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It begins and ends in mud, Sergio Corbucci's frontier, survival means tussling for a dirty coin before a looming pistol. No firearms allowed in town by order of the sheriff (Gastone Moschin), the gunslinger (Johnny Hallyday) rides in after the lynching of his brother. "Your intentions aren't hard to figure out." A bank robbery is the motive given by the widowed proprietress (Françoise Fabian), whose own machinations unfold simultaneously with the stranger's vengeful investigation. Other players include a gang of shaggy degenerates somewhere between Faulkner and Woodstock, and the one-armed bandito (Mario Adorf) with a spur attached to his stump and a knack for self-mythologizing. ("Don't write the truth—write that I won," he snaps at his biographer, cf. Conway's Villa Villa!) Capitalists and anarchists out West, a pox on both their houses, Corbucci's "sidewindin', son-of-a-bitchin' bastard" lays equal waste. A reverse zoom from a pair of riders at the bottom of a gulch is followed without pause by a lateral pan across Mexican minions perched on the side of a mountain, a shot by Mann or De Toth adjusted for '69. The pastoral alternative offered by the maiden (Sylvie Fennec) is alien to the hero, "I've never known that kind of life," he's far more at home crushing an adversary during a saloon brawl with a cash register. Fabian nu dans le bain, Adorf headbutting the camera in a corral, charred dollar bill and slanting sunlight to mark the spot for loot in the graveyard. Greed is laid bare and made to crawl on Main Street, "the whole town stripped for the occasion" in a Salò image half a decade ahead of Salò. The apocalyptic sun at the close reappears in High Plains Drifter. With Angela Luce, Remo De Angelis, Gino Pernice, Serge Marquand, Andrés José Cruz Soublette, Gabriella Tavernese, Mario Castellani, and Mimmo Poli.
--- Fernando F. Croce |