Texas, Adios
Texas, Adios is a 1966 Italian-Spanish spaghetti Western film co-written and directed by Ferdinando Baldi and starring Franco Nero, Alberto Dell'Acqua, José Suárez and Elisa Montés.
Arriving shortly after Django, and featuring some of the same team but a different director, it ditches much of the former's European idiosyncrasies. Instead, it opts for a more classical, Hollywood-inspired approach that has been likened, including by Nero himself, to the films of Gary Cooper. Perhaps for this reason, it is not as widely remembered as its predecessor, although it was a commercial success at the time.
Synopsis
A two-fisted and taciturn Texas sheriff, Burt Sullivan, is a man committed to duty and justice but possessed by a desire for revenge. Sullivan, along with his younger brother Jim, crosses the border to bring wealthy and sadistic Mexican crime boss Cisco Delgado to justice for the murder of their father. Eventually joining forces with a group of Mexican revolutionaries, Burt and Jim soon find themselves at the center of a bloodbath.Cast
Production
Development
Texas, Adios was the second film in a planned three-picture contract between star Franco Nero and Manolo Bolognini's B.R.C. Produzione Film of Rome, after the highly influential Django. It was co-produced with Estela Films of Madrid, a joint venture between Eduardo Manzanos Brochero and Jorge Tusell which partnered on other notable Westerns of the era like Seven Guns for the MacGregors. Although only about three months elapsed between his two films for Bolognini, Nero still found time to star in Massacre Time, another Western whose story has been compared to that of Texas, Adios.According to film historian Marco Giusti, making the film a Django sequel was considered. It was offered to Django helmer Sergio Corbucci, who turned it down. A young Ruggero Deodato, who had been Corbucci's assistant on Navajo Joe and Django, saw the project as a potential career booster and lobbied hard to direct it, but Bolognini ultimately chose Ferdinando Baldi, who was a friend of his. Baldi had almost directed Django, when Corbucci had second thoughts about doing it. This was his first Western as a director. It was announced in the Italian trade press right as production commenced.
Filming
The film was shot in April and May 1966. Baldi was a quick, no-frills craftsman, forcing producer Bolognini to stay on set and order more takes, as he feared the director would miss some technical details that were crucial to the Western genre. Renzo Rosselini was asked by Baldi to be his assistant; he accepted as a friendly gesture and for the fun of working on a Western. Although Corbucci was absent, other crew members did return from Django, such as cinematographer Enzo Barboni, stunt coordinator Remo De Angelis and costume designer Giancarlo Simi. During the shoot, Barboni, who aspired to direct, tried to pitch a more comedic take on the Western to Nero, who was not interested. It would become the runaway hit They [Call Me Trinity] a few years later.The shoot took place in Spain and Italy. Spanish locations encompassed various locations in the Community of Madrid and the Tabernas Desert in the province of Almería. Nero sometimes socialized with Clint Eastwood, who was shooting The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Almería, and several supporting actors appeared in both films. A few more locations were found in the vicinity of Rome. Studio scenes were also shot in Rome, at Cinecittà and Elios Studios for the Mexican village lot. By the time of filming, Nero's career had changed course, and was Hollywood-bound to play Lancelot in Camelot. Director Joshua Logan called him regularly to urge him to stay away from physical scenes, so as to not endanger his participation in his own film.
Immediately after wrapping up his part, Nero moved on to Camelot. Some of the principals did not provide their own voice, even in their native language, a common occurrence in European genre films at the time. Nero and Dell'Acqua were respectively voiced in Italian by Enrico Maria Salerno and :it:Massimo Turci, and Montés was voiced in Spanish by Lola Cervantes. Suárez did voice himself in Spanish.
Release
At the start of production, Texas, Adios was announced for Italian release on 2 September 1966 through Euro International Films, but it was moved up slightly to 26 August. It came fairly close to matching Django success in the market, grossing ITL903 million. In Spain, it was released by Cooperativa cinematográfica de distribución and opened in Madrid on 22 June 1967. It drew 993,000 admissions.In some territories, including West Germany where Django had been a bonafide hit, the film was one of many to be marketed as a pseudo sequel. There, it was re-titled Django, Der Rächer by Constantin Film, and was the 10th best attended film of the year. In the U.K., the film released by Supreme Film Distributors as The Avenger, as part of a double feature with El 'Che' Guevara. It opened in Liverpool on 17 October 1970.