Face to Face / Faccia a faccia (Sergio Sollima, 1967)

Blu-ray in August from Kino Lorber. English version (93 minutes) in HD and Italian (112 minutes) in SD.

That’s unfortunate: I would really want the Italian cut in HD if I had the choice.

yea this is an unfortunate combo :confused:

DVD beaver has a review of the US Kino BD compared with the UK Eureka DVD. it’s a shame the German Explosive DVD is not included too:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film5/blu-ray_reviews_68/face_to_face_blu-ray.htm

I was thinking about the dubbing of this one the other day. If you watch in Italian you get Volonte’s real voice but Milian dubbed. If you watch in English you get Volonte dubbed but Milian’s real voice. Either way someone is dubbed!

it’s crazy! I wanna time travel back to these people and knock their heads together and let them know how much insanity they’re causing decades down the road :slight_smile:

I finally found the time to watch my new Explosive Media Blu-ray.

It was so great to be able to watch it uncut in English with a good quality image. As expected, the places with SD image and sound are noticeably inferior, but they are not particularly jarring. I have never watched the cut English version (and doubt I ever will), but it is fascinating to note what was cut out while watching the uncut version. Some of the decisions are truly bizarre. If it doesn’t affect continuity, why cut out some great scenes/frames instead of some less good ones (reminds me of how they cut part of the cane fields sequence in The Big Gundown!).

I haven’t changed my opinion that while the theme is very interesting, visually this one is not as arresting as The Big Gundown or Run Man Run. As a result, it remains third in my rankings of Sollima’s trilogy. However, the interesting plot does make me very eager to see an original screenplay (ideally the shooting script). As Sollima has mentioned, his original cut was significantly longer than the ā€œuncutā€ version we have today, but the producers forced him to remove huge chunks of material.

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Hey guys, I’ve done a comparison report between the two versions of Face to Face. Enjoy!

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btw I am not sure if writing ā€œwith the HD transfer being taken from Kino Lorber’s releaseā€ is really correct. At least Explosive Media got its HD master from the licensor (Alberto Grimaldi), and there’s reason to suspect that that’s where Kino Lorber got it as well :wink:

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Thanks - good job!

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This is my second favourite Sollima western. However, I didn’t like some of the costumes in this film. The wigs looked ridiculous, especially on Milian, and I thought Carole AndrĆ© looked too much like Peter Pan.

I’ve heard other people mention Milian’s wig before (and I definitely agree - what was Sollima thinking?), but the Peter Pan comment is hilarious. I’m not familiar with Carole AndrĆ©, but I immediately knew who you were talking about regardless!

Haha! I can’t take her character seriously at all. There was one scene of her dancing in a dress. Why didn’t they just let her wear the dress? I know it doesn’t seem to bother too many people but the costumes are a big deal for me. Sollima said he wanted to make a serious western because he respected the American films. I’m watching her trying to get intimate with Milian and all I can think about is Neverland. By the way, I would have cut the scene of Milian dancing, too. He looked stupid enough in the wig but watching him dance added insult to injury.
I sound really negative, don’t I? :smiley: I don’t want people to think that I’m a hater of this film because I’m not. I guess I’m just disappointed with what appear to be minor but end up being major issues for me.

I wonder if there is any historical precedent for any of the costume designs? Sollima often modeled his characters on real people either simply as style references or sometimes as actual people like Charlie Siringo.

Me and my brother used to call this the " Wig" western :grinning:

Ha ha, Carole DOES look a bit like Peter Pan in the movie! She was something of a muse for Sollima - she later appeared alongside Kabir Bedi in ā€œSandokanā€ and ā€œThe Black Corsairā€. As I said in my review of the film for the Staff Favourites, her English voice actress sounds like she’s playing Scout from ā€œTo Kill a Mockingbirdā€.

Personally, I don’t mind the haircuts/wigs in ā€œFace to Faceā€ - they’re pretty cool IMO. I’m also fine with the dance scene, because I felt that it does (in the uncut version) elaborate on some of the character relationships, and it shows what kind of place Puerto del Fuego is. But again, that’s my opinion.

I’m okay with having a dancing scene, just not Milian’s dancing. :smiley: They should have left it to Nello Pazzafini.

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Good point!

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Does anyone here own Eureka Entertainment’s old DVD release? I was wanting to know about the Howard Hughes booklet that came with it, and what info it contained, as I am researching this film. Would anyone who owns the booklet be willing to provide me with some dot points on key info present in the book (such as the original 150-minute version of the film), or even scans of the booklet if possible?

Unfortunately I don’t have the DVD. However regarding the run-time he makes a brief comment in an Italian interview in ā€œAmarcordā€ (March/April 1998) saying something to the effect that while he loves the film, he looks on it with regret since he had to cut a lot from his original run-time of 2hrs and 20 minutes.

Given that the Italian release ran 112 minutes, it looks like he had to chop out 28 minutes from his desired 140 minute cut to meet the requirements.

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Neither do I (it’s still available, by the way). I guess Hughes’s booklet essay is a reworking or distillation of the chapter devoted to Faccia a faccia in his Once Upon a Time in the Italian West (pp. 170–181).