Giulio Questi on DJANGO KILL!

From: I Made One, And To Tell the Truth I Only Like One

An interview with director Giulio Questi by Stephane Derderian

translated from the French by Alain Petit

Spaghetti Cinema # 67, July 1997

I am Giulio Questi. I was born on March 18, 1924, - Yes, I am very young! - at Bergamo, a town in the north, near Milan; very near the mountains. I was in the war of liberation [from the Fascists] for two years; I was eighteen then.

What do you think of Italian Westerns?

I never liked Italian Westerns. I made one, and to tell the truth, I only like one; the one I did.

Why did you make one?

I can't answer. They asked me to make others, but I didn't do it, because the Western genre didn't interest me. When I say I didn't like Italian Westerns, it isn't presumtion; it is personally true. When I say I only like mine, it is because I always considered it different from other Italian Westerns. For me, the Italian Western was only a way to tell stories that I had more than in the head - in the heart. I tell you again, in SE SEI VIVO SPARA, I didn't use the movie Western formula, only the look; but I wanted to recount all of the things, the cruelty, the comradary with friends, the death, all the experiences I had of war, in combat, in the mountains. SE SEI VIVO SPARA is for me an unique experiment that I can't repeat mechanically. The Italian Western didn't interest me.