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The central image is a camera made of wicker amid the idols in a procession—Godard's "fin du cinéma" comes to the American West, but the American West is a muddy set in the Andes. "Don't cowboy have fantasies?" The ragged lyricism of it lies in Dennis Hopper's modulation from impressionism to cubism and back, a New Hollywood bacchanalia at which he's both megalomaniac host and hapless crasher. (An evocative tracking shot early on follows him out of the revelry and into the shadows for a few tears.) A Sam Fuller western in Peru, a prophecy of Peckinpah's Billy the Kid down to the slow-mo, into it rides Christ the dense stuntman. The story within the story wraps only to be picked up by the locals, Hopper stays behind with stetson and poncho and the girlfriend (Stella Garcia) who pines for electrical appliances. "Spaces between spaces and lines between lines," fake paraphernalia and real bullets for the Indios' reenactment, a return to morality in the Movie Church or so hopes the padre (Tomas Milian). The implosion of film is the theme and style of the comedy of the bit player who fancies himself messiah, bloopers and improv sessions and "Missing scene" inserts point the way to sacrifice and resurrection. "La parte más querida de la última película: El muerto." Forms and languages in continuous upheaval in a hallucinatory vaudeville, Hopper's meta-constellation (Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Michelle Phillips, Dean Stockwell, Henry Jaglom, Toni Basil, John Phillip Law and others in flashes) disintegrates purposely and brilliantly. Unpleasant prolongation for gringos at the sex show (Julie Adams' bourgeois swinger gets framed with her back to a poster of a skeletal African child), the gold expedition evaporates in a deflationary joke that drew the ire of critics. "God bless all of you, see you back in Hollywood." Cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs. With Don Gordon, Sylvia Miles, Severn Darden, and Russ Tamblyn.
--- Fernando F. Croce |