Violent City (1970)

Interesting facts

• Filmed in: New Orleans

Violent City is a 1970 crime thriller film directed by Sergio Sollima from a screenplay co-written with Lina Wertmüller, starring Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Telly Savalas, Umberto Orsini and Michel Constantin. Bronson plays a former hitman framed by a former boss and left for dead. He seeks revenge, but realizes his real enemy may be closer than he thinks.

Production

Director Sergio Sollima was initially unenthusiastic about the treatment he was given for Violent City, stating that "the story was rather bad and rhetorical: a love story, a hitman who falls in love, nothing extraordinary. But we had the chance to shoot in the U.S., and I would do whatever it took to do that." He rewrote the screenplay with filmmaker Lina Wertmüller, incorporating a non-linear flashback structure that was not present in the orig…

After Jon Voight and Sharon Tate were initially considered for the leading roles of Jeff and Vanessa, Sollima and producer Arrigo Colombo settled on Tony Musante and Florinda Bolkan. Eventually, Charles Bronson was sent the script for the role of Jeff; he accepted on the condition that his wife Jill Ireland be cast as Vanessa.

Although he enjoyed working with them, Sollima admitted to finding Bronson and Ireland to be a "curious" couple and noted the differences in their backgrounds and personalities, especially Bronson's uncommunicativeness. He also enjoyed working with Telly Savalas as he believed that other directors had failed to utilize the actor's penchant for humor, but was surprised that Savalas and Bronson shared little off-screen rapport.

Violent City was shot primarily on location in New Orleans and Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands, while interiors were shot at Cinecittà in Rome. The film's opening car chase in the streets of Saint Thomas was performed by Rémy Julienne; when Bronson asked the director if he was influenced by Bullitt during the shooting of this sequence, he claimed that he was instead reprising a similar chase he had created for his earlier film Agent 3S3: Massa…

Describing New Orleans as a "magical city", Sollima was driven to take its various cultures into account when choosing locations, such as a neighborhood that had suffered property damage in the wake of a race riot, which the production office was hesitant about filming in. The racing sequence was shot at the real Michigan International Can-Am of the 1969 Can-Am season, at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn.

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