Celebrity Biographies
Sergio Sollima
Along with Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima formed the trio known to spaghetti-western fans as “The Three Sergios.” The last survivor of the trio only directed three titles of this subgenre, but very well-rounded ones. He lavished little, since he only has 14 feature films, but he achieved enormous success in many European countries and especially in Spain with the 70’s miniseries “Sandokán”. The filmmaker died in Rome on July 1, 2015 at the age of 94.
Also born in the Italian capital in 1921, Sergio Sollima graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the prestigious school where Michelangelo Antonioni and Marco Bellocchio , among others, also came from. He worked as a film critic, before specializing in scriptwriting for titles such as Persiane chiuse ( Luigi Comencini , 1951), a drama about the underworld of prostitution in Turin.
He made his debut as a director with one of the four short stories in L’amore difficile (1962), and now on his own, he signed with the pseudonym Simon Sterling, some spy films such as 3s3 special agent (1966) and Agent 3s3 , passport to hell , poor but hard-fought imitations of the James Bond saga. He recovered his real name with Consigna. Tanger 67 , another of these secret agent tapes.
His first spaghetti western was the excellent The Falcon and the Prey (1967), with great roles by Lee Van Cleef , Thomas Milian , and Nieves Navarro , and a brilliant score by Ennio Morricone . The sequel, Corre Cuchillo Corre , from 1968, was not long in coming. She repeated with Milian and Morricone in another of his best works within the genre, Face to Face , with a history teacher taken hostage by an outlaw.
He changed register with the Italian-style thriller, or ‘poliziesco’ starring Charles Bronson Violent City , from 1970. In this area he was responsible for titles such as El cerebro del mal and Revolver .
Above all, he dazzled the children of the 70s, who still remember ‘the leap of the tiger’, with Sandokán , the miniseries that adapted the adventures of the character created by Emilio Salgari . He made a celebrity out of Kabir Bedi , the leading man. Already specialized in productions for the small screen, Sergio Sollima said goodbye as a director with a sequel to the adventures of the Malay prince, Il Figlio di Sandokan , where in 1998 Bedi repeated as the character, while Marco Bonini gave life to his son . The filmmaker himself also had a son who continued in his footsteps, the director Stefano Sollima, who has been lavished on successful series such as Criminal Rome andGomorrah. The series .