Friday, 30 January 2004
Once upon a time in the West - PERSPECTIVES - THE COMMENTARY
By Helen Wang, for The Commentary
Recently, I had the fortune of attending a triple bill screening of Sergio Leone films at the Pacific Cinematheque. It was a fantastic eight hours worth of film experience. The prints are newly restored, with some cut sequences added back on. To my knowledge, these versions are not yet available on DVD; a pity for all of us film fanatics out there. The theatre was quite packed that night, a sign of the simple fact that the Spaghetti Western has not lost its thrall on us even with the passage of time.
The Spaghetti Western rose in its dominance in the early 1960s. When American westerns began to dwindle, European filmmakers started filming their own low-cost productions using lower-profile actors. One of these filmmakers is Sergio Leone, then a fledgling director from a cinema-rich background (his father, also a filmmaker; his mother, an actress). One of these then unknown actors is Clint Eastwood; their chance meeting spurred the birth of a new film genre and movies that people will love and remember for decades to come. The result of their collaboration is the 'Dollars Trilogy,' a set of films that includes A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and the most renowned The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. These films were incredibly popular in their first release, grabbing magnificent box office results everywhere and still managing to maintain some of their sandy allure today, proving irresistible even for people who are not interested in watching westerns, such as me.
A Fistful of Dollars is a frame-by-frame remake of Akira Kurosawa's samurai classic Yojimbo. It introduces the laconic and mythic Man with No Name, whose trademark includes a brown and white poncho, a thin black cigar, a squint that could be interpreted either as a smile or as a frown depending on how you look at it, and a knack of shooting three or more people at once with one turn of his revolver chamber. This anonymous lone gunman rides into a half deserted town at the Mexico border, where two rival gangs are embroiled in a bitter feud over the control of land and power, and then proceed to put one gang against the other, filling his own fist with cash and freeing the long suffering towns people from tyranny and terror. In For A Few Dollars More, the Man with No Name returns as a bounty hunter, but this time, he teams up with one Colonel Mortimer, a rival bounty hunter, to hunt down a psychotic drug-addled bandit leader named El Indio and his crew of fourteen men. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly uses the American Civil War as background; the Man with No Name returns as a con man, teaming up with a bandit named Tuco to find a hidden treasure of gold coins. Another man is also after the gold, a bounty hunter nicknamed Angel Eyes. The treasure is buried in a grave. Both Tuco and Angel Eyes know the name of the cemetery, but only the Man with No Name has the name on the grave. And as you can guess, partners are often switched, backs are always stabbed, and double-crosses are dealt out quicker than Blackjack cards on a Vegas table.
One thing that translates well from Sergio Leone's films is the cynicism at the heart of his West. The Man with No Name, played by Clint Eastwood, is as ruthless and immoral as many of his counterparts. He can stand watching in total impassivity as a woman is being torn from her husband and child, or play con games at which he cheats his partners and leave them for dead after the money is at hand. At the end of the day, you are still not sure what his motives are, or whether he rescues a person simply because the result fits into his scheme, or because he feels fondness for a friend that does not betray him, or because he wants to patch up an old wound. Given such a protagonist, one can only imagine the extent of the villainy of his counterparts. Clint Eastwood is very good in his role, delivering the lines with the classic ironic panache that people will associate with him decades later.
Matching Eastwood's performance is a thoroughly engaging Lee Van Cleef whose entrance in For A Few Dollars More, is a scene that completely dominated the audience's attention and kept our interest for the entire length of the film. Sergio Leone seems to favour actor recycling. Gian Maria Volonté played the key antagonist in the first two films as the brutally dangerous Ramón Rojo in A Fistful of Dollars, and as the sadistically cruel bandit leader El Indio who harbours a dark secret in For A Few Dollars More. Lee Van Cleef played an aging gunslinger that took Clint Eastwood's character under his wing, and then made a complete 180-degree turn in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as the mercilessly calculating hired gunman Angel Eyes.
I also find it interesting that although the trilogy features Clint Eastwood, the second and third films really belong to Lee Van Cleef's Col. Mortimer and Eli Wallach's Tuco. Sergio Leone wrote great entrances for both of these characters, summarising their motives, personalities, manners and whims in those initial scenes. You learn what to expect of these characters from what you see in those first scenes; you understand what makes them tick, what sets them off, what they strive for, and what they hope to gain. By the way, Tuco is one of the most brilliant cinematic creations I have had the pleasure of witnessing on screen, simply astounding character, boorish yet cunning, a great fool of a figure. Even though he's every bit the low-life you would imagine that infests every other western film, you still get the sense that there's a decent enough person lying somewhere behind that ruthless, dirty, clownish exterior. There's a scene in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly where Tuco, caught in the middle of a bubble bath by one of his enemies, has a loaded pistol, pointed at him, revenge for a lost arm. Take the entrance scene plus this one, and it will force you under the spell of this character for the entire film, just as Mortimer's fifteen minute entrance in For A Few Dollars More will.
And if you can't tell from the length of the previous paragraphs, the love of these characters is what made me love these films. The world of Sergio Leone's westerns are filled with men shrouded in mystery, ruthless survivors who know only too well the cost of kindness toward your enemies; they would kill at the drop of a hat, at the need for a mouthful of water, at the sight of another man who steps an inch too close. Because their West is a lawless and ungoverned land, men must make their own rules of the game, there is no lone hero, no justice, no right, no wrong, only violence and bloodbath, survivors and bystanders. Everybody goes by the same moral code. Everybody fights dirty. Victories are won not only by the quickest draw, but also by the quickest mind.
In terms of enjoyment, I find the second film most to my taste. Some preferred the third, but I find the background of the American Civil War rather distracting from the already engaging storyline of the three men competing for the one goal. Admittedly, whenever Eli Wallach is on the screen, it's always good fun. The first film is the tightest in terms of storyline structure, and very enjoyable on its own. But the second film featured tastier villains in terms of their psychotic nastiness, and an equally enigmatic yet deadly partner for our chief protagonist. There's even more backstabbing, side switching, double and triple-crossings between the various characters in the story. This is what makes Spaghetti Westerns fun; you won't find any meaningless historical sentimentality and moral preaching here. This is also perhaps the reason why Sergio Leone's westerns age better than John Ford's. So, if you are in the mood for gritty hardboiled action films, rent the Dollars trilogy. It's a good eight-hour ride.