Pistols Don't Argue / Pistole non discutono

Correctly surmising that most of the town will be busy with Sheriff Pat Garrett’s wedding, Billy the Kid takes the opportunity to rob the town bank. When his younger brother George accidentally drops his mask, Billy tells him to silence the bank tellers with his knife – partly to punish his brother, partly because gunshots would likely alert the townsfolk. With George proving unable to kill the men in cold blood, Billy shoots them anyway.

Thus alerted to the crime, Garrett and his deputies go in pursuit, but are unable to catch the Clanton brothers before they cross the border into Mexico.

Garrett decides to continue on anyway, while his deputies turn back. To simply give up, Garrett rationalises, would lead to a wave of similar robberies all along the border.

Apprehending the brothers proves relatively straightforward for the wily Sheriff. His greater challenge is returning them and the stolen gold back to the US. For Mexican bandit leader Santero has now become aware of the gold, forcing Garrett to take it and the Clantons back across the desert...

Directed by Mario Caiano, Pistols Don’t Argue was the bigger-budgeted portion of the two film package that also gave rise to Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars. If this explains why Pistols isn’t terribly well known, except among spaghetti western enthusiasts, it also makes it a significant film in other ways: Simply put, what did Fistful do that Pistols didn’t, or vice-versa?

Logically, after all, Pistols should have been the more successful film. It had more money behind it along with a more recognisable – albeit still B-list / fading – star in the form of Rod Cameron. It also had more familiar characters in Garrett and the Kid, as the clear-cut hero and villain respectively, plus romance and plenty of good old fashioned “a man’s gotta do...” isms.

A number of reasons can be advanced for Pistols’ relative failure and Fistful’s massive success. Most revolve around the distinction between the Italian western, represented by Pistols, and the Italian western, represented by Fistful.

Around twenty westerns had been produced or co-produced by Italian companies prior to them. All, like Pistols, had been made in imitation of the Hollywood western, with producers seeking to hide their Italianness to convince domestic audiences that what they were seeing was “the real thing”.

While it is true that Leone, Volonte, Morricone and others hid their identities behind Anglo-sounding pseudonyms on Fistful, the film itself looked, sounded and was different, principally in attitude.

As Morricone also scored Pistols, we can start by comparing his work on the two films. The score for Pistols contains suspense and action cues that would not be out of place in one of Leone’s films, while the cues that are used to convey the oppressive desert heat could easily have fitted into The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’s desert scenes. Strings, piano and percussion are used in an recognisable way. What is missing are the more distinctive touches and timbres: There is no whistling, no hammer and anvil percussion, no whip cracks, gunshots or vocalism. What is present, in the “Ballad of Lonesome Billy” is precisely the kind of thing that Leone encouraged Morricone to get away from.

Visually, Pistols is a lot brighter looking, with things lacking the lived-in ness of their counterparts in Fistful and the colour palette being more varied, less drab. Indeed, a deserted ghost town in the desert looks to be in almost as good a condition as the still sort-of inhabited town in Leone’s film. In fairness to Caiano and cinematographer Massimo Dallamano, Pistols’ night work is however better than Fistful’s; inasmuch as Dallamano worked on both films, this discrepancy may then be attributed to having more time and money on Pistols than Fistful. Though explained in part by the fact that it was his wedding day – a traditional romantic element that Leone took pains to avoid in his films, and which is reprised here in the developing relationship between George and a frontier homestead family in need of a man – Garrett starts off clean and gets dirtier as the film progresses, rather than being scruffy and unshaven from the off.

Whereas Leone’s films are about unstable meanings, that the Good is good only in relation to the Bad, Pistols presents straightforward 1930s Hollywood style characterisations for Garrett and the Kid. George is the more interesting character, in that he’s torn between idol-worshipping his brother and his growing realisation that Billy really doesn’t care about anyone except himself.

In relation to the 1930s western, meanwhile, those familiar with John Ford’s Stagecoach will see a couple of familiar tropes come in at the end, with the 11th hour arrival of the cavalry to save the day – albeit reconfigured spaghetti style with Mexican bandits rather than Indians – and the lawman’s willingness to let the sympathetic lawbreaker go free to settle down with a good woman, one Agnes (of) Goddard.

I would normally label this a spoiler, but to me a spoiler implies that a film of this sort does something that you would not expect, whereas here we are dealing with convention.

