VENICE FILM FESTIVAL: JOHN EXSHAW'S REPORT #13
Cinema Retro
WE CONTINUE OUR SERIES OF REPORTS FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT JOHN
EXSHAW'S DIARY FROM THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM
FESTIVAL.
JoaquÃn
Luis Romero Marchent was the earliest European director, prior to Sergio
Leone, to consistently explore the
Western form. After two films in the mid-1950s featuring the Zorro-esque El
Coyote and two in the early Sixties featuring the Fox of Old California himself
(Zorro the Avenger and The Shadow of Zorro), Romero Marchent made
his proper Western début in 1963 with The Magnificent Three, followed by
Gunfight at High Noon, starring Richard Harrison, Robert Hundar, Gloria
Milland, and Fernando Sancho. The latter three actors also starred in Seven
Guns from Texas (1964), shown here today, and introduced by the hulking
Hundar (real name, Claudio Undari) himself. Whether or not Romero Marchent,
still going strong at 86, was invited, I’ve been unable to discover . . .
Bob
Carey (Paul Piaget), having been released from prison after killing a man in a
(fair) fight, discovers that his former fiancée, MarÃa (Gloria Milland, real
name, Maria Fié) is now married to a successful rancher named Clifford (Jesús
Puente), and that he himself is being hunted by the dead man’s brothers, who
have vowed to avenge him. Clifford learns that MarÃa is suffering from a brain
tumour; on being told that her only chance lies in seeing a specialist in El
Paso, Clifford decides against telling MarÃa and begins making plans for the
long and hazardous journey through Indian territory. With the Redskins
currently on the warpath, the Army cannot spare men for an escort, and so
Clifford is forced to hire adventurers for the journey. These include Carey,
Ringo, a flamboyant character known as “Gambler†(Fernando Sancho), a couple of
bad hats led by Raf Baldassarre, a comic-relief Chinese cook (Gregory Wu) and
the wagon driver, played by Paco Sanz. With tensions simmering within the
party, and dangers threatening without, the group embark on their race against
time . . .
Last
year, when I was interviewing Aldo Sanbrell, I was surprised to learn that,
generally speaking, he preferred the Westerns he had made with Romero Marchent
to those made with Italian directors, Sergio Leone included. Admittedly (For
a Few Dollars More apart), Leone had never made the best use of Aldo,
employing him more as a good-luck talisman than as an featured character star,
but considering that Sanbrell had also appeared in films for Corbucci, Sollima,
and Tessari, it seemed an extraordinary endorsement of his fellow countryman.
But, watching Seven Guns from Texas, I began to see why Aldo felt that way.
A very traditional Western, with a solid plot and clearly defined characters in
even the smaller roles, it is just the sort of well-crafted movie that would
appeal to an actor brought up on the Westerns of Randolph Scott and Joel
McCrea, and who consequently preferred the American approach – “Americans, in
Westerns, give you much more reality. . . . Romero Marchent, he makes something
like the American films – so simple . . . But it was real. He doesn’t go into
the fantasy, let’s say, of Leone . . . â€
In
addition to being told with a skill and conviction which should satisfy most
traditionalists, Seven Guns from Texas looks impressive – the fort has a
built-to-last quality that would put many higher-budget Hollywood Westerns to
shame, and the costumes and photography are of a comparably high standard.
Piaget is rather stiff and colourless as Carey, but then traditional Western
heroes often are. Hundar, who would become a distinctive presence in the
Italian Western, is fine as Ringo, and Baldassarre is suitably snaky as the
villain who holds the party to ransom over a water hole near the film’s end..
Puente gives a sympathetic performance in what is a fairly thankless role, and
Sanz, who seems to be turning up in everything in the last few days, demonstrates
his versatility behind a bushy beard which would have been the envy of George
‘Gabby’ Hayes. While Romero Marchent includes a number of obvious allusions to
‘Stagecoach’ in his film, they are in no way intrusive; indeed, the basic story
of a race against time in the face of terminal illness was apparently an
extrapolation of the director’s family’s own, ultimately futile, efforts to
find a cure for his mother’s lung cancer. The Spanish print reportedly closes
with the death of MarÃa, but the ending in the Italian version was “softenedâ€
to allow the possibility that she may survive.
