I picked up this seminal world of hard-boiled fiction on the grounds that it was an inspiration for both Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and had also attracted Bernardo Bertolucci at one point, though his attempt at making a more faithful adaptation of it appears to have came to naught.
One of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories, it is told in the first person by the unnamed private investigator, a representative of the aforementioned agency. He arrives in the mining town of Personville AKA Poisonville, population 40,000, having been hired by one of the town's public citizens, Donald Willson.
The Op and Willson never get the chance to meet, however, with Willson being gunned down the same night as the Op arrives. He soon learns that Willson's was a relative newcomer in Poisonville but had already earned the reputation as an honest man and thus troublemaker, and that his father, Elihu Willson, had built up the town from nothing but then lost control over it during a labour dispute:
“[O]ld Elihu didn't know his Italian history. He won the strike, but he lost his hold on the city and the state. To beat the miners he had to let his hired thugs run wild. When the fight was over he couldn't get rid of them. He had given his city to them and he wasn't strong enough to take it away from them. Personville looked good to them and they took it over.”
The Op's confidant, a labour organiser named Quint, identifies four different figures who run the town from behind the scenes, maintaining an uneasy balance of power amongst themselves and with Willson: bootlegger Pete the Finn; bondsman and fence Lew Yard; chief of police Noonan and gambler 'Whisper' Thaler.
While his subsequent attempts to clean up the city see him make arrangements with and feed information to each of the five men, the scenario cannot really be described as a 'servant of two masters' plot in the manner of Leone's film, with the intrigue and conflict between the various figures considerably more complicated than that between the Baxters and Roho, and the Op tending to present himself as more of a neutral power broker rather than identifying himself with any faction.
The Op also brings in some outside help in the form of another couple of men from the agency rather than being self-reliant, although their role is primarily that of observers and might be compared to that of the coffinmaker and barkeep in Fistful.
There is also less sentimentality than Leone's film, with no counterpart to the 'holy family'. Instead the two women who appear, Willson's widow and especially Dinah Brand, who is out for whatever she can get from the Op and the other men around her, are hard, uncaring figures.
A good read in its own rights and an interesting one in seeing how things changed cross-culturally when it was liberally adapted for the screen. (Though the most faithful in its prohibition America setting, Walter Hill's Last Man Standing also takes liberties with the source material, in giving Bruce Willis's character a more heroic role in defending a prostitute and in again reducing the number of factions and subplots to more manageable numbers.)
Also of note, though more in terms of the giallo, is a subplot late on where the Op is uncertain whether he has committed a murder himself and must thus find the real perpetrator before he is caught by the (corrupt) police.
Monday, 21 July 2008
Le Deportate della sezione speciale SS / Deported Women of the SS Special Section
Though featuring the expected elements of sex, sleaze, sadism, shocks and showers, this 1977 Nazisploitation entry from Rino De Silvestro is unusual in other regards, evincing a comparatively serious and sombre tone at times and featuring a few scenes which hint at a challenge to the viewer's pleasure in watching the film.
De Silvestro makes his bid for authorship
Set in the dying days of the Third Reich, the film begins with the transportation of a mixed group of female prisoners by a filthy but perhaps surprisingly roomy cattle car.
Flashbacks establish our main protagonist, Tanya Nobel, an aristocrat of German extraction who has renounced the Reich and the Volk in favour of her Polish resistance lover; as is usually the case in the filone story takes priority over history.
Erna Schurer and John S
Tanya immediately earns the enmity of Trudy, who is determined to become a Kapo once they arrive at their destination. Trudy's character is more sketchily drawn, however. While there is an element of class resentment to her remarks – “Leave her alone” “Oh yeah! Just who the fuck do you think you are! Your aristocratic background doesn't mean shit here! You're up to your neck in it just like the rest of us!” – it isn't that clear why she is a prisoner rather than a Nazi in this regard beyond her lesbian proclivities, though I certainly suspect that she is something of an anti-social element who could not be relied upon to put the values of the Reich above her own gratifications rather than a leftist.