Besides the killing of the innocent who could identify someone (Once Upon a Time in the West) and the forced march through the desert (The Good the Bad and the Ugly), a third trope which re-appears in a Leone western is a trick Garrett plays on the Kid, of removing the bullets from his gun (GBU again). The distinction in each case, and elsewhere, seems one of Leone’s cynicism against Caiano’s romanticism, that Garrett’s forced march is not a vengeful attempt to torture a foe to death, for instance.

Another key difference between the filmmakers is their treatment of the Mexican: Other than a couple of Mexican labourers on the Goddard stead (or those who know their place in the Anglo-dominated hierarchy?) all the Mexicans seen in Pistols are corrupt and villainous. As such, Garrett’s territorial intrusion along with his justification for it, are vindicated. Leone would again be more questioning: Yes, the Rojos are worse than the Baxters in Fistful, but we’re dealing with shades of (dark) grey.

In sum, a fascinating failure.

Arcana

Is there anyone out there who has a copy of Guilio Questi's Arcana? If so, please get in touch.

Dio è con noi / The Fifth Day of Peace / Crime of Defeat / God with Us

This is one of the more unusual Italian co-productions to deal with the Second World War. For the simple fact is that it isn’t really a war film per se: There’s no near-impossible suicide mission upon which could hinge the outcome of the war, it having already been decided in the Allies favour. Nor are there any mass combat sequences as such, though the scale of the film is nevertheless suitably impressive when it needs to be.

This, combined with the facts that it based on a true story; features courtroom drama elements; and is about freedom, authority, law, order, justice and mercy in their various permutations, marks it out as exploring similar territory to director Giuliano Montaldo's later Sacco and Vanzetti.

The story opens some time after D-Day. That the Allies have advanced into the Netherlands and the wintry conditions suggest sometime in late 1944 or early 1945. The German army is in disarray.

While the Allies, under the command of General Snow, undertake the task of transforming a Nazi concentration camp into an Allied POW camp, two German army deserters, Bruno Grauber and Reiner Schultz, eke out a desperate and precarious existence stealing food from farmers who barely have anything of their own. Food first, then morals, again.

The older Grauber, played by Franco Nero, deserted some months back, after eight reluctant years in the Fuhrer’s army. The younger, Schultz, played by Larry Aubrey, either deserted or became detached from his unit - the circumstances are deliberately left unclear - in which he had only served a few months.

Initially Schultz has both a uniform and a gun, but discards them at Grauber’s disgust / insistence. It is a gesture which is to prove of profound significance in the coming months.

Dressed in civilian clothing, the two men eventually find their way to the camp, which is now under the control of the well-intentioned but seemingly indecisive Captain John Miller, played by Richard Johnson.

His German opposite number Colonel Von Bleicher, played by Helmuth Schneider, controls his fellow prisoners/men with an iron rod, and is intent on maintaining the order and discipline upon which the German army and now the POW camp depend: There are to be no unauthorised escape attempts, for instance. Those POWs who try are captured by their fellow soldiers, tried by court-martial and whipped in punishment, all right under the noses of Miller; when this is discovered, the German soldiers claim their wounds were caused by the barbed wire.

Initially Von Bleicher remains ignorant of Grauber and Schultz, who are instead assigned kitchen duties by soldier Jelink. It’s a cushy job, not least since Jelinek is played by none other than Bud Spencer, in characteristically bluff mode.

But when Von Bleicher finds out about the two men's presence, he determines that they should be be court martialled, under which desertion meriting the punishment of death by firing squad...

Yet do wartime laws apply now that it is peace is first at hand and then arrives? How can the sentence be carried out given the Germans no longer have arms? Who benefits if it is carried out?

Even more so than its successor, The Fifth Day of Peace is a thought-provoking film. One reason for this is that the dividing lines between the good guys and the bad guys are less clear: There are no obvious heroes or villains, just different men with different understandings of the situation. Another is the absence of back-story. Whereas the flashbacks and investigation in Sacco and Vanzetti diegetically establish that the two men are innocent of the crimes against them and are the clear victims of anti-anarchist and racist prejudice, here we know nothing about Von Bleicher, Glauber and Schultz's pasts.

Von Bleicher plays the honourable German solider but not necessarily a fanatical Nazi card expertly: If order is not maintained, then anarchy will prevail.

Glauber meanwhile may have actual political motives for his desertion or may just have had enough and saw an opportunity. Whatever the case by now failing to modulate his behaviour - at one point he literally pisses upon an Allied NCO who might otherwise have been more sympathetic - he is now marked out as a figure who threatens the order of the camp and, by extension, the establishment of the right kind of regime and peace in the defeated Germany.