***********
One
of the great canards thrown at the Italian film industry during its
international heyday was that it provided a haven for washed-up stars whose
“real†careers back in Hollywood had gone south of the border. As with so much
written in those times (such as the notion that Anglo pseudonyms were adopted
to fool English-speaking audiences into thinking they were watching a “realâ€
Hollywood film), this was arrant nonsense. Not only did the Italian film
industry create new stars of global significance (Steve Reeves, Clint Eastwood,
Franco Nero, Tomás Milian, to name only the most obvious), but it also gave older
“name†actors opportunities they would never have had at home.
Rather
than sneering about “has-been stars making cheap B-movies in Italyâ€, film
historians need to ask themselves what those actors might have done had they
stayed in Hollywood. Take Guy Madison, for example: he went to Italy in 1960,
two years after the cancellation of his long-running TV series, The
Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, and spent a decade starring in every
popular genre of the day: pepla, swashbucklers, Westerns, spy films, superhero
yarns, and war movies. He was able to play both heroes and villains, from Wyatt
Earp to turbaned Oriental exotics, in films which, if they were cheap, were
only so in comparison with bigger-budgeted Hollywood movies (and which, thanks
to the behind-the-camera skill and inventiveness of such as Mario Bava,
frequently looked much better than their similarly-budgeted American
counterparts). Now, ask what Madison might have done had he stayed in
Hollywood: a few more guest spots in Wagon Train and other TV series?
Cameos in the occasional movie? Or straight down the ladder to grade-Z horror
flicks for the drive-in market? Nor is Madison an isolated case: what did the
future in Hollywood hold for a middle-aged ex-Tarzan like Lex Barker? Certainly
not the chance to work with Fellini and become a massive star in Continental
Westerns. And then there’s Gordon Scott, and . . . well, you get the idea.
Neither
Van Heflin nor Gilbert Roland, two “name†stars finding good work hard to come
by in 1960s’ Hollywood, can have had any reason to regret their participation
in Giorgio Capitani’s The Ruthless Four (1968), a superior Western in
every respect, and one which gave Heflin, in his only Italian outing, the last
good role of his distinguished career. He plays Sam Cooper, a gold prospector
who finally strikes it rich only to find himself faced with an immediate murder
attempt by his hitherto loyal partner. After being held up and robbed on his
way back to town, Cooper, realising that he needs someone he can trust to help
extract the gold, wires money to Manolo Sánchez, a young man whom Sam had
helped raise before succumbing once more to wanderlust and gold fever. Manolo
(played by George Hilton) duly arrives, and Sam, in the course of their drunken
reunion, gradually reveals his reason for summoning him. Close on Manolo’s
heels, however, comes the sinister figure of “the Blond†(Klaus Kinski), who
soon reasserts his authority, based on their homosexual relationship, over the
affable but weak Manolo. With “the Blond†insinuating himself into the group,
Sam turns to a one-time friend, Mason (Roland), for support. Mason, who still
believes that Cooper turned him in after their escape from a prison camp
several years previously, agrees to accompany Cooper in return for a fifty-fifty
split. The quartet set off, foiling an ambush instigated by the town’s
storekeeper before beginning the long trek to Cooper’s mine . . .
Capitani,
whose only Western this was, originated the story which was then developed by
co-writer Fernando Di Leo, who had worked uncredited on the first two Dollars
films and would later become well-known for his crime movies of the 1970s. The
characters in The Ruthless Four have a psychological depth and
complexity comparable to any American counterpart of similar scope and
ambition, and indeed the film (a few stylistic flourishes apart) is largely
indistinguishable from a traditional Hollywood Western. The most memorable
stylistic flourish involves Capitani’s introduction of the Blond, who arrives
in town during a thunderstorm, wearing a battered trilby and a rubber slicker.
