Gianni Garko interview

Gianni Garko says "Leone westerns changed history with his talent".

 Garko is one of the best-known of the European 'gunmen'. He returns now to Almeria as a juror at the Almeria Western Film Festival held in Tabernas.

Gianni Garko is one of the stars of the Western European subgenus aka spaghetti western. He achieved success thanks to the character of Sartana, an elegant gambler with a unique personality in the welter of anti-heroes that populated the spaghetti universe, so tied to our land.

These days he revisited the natural scenes that made him an idol of western and action film fans. He is part of the jury of Almeria Western Film Festival. He participated in shooting films in the province in “Saul and David”, “Blood at Sundown”, A pair of murderers' or “Those Dirty Dogs”, among others. Now graying, but still elegant and cosmopolitan in demeanor, which served him well to enthrall movie lovers of the Western as one of its unforgettable heroes.

Q: He hasn’t spent much time in Spain since he last shot a film in Almería, how did he find the look of the province?

A: It has been a big surprise because I did not recognize it. When I came here for the first time over forty years ago I found a small town with a hotel, the Costasol, and neighborhoods ... Now it's something completely different. It has all been modernized.

Q: What about the desert? 

A: The landscape itself remains forever. The view is exactly the same that has not changed.

Q: You are Sartana, one of the most elegant heroes or antiheroes of the spaghetti western.

A: Sartana was not a cowboy, he was a gambler playing poker in the lounge. A very mysterious and elegant man because he was not only a bourgeois gunman and his appearance is still very current today. The director Gianfranco Parolini made these films with a hint of James Bond. It's a western that is quite different from the original Sergio Leone mold for this reason. Sartana has remained because he is timeless.

Q: Was Leone’s shadow or style present in the direction of his films or was he trying to provide an original vision?

A: With Sartana we wanted to make a new version of a character established by revenge but not romantically involved with the motive of revenge. This can be the novelty about the archetypes of Sergio Leone.

Q: Why now the public again admires the Western European? 

A: I do not know. We should do a sociological study. Plato said that dreaming can do everything that you cannot do in real life. As Freud said, in the dream you commit heinous actions that soothe our cravings for a life of violence. This is well within the western, currently recovers very human condition.

Q: What do you remember about filming in Almeria? 

A: The first time I came to Almería was for the filming of 'Saul and David' in 1964. A colossal movie. We were staying in the Costasol and saw a man sitting in a chair, it was Sergio Leone who was making a film of an American western imitation, “A Fistful of Dollars”. I saw a very tall gentleman with a backpack, which was Clint Eastwood. Our film, a great production, but it had no success in theaters and this little film that they did changed the history of the western. Such was his talent that with so little means his film managed to make movie history.