Sollima graduated from the
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1935. During World War II he was in the
Italian Resistance. After the war, he gradually progressed from working as a film critic to screenwriting to becoming a director Like many Italian
cult directors, Sollima started his career as a screenwriter in the 1950s and wrote many
peplum films in the 1960s. He made his directing debut doing one of the four sequences in the
anthology film Of Wayward Love. Sollima filmed three
Eurospy films and then moved to
spaghetti westerns.
The Big Gundown (starring
Lee Van Cleef and
Tomas Milian) was released in 1966 with big success, despite the fact that it had to compete with
Sergio Leone's
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and
Sergio Corbucci's
Django. Sollima soon filmed two more westerns.
Face to Face (Milian and
Gian Maria Volonté) was released in 1967 and
Run, Man, Run! (Milian) in 1968. Although Sollima directed only three westerns and they never reached the level of popularity as the ones by the other Sergios (Leone and Corbucci), each of them is highly regarded among genre enthusiasts. In 1970, Sollima switched genres again and directed the
Charles Bronson and
Telly Savalas starred
Violent City, which was one of the first violent and fast-paced Italian
crime films often known as
poliziotteschi. Like for all of his westerns, the soundtrack was provided by
Ennio Morricone. Sollima's last well-known film is
Revolver, a poliziotteschi film starring
Oliver Reed and
Fabio Testi. Sollima directed the six-part Italian TV series
Sandokan starring
Kabir Bedi with several
feature films spun off the series. ==Selected filmography==