Going into the saloon, the Blond asks for milk and is not amused by the
barman’s smart-ass reply. As he grabs the barman’s wrist, Capitani cuts to a
Leonesque close-up of Kinski’s eyes, then, when he turns away, there is an
anachronistic jazz intro on the soundtrack, an obvious reference, along with
his costume, to Kinski’s many roles in Edgar Wallace krimis, in which
the actor often played sinister weirdos slinking around in smoke-filled jazz
clubs. Another nice touch is the depiction of Lancaster, the treacherous
storekeeper, as an obese knitting fanatic. Capitani also makes interesting use
of Carlo Simi’s El Paso set; whereas, in Sugar Colt, Franco Giraldi
obviously didn’t give a damn who recognised it, Capitani seems to go out of his
way to disguise its appearance, choosing unusual camera set-ups and avoiding
long-shots – perhaps an indication of how well-known the set had become a mere
two years after For a Few Dollars More (The Ruthless Four was
shot in 1967.)
Van
Heflin, who, with his bulging eyes and homely features, was surely one of the
more improbable Hollywood stars – a character actor propelled by his talent
into leading roles – gives a wonderfully rich and well-judged performance as
Cooper, certainly on a par with his work in Shane and 3:10 to Yuma.
Roland, a more limited actor, perhaps, but one whose unique brand of style and
steely machismo made him a welcome figure in many Fifties’ Westerns, is at his
best in The Ruthless Four, as a man twisted by suspicion (and crippled
by bouts of malaria) who regains his sense of decency at the end. In one
delightful touch (presumably improvised), Roland, to distract the storekeeper’s
bushwhackers, executes a seemingly impromptu two-step dance, which immediately
recalls the actor’s many roles as Latin lovers in his early career.
Hilton,
the Uruguayan-born star of many Spaghetti Westerns (often as fairly laid-back
types, with the occasional avenger or villain thrown in) is excellent as the
spineless Manolo, with Capitani cleverly exploiting the essential softness in
the actor’s screen persona. It seems well worth pointing out that, had Hilton
been a star of Hollywood Westerns at the time, the chances of him being
offered, or allowed to play, a role like Manolo Sánchez would have been less
than zero. (“Big Jake, starring John Wayne, with George Hilton as The
Catamite Kid� Unlikely, to say the least.) Indeed, another of the most
commendable aspects of the Italian film industry in this period was the freedom
enjoyed by actors in their choice of roles: they could make a Mario Bava horror
film one week and a Fellini the next, and if an actor decided to become
associated with a particular genre, it seems it was a matter of choice, not
box-office imperative or typecasting.
Klaus
Kinski, it need hardly be said, is extremely effective as the Blond – less
flamboyant than in many of his Western roles, which were often little more than
glorified cameos, but none the less impressive for that. And he gets to stick
around for a lot longer than usual, a good thing in itself.
Giorgio
Capitani and George Hilton were both present for the screening, which attracted
a full house in one of the smaller cinemas allocated to the retrospective.
Capitani went on to become a highly-respected director of sophisticated
comedies, most of which received little distribution outside Italy, but The
Ruthless Four is considered by many to be his best film, and is well worth
tracking down.
With
barely time to water our horses, we were off on Pasquale Squitieri’s Vengeance
Trail (1971), which tells the story of Jeremiah Bridger, played by Leonard
Mann (real name, Leonardo Manzella), whose family is wiped out in an Indian
raid. Jeremiah grows up to be a taciturn Indian killer and scalphunter, until,
one day, he captures an Indian girl named Tune (Elizabeth Everfield). His
racist hatred apparently not extending to hot babes in buckskins, Jeremiah
doesn’t quite know what to do with her, but eventually decides to take her into
town, with vague ideas of selling her. When a bad hat named Boone tries to buy
Tune for his boss, he makes the mistake of insulting Bridger, and a fight
ensues. The townsfolk then catch sight of Tune and attack her. She is
tarred-and-feathered and on the point of being burned alive when Jeremiah
manages to rescue her from the mob. Later, however, the pair are tracked down
by Boone and his men. Caught by surprise, Bridger is shot and left for dead,
and Tune abducted.
