The Sicilian
Short description
The Sicilian tells the story of Salvatore Giuliano, a bandit in 1940s Sicily who robs wealthy landowners and gives the money to poor peasants, earning him comparisons to Robin Hood. He leads a populist campaign for Sicilian independence, placing him in conflict with the Church, the Mafia, the landed gentry and the Italian state. As his fame spreads, his own sense of self-importance grows, and he becomes a symbolic figure in a struggle far larger than himself.
Michael Cimino directed the film, the fifth of the seven features listed for him, arriving between Year of the Dragon and Desperate Hours. Steve Shagan and Gore Vidal wrote the screenplay, and the cast includes Christophe Lambert as Giuliano, Terence Stamp, Joss Ackland, John Turturro, Richard Bauer and Barbara Sukowa, among sixty credited performers. The production had a budget of nine million dollars.
The film drew little commercial or critical success. Its worldwide box office of five million dollars fell well short of its budget, and it holds a rating of 5.4 from around 5,800 votes on IMDb and 5.2 from roughly 150 votes on TMDB. A critics' rating of 4 out of 10 from about twenty reviews sits close to those audience scores, indicating broad agreement rather than division.
What's left behind the scenes
- The full version runs for 146 minutes.
- Once filming was completed, Michael Cimino (1939-2016) began editing the footage. He didn't tell anyone how it was progressing until, several months later, he announced that he was finished and presented what he called the final version of the film, lasting 150 minutes. However, his contract stipulated that he was allowed to release a director's cut of up to 120 minutes. Cimino stated that it was simply impossible to cut anything further and insisted that producers David Begelman (1921-1995) and Bruce McNall present the resulting film to 20th Century Fox, the film's distributor in the United States. Before the screening began, the studio executives told Begelman and McNall that the film's length would limit the number of showings per day in theaters and that the film absolutely had to be cut. The producers relayed the studio's request to Cimino, who exploded, saying he had already cut it down for six months and that it was simply impossible to cut it any further. When the producers said there must be some way to shorten the film to the required length, Cimino replied sarcastically, “Cut it, you say? Well, if you say so!” A few days later, the director provided a new version of the film from which he had cut all the action scenes. According to McNall, “According to the script, the wedding scene was supposed to be followed by a scene of an attack on the wedding. But what Cimino brought was the wedding, and immediately following it, a scene in the hospital where all these people in formal wear were being treated for their injuries. He cut out all the shooting.” Begelman didn't even wait for the screening to end; he immediately called Cimino, who simply replied that since his contract specified a film length of 120 minutes, what he had provided should be satisfactory.
- Some changes to the script were made by Gore Vidal (1925-2012), but they went unnoticed. Vidal sued screenwriter Steve Shagan (1927-2015) and the Writers Guild of America, and eventually won the case.
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