Whatever the case, it soon emerges that this is another one of those films where the activities of the Nazis themselves don't seem particularly geared towards the instrumentally rational goal of winning the war nor the value rational one of ridding the Reich of those they deem undesirable; while the two goals were perhaps not altogether incompatible when the war was going well by the time the film is set they almost certainly were in terms of suggesting conflicting deployments of men and material.
A Suspiria-style lightbulb shot and a row of less than happy campers
As the train pulls into the station, Tanya and another prisoner make a bid for freedom. Trudy notices and alerts the guards. Tanya is thus recaptured while the other woman is gunned down; again, students of Nazi crimes rather than their representation in the Nazisploitation filone might have cause for pause here as to the probability of this scene.
From the station, the prisoners are transferred to the camp, apparently located in an old castle. Trudy gets her wish to become a kapo and thus gets to dish out rather than receive the same humiliation and brutalisation as the others as they are processed and assigned new duties.
Tanya is earmarked to be a field whore serving in the Joy Division until the camp commander Erner notices her name on the roster. As another flashback explains, Erner is infatuated with Tanya, althought she had always refused his attentions.
Erner thus decides to keep Tanya in the camp and resolves to make her love him, resulting in a battle of wills between the two as the other inmates struggle to survive amidst the capricious wardens and kapos that all builds to a dramatic and suspenseful climax...
Kapo Trudy wielding her phallic baton
As is often the case in the filone, the reasons for the prisoners being in the camp – whether their 'crimes' are ethnic/religious, sexual, political or otherwise – are not specified with the exception of Tanya.
Unsurprisingly the incidence of homosexuality – as a 'perversion' – is presented as be far higher amongst the Nazis and their confederates than the prisoners, with two wardens getting into a catfight over their respective claims over one piece of live property:
“She's my whore”
“Oh yeah, fuck you. What are you going to do about it?”
“I'll show you! [slap]”
Far more surprising and interesting, however, is the scene of male homosexual activity between Erner and his devoted underling, Dobermann [sic] by virtue of giving the implied male heterosexual audience something they didn't expect or desire; as one IMBD reviewer remarks: “This was the last thing I was expecting to see [...] Needless to say, a big turn off.”
Ernst and Dobermann
Significantly this scene is also presaged by one of the battles of wills between Tanya and Erner, as she pointedly refuses to gaze at his humiliation of two other field whores by compelling them to make out with one another and then fellate him, before then moving to seduce Dobermann – a combination cumulatively suggesting a somewhat Sartean dynamic of looking and refusing to look that, while being about power, cannot be reduced to male / female, active looking / passive to be looked at ness. (“You have to look! You can't refuse my spectacle!,” as Erner screams at Tanya.)
Despite this difference, one of the problems with the Nazisploitation filone more generally that again emerges is that of scale. These low-budget films lacked the resources to convincingly depict a larger-scale camp with hundreds or thousands of prisoners, only ever being able to present small-scale and somewhat specialist facilities with only a couple dozen inmates at most at a time.
Their production design also tends to be that bit off, as when the rows of improbably comfortable looking beds and the showers with abundant hot water and soap for those long shower scenes come across as more appropriate to a prison, convent or girls' school – a lack of specificity which further highlights the ease with which the same basic stock scenario, situations and sets could so often be redressed by a simple substitution of mother superior for head warden or SS doctor.
Tanya refusing to gaze...
... making a defiant, resistant gaze of her own...
... and as the laughing woman...
On the plus side, the direction is more accomplished than many others of its kind, with some effective camera set ups and movements. Likewise although the inmates – including Stefanio D'Amario and Sara Sperati – are as usual that bit too healthy and well-fed looking to really convince as the real thing, they and the other performers – including Erna Schurer, Solvi Stubing and John Steiner amonst the Nazi contingent – are uniformly committed to their roles and, within the melodramatic, operatic and campy boundaries of the filone, more than adequate.