Jeremiah
is fortuitously found by a garrulous medic (Steffen Zacharias), who not only
restores him to health but also helps him understand that it was not the
Indians who were responsible for the deaths of his parents and sister. Needless
to say, they were victims of an evil scheme hatched by Boone’s boss, a cattle
baron named Perkins (Ivan Rassimov). In need of cheap grazing land, Perkins
periodically uses a tame journalist named Virgil Prescott (Klaus Kinski) to
stir up fear and hatred of the Indians. If the resulting panic fails to
persuade the settlers to sell up, Perkins then sends his men, disguised as
Indians, to drive them out, at the same time scattering a few real Indian
corpses on the scene. With the help of the Indians, Jeremiah extracts the truth
from Boone, before bringing about Perkins’ downfall . . .
Considering
his impassioned tribute to Sergio Leone last Sunday and the fact, demonstrated
again before this screening, that Pasquale Squitieri appears to know more about
the West and the Western than all the other directors present at this event put
together, it would be nice to report that this knowledge was put to good use in
Vengeance Trail. Alas, that is not the case, and the film only tends to
confirm the impression created by Squitieri’s other Western, the lame Django
Against Sartana (1970), that the director was much happier making the Mafia
thrillers for which he is best known. To be fair, Squitieri’s overall direction
of Vengeance Trail is perfectly acceptable, but cannot overcome the
banal predictability of the script, which he co-wrote.
But
the real problem with the movie is the casting of Leonard Mann in the lead. A
talent- and charisma-free zone, Mann somehow managed to find gainful employment
in a variety of genre movies for the best part of twenty years, but in Vengeance
Trail, where he is required to do little other than look mean convincingly,
the best he can manage is the surly sulk of a sixteen-year-old. Thankfully,
Rassimov, Kinski, and Zacharias are on hand to provide colour, the latter, as
usual, delivering it by the bucketful.
Before
the film, Squitieri recalled his difficulties in finding suitable extras to
play the Indians. As the film was shot in Italy rather than Spain, he had the
bright idea of recruiting a bunch of Oriental students from their university in
Rome – with the unfortunate (though perhaps foreseeable) result that instead of
looking like a bunch of Spaniards dressed up as Indians, the Indians look like
a bunch of Orientals dressed up as Indians. . . . Squitieri also recounted the
seemingly obligatory Nutty Klaus tale, in which Kinski, as the townsfolk move
in on him at the end of the film, began lashing out at the extras, delivering a
multitude of bruises and bleeding noses. When Squitieri asked him what the hell
he thought he was doing, Kinski drew himself up with great dignity and replied,
“Realism! Realism!†before stalking off the set. If only more actors were this
dedicated . . .
Afterwards,
I tried to speak to Squitieri, but when he realised that my Italian was about
as good as his English, he smoothly passed me over to his daughter, who speaks
perfect English and who told me that both she and her brother had also been
press-ganged into playing Indians in the film. Only later did it occur to me
that I’d probably been speaking to the daughter of Jill McBain – Claudia
Cardinale having had a long relationship, resulting in two children, with
Pasquale Squitieri.
One
final point – there was an interesting, if inexplicable, difference between the
Italian print of Vengeance Trail and the one currently available on
Region 2 DVD from C’est La Vie. Following the massacre of the Bridger family,
young Jeremiah emerges from the cellar of his house holding his father’s rifle.
After wandering around in a daze, he sees an Indian (with whom the family were
earlier shown to be on friendly terms), approaching up a ravine. The Indian
waves in greeting, but Jeremiah raises the rifle and shoots him dead. This
scene is missing from the DVD print, which instead cuts straight from young
Jeremiah at the farmhouse to Leonard Mann trying (and failing) to look grim and
vengeful. C’est la vie, I guess . . .
************
Cesare
Canevari’s Matalo! (1970) enjoys a reputation as one of the oddest
Spaghetti Westerns ever made, a category which, as we have seen, is not short
of candidates. But whereas Yankee, If You Live, Shoot!, and El
Puro (to cite the examples on show at Venice) all seem to have derived from
a genuine desire to experiment with the Western form (or, in the case of Giulio
Questi, perhaps, from a certain naïvety regarding the rules), in Matalo!,
Canevari, whose career has been nothing if not idiosyncratic, demonstrates such
a complete disregard for, and lack of interest in, the genre that it is
impossible to view it as anything more than an exercise in contempt, and a
pretentious one at that.
