes (US, Blu-ray/DVD) |
| Country | Italy Spain United States |
| Language | Italian English |
| Box office | 1.441 billion ITL (Italy) |
The Big Gundown (Italian: La resa dei conti, lit. The Settling of Scores) is a 1966 Italian Spaghetti Western film, co-written by long-time Sergio Leone collaborator Sergio Donati, directed by Sergio Sollima, and starring Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian. It was originally released by Columbia Pictures in the US as a double feature with A Time for Killing.
Some critics, such as Leonard Maltin, consider the film one of the finest spaghetti westerns, second only to Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy. It was the first film Van Cleef made following The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and was his first leading man or hero role. Tomas Milian played Cuchillo, a charming rogue accused of rape and murder. Run, Man, Run! (1968) was a sequel which brought back Milian without Van Cleef.
It was important to Sergio Sollima that he tell a classic tale of a rich corrupt politician vs. a poor misunderstood peasant/scapegoat as a way of addressing the age old subject that, being Italian, he knew quite well living under the dictatorship of Mussolini during World War II. This film would actually share more with Leone's opus Once Upon a Time in the West than the Eastwood pictures. Each focuses on the modernizing of the West and the corrupt, rich businessmen that manipulated and used the poor. The film was shot in Almería, Spain, where many famous Italian Westerns were filmed.
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Wikipedia