Each year, the Cannes Film Festival‘s lineup of classic films allows those on the Croisette to catch up with old favorites, often in newly restored editions, and this year is no different. The lineup includes films by Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, Jean Renoir, Wim Wenders, Francois Truffaut, Krzysztof Kieślowski and more, but one filmmaker in particular will get a boost by Quentin Tarantino.
Sergio Leone‘s restored “A Fistful Of Dollars” will screen on Saturday, May 24th, after the awards are handed out at Cannes, and on hand will be Tarantino himself to host the screening and share his love of the director. Tarantino has never been shy about the debt he owes to Leone, whose style is clearly imprinted on such films as “Django Unchained” and “Inglourious Basterds,” and it should make for quite an event for those in the south of France.
The Cannes Film Festival runs from May 14-25. Press release below.
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Quentin Tarantino to close the Festival de Cannes with a celebration of the life and work of Sergio Leone. A Fistful of Dollars by Sergio Leone will be screened at the Awards Ceremony on Saturday 24th May.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Spaghetti Western in 1964, the Festival de Cannes will be showing A Fistful of Dollars directed by Sergio Leone that same year and starring Clint Eastwood and Gian Maria Volontè. The film will be screened on Saturday 24th May, after the prizes have been awarded, using the exceptional new copy restored by the Cineteca di Bologna.
The event will be hosted by Quentin Tarantino, a great admirer of Sergio Leone, who has always been open about how much his own film making owes to the influence of the Western’s great Italian masters.
The restoration of A Fistful of Dollars was undertaken by the Cineteca di Bologna and Unidis Jolly Film (the film’s original producer and distributor) with the involvement of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation. The work was carried out by the Immagine Ritrovata film restoration laboratory. The original Techniscope camera negative was digitised by immersion and restored to 4K resolution. Cinematographer Ennio Guarneri oversaw the digital calibration and a period copy printed in Technicolor was used as a visual reference. The digital restoration of the sound was achieved with two optical negatives of the English version owned by Unidis Jolly Film and MGM, remixed with two separate magnetic sets that contained the original pre-mixes of the music and the effects.
The screening is made possible thanks to the beneficiaries: the Paladino family and Unidis Jolly Film. Special thanks go to the Leone family.