The
story opens with an outlaw called Burt (Corrado Pani, called Bart in the
English-language print) being marched to the gallows, where he cockily thrusts
his head through the noose. The reason for Burt’s attitude soon becomes
apparent when a gang of Mexicans invades the town, killing everyone in sight
and setting him free. Burt, who sees himself as both a lover and a fighter,
romances a woman in mourning dress (presumably the widow of his victim) while
at the same time stealing her money. As her rough-riding Romeo departs, the
woman commits suicide. Burt pays the Mexicans, then guns them down from
long-range and recovers the money. As he does so, he reflects (in voice-over) on
the wise words of his pappy, who told him that, “Money is like ripe fruit on a
tree. All you’ve got to do is reach out and grab it before someone else
does.â€
After
meeting up with his muchachos, Philip (Luis Dávila) and his girlfriend,
Mary (Claudia Gravy), and the very weird Theo (Antonio Salines, called Ted in
the English-language print), Bart and the gang, disguised as Mexicans, mount an
attack on a stagecoach carrying a gold shipment, in the course of which Burt is
apparently killed. The gang hide out in Benson City, whose only inhabitant is
revealed to be Gertrude Benson (Ana MarÃa Mendoza), a crazy old crone who
dreams of restoring the city to its glory days. Some time later, a drifter
named Ray (Lou Castel), who is dying of thirst, arrives in Benson, as does a
female homesteader (Anna Maria Noè) who has been forced to shoot her horse in
the desert. The pair are captured by the gang and subjected to as series of
painful and humiliating ordeals. Meanwhile, an unknown figure stalks the town,
waiting to strike . . .
The
overall impression one gets from Matalo! is that Canevari, having read
more than was good for him about Charles Manson’s doings in Death Valley,
wanted to make a film about drug-crazed hippies doing unspeakable things to
people in a desert commune. The producer, however, wanted him to make a
Western. Canevari said va bene, and then went ahead and made his Manson
film anyway, disguised as a Western. In consequence, Matalo! is full of
shrieking anachronisms, all of them deliberate and all of them annoying. Bart’s
escape is accompanied by a driving electric guitar break, a splendid piece of
music by Mario Migliardi but not what one expects, or wants, in a Western. Bart
himself is rigged out in a candy-striped headband, a long-tailed suede
waistcoat with fringes, beads, wristbands, and an enormous, butterfly-shaped
belt buckle – a look which might have gone down big with the chicks in
Haight-Ashbury in 1970, but which, again, is just plain silly and embarrassing
in a Western.
The
anachronisms also extend to the casting. Corrado Pani bears quite a strong
resemblance to Al Pacino – and like Pacino, is very definitely a modern, urban
actor, with entirely the wrong face, persona, and mannerisms for a Western
character. Dávila, who at least has the right face for the part, is made to
look rather ridiculous by sporting a long bead necklace, while Gravy’s
crazy-groupie act suggests she is auditioning to join the Manson Family. And
presumably it was no coincidence that Salines just happens to look like Manson
himself. And then there’s Lou Castel . . . Some actors have faces that look
great on screen and some don’t, and Castel is certainly one of the latter, a
moon-faced Method actor of inexplicable popularity in European art-house
circles who not only doesn’t look good on screen but lacks a strong screen
presence to compensate. I never took to Castel in A Bullet for the General
but at least in that film he was playing an unsympathetic, mercenary gringo so
it didn’t really matter. In Matalo!, however, in which he is the nominal
hero, Castel spends most of his time being either extremely thirsty or being
lashed with a chain by Theo; at the end, he is rescued by his trusty steed (!)
before donning a Sgt. Pepper paisley frockcoat and confronting the baddies with
a fistful of boomerangs. Yes, that’s right, boomerangs . . . As if that wasn’t
ridiculous enough, Canevari further indulges his obvious contempt for both the
genre and his audience by having Phil and Mary die off-screen in a ludicrous
shoot-out which, in addition to being deeply unsatisfying, doesn’t even make
any spatial sense. In doing so, the director, who claims his film to be
“surrealistâ€, not only fails to obey the most basic rule of film-making (don’t
cheat your audience), but, in consequence, delivers a movie which reveals
itself to be nothing more than a grab-bag of preposterous and irritating
stylistic tricks.
