When Quentin Taratino introduced me to my father: The first tribute to Anthony Steffen, king of the European western [Part 1]

Manuel de Teffe

September 25, 2019

It was thanks to Quentin Tarantino that I was able to appreciate for the first time my father as Anthony Steffen on the big screen, in September 2007, when I was invited to the Venice Film Festival to present "A long row of crosses" by Sergio Garrone, during a special western retrospective that the American director and writer had wanted to shoot us in one fell swoop all his most beloved works of the genre.

Antonio de Teffé, aka Anthony Steffen, undisputed but almost forgotten king of European western cinema with 27 titles as an absolute protagonist, had died a few years earlier, in Rio de Janeiro, knocked down by an absurd evil, surrounded by a spectacular solitude, the kind of curtain that often falls as a redemptive counterpoint on those who have beaten the pieces too much to the glory of the world and then pass with affectionate ease to the dark side.

Tarantino had re-established Anthony Steffen in Venice among the unforgettable, he had forcefully snatched him from a criticism that had offended him, disappointed him and too much reduced in the eyes of the public, because he was an artist not engaged in the years of absolute commitment, and had laid him on that ideal throne that belonged to him logically. This Tarantino repositioning my father could never enjoy, and always had the strange feeling of not having done enough because he was never rewarded by the critics who praise and therefore virgin of intellectual recognition. His pride was therefore perfectly sabotaged, but this was in the end paradoxically also a good: the man, in fact, was in private life even harder than what he represented on the screen, and the criticism that did not confer cockades also gave him the opportunity to stay with his feet on the ground and cultivate his most human side.

[Sergio Garrone and Manuel de Teffé]

When in 2007 at the Venice Film Festival I took my father's place and presented Sergio Garrone's absolute masterpiece thanks to Quentin, it was Sergio Garrone himself who embraced me like a father. Emotions and colt: that summer Tarantino's simple editorial choice was enough to rehabilitate in one fell swoop the entire careers of Steffen and Garrone, a great forgotten director now ninety years old who has just embraced the American genius during the Roman premiere of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (Nemo propheta at home on steroids).

More than ten years after the tribute of Venice, finally, in collaboration with the French Artus film, I have the joy of announcing that we have managed to realize, thanks to the designer Curd Riedel who took care of all the contents, a very special tribute box set to Anthony Steffen with "W Django!", by Edward Muller, remastered in 2K: Blu Ray, DVD + a 96-page booklet that traces the artistic and human parable of a great Italian cinema, who after 67 films has decided to retire so as not to burn his retinas in the spotlight and become blind like his friend Totò. A very special long interview of mine, traces an unpublished profile of Antonio de Teffé / Anthony Steffen embellished with surreal anecdotes and photos never published, one above all those of the marriage with my radiant mother.

The book also announces the beginning of a project I am working on with great emotion as a director and writer, entitled "Django begins", which narrates the unforgettable adventures of Anthony Steffen in Almeria in 1968, a film that I first revealed to Castellari and Garrone, still in fibrillation for the project.

Born at the Brazilian embassy in Rome in Piazza Navona, Antonio de Teffé had by chance embarked on a film career as a "runner" in Bicycle Thieves by the great De Sica. Since he was a handsome and his mother had played poker a castle in Castiglion della Pescaia, and his father Manuel de Teffé my namesake, was a Brazilian car champion who did not have much time for his son, dad focused on his manly beauty to enter the world of entertainment and brand him with his presence of VIR, as he called himself.

The Western came to him like a hook from heaven when, in the mid-60s, during the crisis, including the Italian habit of jumping on the bandwagon of the winner without getting his hands dirty, Antonio de Teffé changed his name to Athony Steffen, put a hat on his head and had my mother take a black and white cowboy photo and then send it to all Roman productions. The brilliant Antonio died and a ruthless Anthony rose, disappeared de Teffé and mounted Steffen in the saddle. Succubi of a high-sounding onomatopoeia that had to hide a mysterious stellar fame, all the productions called him immediately and Dad began to shoot one western after another: so hard, that they only wanted him, so naive, that he always had to be right regardless, so much so that Leone preferred Eastwood in the end.

[Antonella Caramazza La Lomia and Antonio de Teffé]