Sergio Corbucci on The Specialists

Sergio Corbucci on The Specialists
Sergio Corbucci on The Specialists

Here’s a little article I found in L’unita from March 20th 1970.

“I’m inviting the public not to go and see Gli specialisti because most people will not recognise it as my film.” So said director Sergio Corbucci explaining how he feels after the distributors cut some scenes for his new film.

“The film,” he continued, “Now lasts ten minutes less. Following the cuts some situations in the story and the presence of certain characters are unintelligeable. The owner of the distributor, Magna Film, cut those sequences so that it could be certified to show to minors aged fourteen and over rather than those over eighteen, as was the first decision of the censorship committee.”

The director added that he had not been approached by the distributor, saying, “He was surprised when I sent them a protest telegram”.

About Matt Blake 890 Articles
The WildEye is a blog dedicated to the wild world of Italian cinema (and, ok, sometimes I digress into discussing films from other countries as well). Peplums, comedies, dramas, spaghetti westerns... they're all covered here.

2 Comments

  1. Interesting article Matt. I guess this practice of cutting films to suit specific audiences or age groups has been going on for sometime both in the U.S. and Europe. I wonder if during later contract negotiations the final approval by the director didn’t come up. During these years is when art became business and the producers and distributors became the final word on what was released to the public.

  2. I think the power of the distributors in Italian cinema is much under-acknowledged. Many of the casting decisions and final cut approvals weren’t down so much to the producers – who always got the grief – but the distributors. I remember reading, for instance, that the reason Klaus Kinski was cast so often in Spaghetti Westerns wasn’t particularly because producers went after him, but because the distributors would pay more up front if he was involved (distributors paid a lump sum before a film was made, so their input decided what the final budget would be). Having someone like Kinski, who was seen as being an exportable name, could increase the budget by 25% or so.

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