Canevari
was present for the screening, though nothing he said made Matalo! any
less absurd and he was soon drawn into a squabble with the pugnacious Squitieri
which, alas, my Italian was insufficient to follow. Reading up on the film
later in Bruschini’s and De Zigno’s Western all’italiana: The Wild, the
Sadist and the Outsiders, I discovered that, due to some oversight which
sounds quite typical of the fly-by-night world of low-budget Italian
film-making, the screenwriter, Mino Roli, managed to sell the same script to
two different producers, with the result that another, earlier version of the
story, minus the pretension, also exists: Tanio Boccia’s Dio non paga il
Sabato/God Does Not Pay on Saturday (1968, and also known as Kill the
Wicked).
***********
Having
recently been engaged in research on Riccardo Freda, I was particularly
interested to see Death at Owell Rock, the director’s only Western, made
in 1967 and starring Mark Damon. Freda, who occupies a unique position in
Italian popular cinema, is highly regarded on the Continent for the historical
spectaculars which seem to have been his chosen métier, but remains best
known in English-speaking territories for making both the first Italian horror
film, I vampiri (1956, a.k.a. The Devil’s Commandment), and the
first Italian science-fiction film, Caltiki, the Immortal Monster
(1959), as well as for introducing the practice, soon followed by virtually the
entire Italian film industry, of adopting Anglo pseudonyms to disguise the
Italian origin of his work from Italian audiences (which were initially
disinclined to accept that Italians could make horror or sci-fi films).
So
far, so straightforward. But Freda’s reputation as an innovator is somewhat
undermined by what appears to have been a deep streak of dilettantism in his
character, revealed, for instance, in the reported fact that I vampiri
was made not out of any great conviction or any particular love of the horror
genre but as the result of a bet with the producers. In addition to which
Freda, who appears to have been independently wealthy, developed a habit of
abandoning projects before shooting was completed, as happened with both I
vampiri and Caltiki. The main beneficiary of Freda’s suspect
temperament was his director of photography, Mario Bava, who not only finished
the two aforementioned films, but was encouraged by Freda to begin directing
himself, with the result that Bava soon outstripped his mentor by making the
first great classic of Italian Gothic cinema, Black Sunday, in 1960.
Freda responded by casting Bava’s leading lady, Barbara Steele, in his own
classic, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, two years later, but it seems clear
that, from about 1960 onward, Freda was reduced to following trends rather than
initiating them. He dabbled, with varying degrees of success, in the pepla,
spy, and giallo genres (the latter pioneered by Bava), with the odd
swashbuckler thrown in for old times’ sake, and it is within this context that Death
at Owell Rock needs to be seen.
The
film opens with a murder witness having his tongue cut out, a seemingly Gothic
touch which might be expected from Freda (but which may owe something to the
famous ear-cutting sequence in Corbucci’s Django). We are then
introduced to Damon’s character, a gunfighter called Lawrence, during a lively
stagecoach hold-up followed by an equally lively brawl in the general store of
Owell Rock. The film then unfolds as a thriller, involving switched identities,
as Lawrence and his sister, Jane (Luciana Gilli), aided by her fiancée, Harry
(played by Stephen Forsyth), combine to track down the men responsible for
killing their father . . .
While
Death at Owell Rock is an adequate and generally absorbing revenge
Western, it comes as no surprise to learn that Freda had his problems with the
producers and ended up using the pseudonym ‘George Lincoln’ on the credits –
not, in this instance, to lull unsuspecting Italian audiences (who must have
been pretty used to this tactic by 1967) into thinking this was a Hollywood
Western, but for the more traditional reason of disavowing the finished film. A
quote included in the programme illustrates his reasons: “I had a very low
budget, and production cut most of the violent scenes. It was a story about
revenge – they tore my editing to shreds and cut my scenes. I’d written the
script; it was a brutal film. But I lost interest in the final film. That’s why
I used a new pseudonym – George Lincoln.†Still, any film which features that
staple of Italian Gothic cinema, Alan Collins {Luciano Pigozzi), as a drunken
judge finally prodded into standing up to the baddies may certainly be said to
have incidental pleasures which make it worth seeking out, even if the overall
impression conveyed is that of a missed opportunity.
____________
|
|