Violent City

Violent City (Italian: Città violenta), also known as The Family, is a 1970 Italian-French film directed by Sergio Sollima and starring Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland and Telly Savalas. Set and shot in the city of New Orleans, the film is an urban crime thriller with a plot of hitman revenge.[1][2]

Città violenta
Cover of the DVD release
Directed bySergio Sollima
Produced byArrigo Colombo
Giorgio Papi
Screenplay bySauro Scavolini
Gianfranco Galligaric
Lina Wertmüller
Sergio Sollima
Story byDino Maiuri
Massimo De Rita
StarringCharles Bronson
Telly Savalas
Jill Ireland
Umberto Orsini
Michel Constantin
Music byEnnio Morricone
CinematographyAldo Tonti
Edited byNino Baragli
Production
company
Unidis
Fono Roma
Universal France
Distributed byUniversal (Italy)
International Coproductions (US)
Release date
  • 17 September 1970 (1970-09-17)
Running time
100 minutes
CountryItaly
France
LanguageEnglish
Italian

Plot

The film opens with professional assassin Jeff Heston (Charles Bronson) and mistress Vanessa (Jill Ireland) pursued mercilessly while holidaying in the Virgin Islands. Jeff is shot and left for dead, while Vanessa runs off with his shooter and former business associate Coogan. After his release from prison on a framed murder charge, Jeff tracks the pair to New Orleans. However, after taking revenge on his betrayer and reuniting with Vanessa, Jeff is blackmailed by the very crime boss (Telly Savalas) who framed him, took Vanessa as his mob wife, and who is now intent on having him join his organisation.[3] When Jeff refuses, he is hunted through an unforgiving city only to discover that his real enemy is closer than he realised.

Release and reception

The film was a commercial hit,[4] and one of Sergio Sollima's more political films, and less successful than the director's earlier Spaghetti Westerns.[5] It was released just as Bronson was emerging from his career as a character actor into a period of stardom as a leading man.[6] That transition was ultimately effected by the success of his later films for United Artists beginning in 1972, and greater fame with Paramount's Death Wish (1974), and during this era Città violenta received distribution in the United States first by International Co-Productions, and later in even wider release by UA, and retitled The Family.[4] By the time of its domestic release, UA edited some eight minutes from the Italian version. Only in recent years has this footage been restored by Anchor Bay Entertainment for DVD issue. In a review of the 2008 DVD release, Slant Magazine singled out the opening car chase sequence for praise, claiming that it almost outdoes those of Bullitt and The French Connection "by staging its engine-revving, pedestrian-dodging antics not on the wide streets of American cities but, rather, the narrow, winding pathways (and, in one case, staircases) of a Caribbean island."[3]

Influence

Danish film director, Nicolas Winding Refn has cited Violent City as one of his favorite Italian genre films.[7]

American film director Quentin Tarantino used samples from the film's Ennio Morricone score in his 2012 film Django Unchained.[8]

See also

References
  1. Hughes, Howard (2006). Crime Wave. London: I. B. Tauris. p. xx. ISBN 1-84511-219-9.
  2. Frayling, Christopher (1981). Spaghetti Westerns. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 95. ISBN 0-7100-0503-2.
  3. Henderson, Eric (March 23, 2008). "Violent City". Slant Magazine.
  4. Talbot, Paul (2006). Bronson's Loose!. United States: iUniverse, Inc. p. 27. ISBN 0-595-37982-6.
  5. Hughes, Howard (2006). Once upon a Time in the Italian West. London: I. B. Tauris. p. 181. ISBN 1-85043-896-X.
  6. Hendrix, Grady (March 25, 2008). "Fun With the Human Testosterone Shot". New York Sun. Retrieved 2008-09-30.
  7. http://twitchfilm.com/2010/05/a-conversation-with-nicolas-winding-refn.html
  8. http://wiki.tarantino.info/index.php/Django_Unchained_complete_soundtrack_list_with_movie_references
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