Stelvio Cipriani' score is another asset, although some of his cues are recognisable from elsewhere, such as the lush, romantic piano piece that build ups to the Countess's murder in Bay of Blood.
De Silvestro makes his bid for authorship
Set in the dying days of the Third Reich, the film begins with the transportation of a mixed group of female prisoners by a filthy but perhaps surprisingly roomy cattle car.
Flashbacks establish our main protagonist, Tanya Nobel, an aristocrat of German extraction who has renounced the Reich and the Volk in favour of her Polish resistance lover; as is usually the case in the filone story takes priority over history.
Erna Schurer and John S
Tanya immediately earns the enmity of Trudy, who is determined to become a Kapo once they arrive at their destination. Trudy's character is more sketchily drawn, however. While there is an element of class resentment to her remarks – “Leave her alone” “Oh yeah! Just who the fuck do you think you are! Your aristocratic background doesn't mean shit here! You're up to your neck in it just like the rest of us!” – it isn't that clear why she is a prisoner rather than a Nazi in this regard beyond her lesbian proclivities, though I certainly suspect that she is something of an anti-social element who could not be relied upon to put the values of the Reich above her own gratifications rather than a leftist.
Whatever the case, it soon emerges that this is another one of those films where the activities of the Nazis themselves don't seem particularly geared towards the instrumentally rational goal of winning the war nor the value rational one of ridding the Reich of those they deem undesirable; while the two goals were perhaps not altogether incompatible when the war was going well by the time the film is set they almost certainly were in terms of suggesting conflicting deployments of men and material.
A Suspiria-style lightbulb shot and a row of less than happy campers
As the train pulls into the station, Tanya and another prisoner make a bid for freedom. Trudy notices and alerts the guards. Tanya is thus recaptured while the other woman is gunned down; again, students of Nazi crimes rather than their representation in the Nazisploitation filone might have cause for pause here as to the probability of this scene.
From the station, the prisoners are transferred to the camp, apparently located in an old castle. Trudy gets her wish to become a kapo and thus gets to dish out rather than receive the same humiliation and brutalisation as the others as they are processed and assigned new duties.
Tanya is earmarked to be a field whore serving in the Joy Division until the camp commander Erner notices her name on the roster. As another flashback explains, Erner is infatuated with Tanya, althought she had always refused his attentions.
Erner thus decides to keep Tanya in the camp and resolves to make her love him, resulting in a battle of wills between the two as the other inmates struggle to survive amidst the capricious wardens and kapos that all builds to a dramatic and suspenseful climax...
Kapo Trudy wielding her phallic baton
As is often the case in the filone, the reasons for the prisoners being in the camp – whether their 'crimes' are ethnic/religious, sexual, political or otherwise – are not specified with the exception of Tanya.
Unsurprisingly the incidence of homosexuality – as a 'perversion' – is presented as be far higher amongst the Nazis and their confederates than the prisoners, with two wardens getting into a catfight over their respective claims over one piece of live property:
“She's my whore”
“Oh yeah, fuck you. What are you going to do about it?”
“I'll show you! [slap]”
Far more surprising and interesting, however, is the scene of male homosexual activity between Erner and his devoted underling, Dobermann [sic] by virtue of giving the implied male heterosexual audience something they didn't expect or desire; as one IMBD reviewer remarks: “This was the last thing I was expecting to see [...] Needless to say, a big turn off.”
Ernst and Dobermann
Significantly this scene is also presaged by one of the battles of wills between Tanya and Erner, as she pointedly refuses to gaze at his humiliation of two other field whores by compelling them to make out with one another and then fellate him, before then moving to seduce Dobermann – a combination cumulatively suggesting a somewhat Sartean dynamic of looking and refusing to look that, while being about power, cannot be reduced to male / female, active looking / passive to be looked at ness. (“You have to look! You can't refuse my spectacle!,” as Erner screams at Tanya.)