The alternative titles are also significant here: The 'Crime of Defeat' is one that applies more to Von Bleicher, as the career soldier, than Glauber, as the reluctant draftee. 'God,' meanwhile, is not 'with us', that is the protagonists, but silent, offering no counsel. Tellingly that which is offered to Miller, as the man who must decide between Von Bleicher's and Glauber's cases and futures, comes from General Snow, and whose decision will undoubtedly have consequences for his own career.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what ideas a film contains if the execution is flawed. Thankfully The Fifth Day of Peace is a film where everything works. The lead performances are uniformly strong - Nero energetic bordering on manic at times; Schneider formal and precise; Johnson now apparently hesitant and now apparently resolute, and Aubrey pathetic. The technical aspects of production design, cinematography, editing and scoring are universally accomplished. And, most importantly, Montaldo does what the director should do: Orchestrate these elements, bringing them together harmoniously along with make his own contributions and control evident without overshadowing those of his collaborators or grandstanding. He particularly impresses in his ability to move between levels of scale, of finding the small details within the bigger picture and vice-versa - something which recapitulates the themes of the piece as a whole.

A.A.A. Massaggiatrice bella presenza offresi... / A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services

Given the popularity of the giallo in the early 1970s it is no surprise that Demofilo Fidani, "the Ed Wood of the spaghetti western" should have contributed to the filone through, albeit under his own name rather than his preferred SW pseudonyms of Dick Spitfire and Miles Deem.

What is more surprising is that A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services is not completely and utterly hopeless.

This is not to say, however, that it's by any means a good film. Rather, it is one of those lower echelon gialli in which the poetic/prosaic set-piece/narrative distinction discussed by Mikel Koven is in evidence.

The story, which sees the clients of the titular masseuse, played by a young Paola Senatore, falling prey to a killer, does not seem to be up to much.


The marigold killer?

Often as not, it functions as a justification to have Senatore's character, Cristina, parading around in various states of undress, although fans of her later work should note that there's no full-frontal nudity nor anything beyond softcore simulation. Critics of giallo exploitation may also care to note that the role of the voyeur/spectator is also implicated here prior to his punishment in our stead.




You are the voyeur

At other times AAA.... is talky, focusing upon Cristina's relationships with her sleazy boyfriend - seeing as he's played by Howard Ross, sleaze tends to come with the territory - her flatmate, confusingly named Paola (and played by Fidani's daughter), Paola's boyfriend and Christina's respectability-obsessed and estranged father.


Dig that fur coat / white roll neck ensemble Ross is wearing

The investigation of the clients' murders is left mostly to the police which, coupled with the fact that Cristina herself does not appear to be in too much danger in the Edwige Fenech manner nor is especially proactive in the Susan Scott manner, results in a pretty slow moving and unengaging movie at times.


Mack Sigis Porter rocks!

On the plus side AAA... has plenty of tasteful 70s costumes and sets (both credited to Fidani's wife, Mila Vitelli Valenza, who also had a hand in the writing in that keep it in the family / economical way) along with a good sleaze/suspense score from Lallo Gori, topped off with a closing track by the immediately recognisable Mack Sigis Porter ensemble.




Unusual blocking

You can also see that Fidani was at least trying not only in the set pieces, most notably the unmasking of the killer, but also in some of his compositions and use of yellow objects. This said, the decision to outfit the otherwise classically black clad, straight-razor wielding killer with yellow gloves comes across as a step too far, unless the intention was to connote a kitchen-sink domesticity to them...

Dawn and Day of the Dead

For anyone in Edinburgh or nearby:

Dawn and Day of the Dead, with Ken Foree and Joe Pilato Q&A's

http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/news_item.aspx?venueId=edbg&id=1932

Dubbing and poster art correlation?

On ebay at the moment there's a Belgian poster for The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh, with titles in Flemish and French:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BLADE-OF-THE-RIPPER-EDWIGE-FENECH-GIALLO-IT-POSTER_W0QQitemZ290351658560QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item439a4eb640&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

The poster art itself is the same as the Italian version.

It makes me wonder: During the heyday of European popular genre cinemas, was there a correlation between whether a country dubbed or subtitled and whether they had their own poster art or not, beyond simply having the translated or other title and perhaps emphasising the native star above the foreign one.

Did ' bigger' markets, or ones with a particular national orientation, have their own art, whereas smaller ones just used pre-existing art?

La signora in giallo

Any non-Italians care to guess which US TV series the title 'La signora in giallo' (the lady/woman in yellow/giallo refers to)?