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"From savior to clown in six months," a biting, exhaustive reading of the Zapata mythos. The Mexican peon (Tony Musante) forces the reptilian patrón to eat his own, he's buried up to his chin but rescued from stampeding hooves by comrades who dig a tunnel under him. To him la Revolución means "kill the bosses and take their money," his colleague is the European mercenary (Franco Nero) who won't switch sides in the middle of a storm of bullets until bills have exchanged hands. They meet amid slogans and hanging bodies, after "il Polacco" has illustrated his disposition by making a saloon cheat gulp down loaded dice with a glass of milk. "I'm on my side, always," he tags along with the rising fighter on his pillaging spree, supplying machine-gun and checklist. On their trail is a dandified cutthroat (Jack Palance), by their side is "a thinking woman" (Giovanna Ralli) just sprung from the political clink. "To go from the hands of the police to those of bandits doesn't make me cry with happiness." Insurrection and greed in the wasteland, on the balance are some of Sergio Corbucci's most vivid constructions. An endless desert studded with banks, pistols for bogus saints amid procession fireworks, an ample mural to accommodate Thomas Hart Benton spirals and Goya fusillades. Idealism is "the shortest path to the cemetery," declares the soldier of fortune who showers in drinking water and strikes matchsticks off a corpse's boot. A beauty's nude form gives a map of the class struggle, sweaty greasepaint and bleeding carnations fill the corrida arena. "Keep dreaming... but with your eyes open." The fragile sense of hope at the end promptly bumps against Pontecorvo's Queimada! With Eduardo Fajardo, Franco Giacobini, Álvaro de Luna, Raf Baldassarre, Joe Kamel, and Franco Ressel.
--- Fernando F. Croce |