Despite this difference, one of the problems with the Nazisploitation filone more generally that again emerges is that of scale. These low-budget films lacked the resources to convincingly depict a larger-scale camp with hundreds or thousands of prisoners, only ever being able to present small-scale and somewhat specialist facilities with only a couple dozen inmates at most at a time.
Their production design also tends to be that bit off, as when the rows of improbably comfortable looking beds and the showers with abundant hot water and soap for those long shower scenes come across as more appropriate to a prison, convent or girls' school – a lack of specificity which further highlights the ease with which the same basic stock scenario, situations and sets could so often be redressed by a simple substitution of mother superior for head warden or SS doctor.
Tanya refusing to gaze...
... making a defiant, resistant gaze of her own...
... and as the laughing woman...
On the plus side, the direction is more accomplished than many others of its kind, with some effective camera set ups and movements. Likewise although the inmates – including Stefanio D'Amario and Sara Sperati – are as usual that bit too healthy and well-fed looking to really convince as the real thing, they and the other performers – including Erna Schurer, Solvi Stubing and John Steiner amonst the Nazi contingent – are uniformly committed to their roles and, within the melodramatic, operatic and campy boundaries of the filone, more than adequate.
Stelvio Cipriani' score is another asset, although some of his cues are recognisable from elsewhere, such as the lush, romantic piano piece that build ups to the Countess's murder in Bay of Blood.
Saturday, 19 July 2008
Genova a mano armata / Merciless Man
If it would be difficult to think of a more generic title for a poliziotto than Genova a mano armata, writer-director Mario Lanfranchi's 1976 film nevertheless manages to produce the occasional surprise amongst the de rigeur shoot outs, brawls, chases, crosses and double-crosses.
Specifically, rather than being a dedicated crime fighter or a gangster, our protagonist (Tony Lo Bianco) is an ex-cop kicked off the force for inappropriate conduct.
Taking advantage of his father's Italian origins he's relocated to Genoa and set himself up as a private investigator – a post assumed against the wishes of local cop Gallo (Adolfo Celi) who is convinced 'The American' is up to something but cannot put his finger on anything specific.
Not that it can be said that the American has exactly shone in his new occupation, with his most recent case going spectacularly wrong on all counts as he failed to save a kidnapped businessman from being killed, the ransom from going missing and the kidnappers from escaping.
Nonetheless given that a group of gangsters seem intent on following the American's every move and also warn him against further involvement in the case he does at least have some leads to go on when the victim's daughter, Dr Marta Mayer (Maud Adams), hires him to track down her father's killers and bring them to justice one way or another...
Whether on account of the cross-over between the hunters and hunted or the apparent omission of 15 or 20 minutes of material in the version I watched, Genova a mano armata had a somewhat choppy narrative, being prone to jump from one plot point or incident to another without bothering too much about the finer details of the whys and wherefores
Though the eventual resolution goes some way to explaining how this should be so, it's also one of those cases of too little too late.
Other incidents along the way such as the American's shooting up heroin in order to infiltrate a private clinic he believes is involved in the increasingly confusing affair – presumably an idea borrowed from the French Connection 2, just as a later bus hijacking recalls Dirty Harry – strain credulity, without being well enough put together to get by on character, performance or direction alone, especially when we're not really given much reason to care about Lo Bianco's character to begin with.
Bond fans may care to note that the film may well be unique in starring not one but two of that franchise's major villains in the form of Thunderball's Celi and Octopussy's Adams, while the presence of Howard Ross / Renato Rossini as the leader of the gangsters should be a plus as far as Italian trash fans are concerned as will Franco Micalizzi's characteristically energetic score.
Specifically, rather than being a dedicated crime fighter or a gangster, our protagonist (Tony Lo Bianco) is an ex-cop kicked off the force for inappropriate conduct.
