Sergio Sollima was born on April 27, 1921, in Rome, Italy. He began his career as a film critic before transitioning into the movie industry as a screenwriter. Sollima wrote scripts for Italian-produced "sword-and-sandal" fantasy sagas and worked as an assistant director for various film directors.
Sollima's early writing career includes penning scripts for films such as Ursus (1961),Goliath contro i giganti (1961),and I dieci gladiatori (1963). He also worked on pepla, a subgenre of Italian fantasy films, and directed action scenes as an 2nd unit director.
Sollima is best known for directing a few Spaghetti Westerns, alongside Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci. He excelled at a number of different genres, including spy films, and wrote the scripts for the first two films in the Agent 3S3 series.
Sollima's third spy film, Requiem per un agente segreto (1966),was a more ambitious project that reworked the James Bond formula. He portrayed the Italian spy Bingo as a cold and sadistic thug, deviating from the suave and sophisticated exterior of Bond.
The following year, Sollima made La resa dei conti (1966),which is considered one of the best Italo Western films ever. The film transcended the traditional limits of the genre by capitalizing on the political aspects of the story. Sollima compared the central clash of the story to an American soldier against a Viet Cong or a British Army officer against an African native youth.
Sollima's next Western was Faccia a faccia (1967),which he claims is his personal favorite. The film was born from the idea that people change from good to bad or bad to good when they find themselves in exceptional circumstances.
Sollima's final Western was Corri uomo corri (1968),which was an indirect sequel to La resa dei conti. The film featured Tomas Milian returning to his role as Cuchillo, but did not match the popularity of the first film.
Sollima's next picture was Città violenta (1970),which transported the themes and concerns of his Westerns to an urban contemporary setting in Milan, Italy. The film featured Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, and Telly Savalas in a complex and serpentine story of betrayal and brutal vengeance.
Despite its commercial success, Sollima had grown tired of staging elaborate action scenes and directed the low-key, psychological mystery Il diavolo nel cervello (1972). He clashed with his producers who wanted to market the film as a fast-paced giallo, and later blamed the misleading advertising for the film's disappointing box office returns.
Sollima returned to directing crime thrillers with Revolver (1973),which starred Oliver Reed and Fabio Testi. The film transported the basic premise and character of The Big Showdown to a modern urban setting, and added a darker spin to the classic story of corruption and betrayal.
Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Sollima worked almost exclusively for television, finding success with a mini-series of feature films based on the pulp fiction novels by Emilio Salgari. He briefly returned to the big screen with directing a feature film of the Sandokan series and then directed the action thriller Berlin '39 (1993).
Sollima's latest TV film series, "Il figlio di Sandokan" (1998),never aired, after which he retired from filmmaking at the age of 77. Sergio Sollima died on July 1, 2015, at the age of 94, due to undisclosed causes.