Taking advantage of his father's Italian origins he's relocated to Genoa and set himself up as a private investigator – a post assumed against the wishes of local cop Gallo (Adolfo Celi) who is convinced 'The American' is up to something but cannot put his finger on anything specific.
Not that it can be said that the American has exactly shone in his new occupation, with his most recent case going spectacularly wrong on all counts as he failed to save a kidnapped businessman from being killed, the ransom from going missing and the kidnappers from escaping.
Nonetheless given that a group of gangsters seem intent on following the American's every move and also warn him against further involvement in the case he does at least have some leads to go on when the victim's daughter, Dr Marta Mayer (Maud Adams), hires him to track down her father's killers and bring them to justice one way or another...
Whether on account of the cross-over between the hunters and hunted or the apparent omission of 15 or 20 minutes of material in the version I watched, Genova a mano armata had a somewhat choppy narrative, being prone to jump from one plot point or incident to another without bothering too much about the finer details of the whys and wherefores
Though the eventual resolution goes some way to explaining how this should be so, it's also one of those cases of too little too late.
Other incidents along the way such as the American's shooting up heroin in order to infiltrate a private clinic he believes is involved in the increasingly confusing affair – presumably an idea borrowed from the French Connection 2, just as a later bus hijacking recalls Dirty Harry – strain credulity, without being well enough put together to get by on character, performance or direction alone, especially when we're not really given much reason to care about Lo Bianco's character to begin with.
Bond fans may care to note that the film may well be unique in starring not one but two of that franchise's major villains in the form of Thunderball's Celi and Octopussy's Adams, while the presence of Howard Ross / Renato Rossini as the leader of the gangsters should be a plus as far as Italian trash fans are concerned as will Franco Micalizzi's characteristically energetic score.
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Torso poster
My latest Ebay acquisition: a nice and garish US poster for Torso. The price of the shipping to the UK is almost as much as the poster itself :-(
Monday, 14 July 2008
Il Colosso di Rodi / The Colossus of Rhodes
Set in the period between Greece decline and Roman ascendancy, The Colossus of Rhodes begins with the ceremony marking the completion of the titular Wonder of the World.
Ten years in the making, the giant statue over the entrance to the island state's main harbour promises to alter the balance of power in the Mediterranean, giving Rhodes and its allies a near impregnable base.
Two views of the Colossus, in benign mood / mode
A later fight on its shoulders, giving an idea of the film's scale
Accordingly the Phenecians, the first villains of the piece, have sent an emmisary to Rhodes to negotiate with King Sirse for access to the harbour, the plan being to raid Greek ships and split the proceeds.
Sirse is wise enough, however, to impose a limitation on the number of Phenecian ships and men permitted into the harbour at any one time, both as a means of securing his own position and hopefully avoiding arousing suspicion amongst the Greeks, Rhodes traditional ally.
Sirse's advisor Thar has his own plans and is secretly plotting to overthrow his ruler with the aid of the Phenecians, hundreds of whose troops are being brought into the island in the guise of Macedonian slaves.
Sirse, Thar and the Phenecian emissary negotiate over a model of the harbour – a precursor to McBain's simulacra of Sweetwater station?
In addition another faction amongst the island's nobility also hopes to bring about a regime change, being dissatisfied with Sirse's rule and what they see as the vainglories of the Colossus. Unlike Thar they are loyal to their homeland and are looking to Greece for assistance.
All this means that everyone wants to know where the loyalties of the heroic half-Rhodean warrior visiting his uncle after his recent wartime exertions for Greece, Dario, lie and if he is just the innocent abroad that he appears to be...
Though entirely enjoyable in its own right, the main interest that The Colossus of Rhodes holds for many viewers today – myself included – is likely in its status as the official directorial debut of Sergio Leone and the extent to which it contains the same signature touches and themes as can be found in his later films.
The chief differences from the westerns are that the distinctions between the good guys and the bad guys are more straightforward and obvious, and the failure of the protagonist to play different factions against one another for his own benefit.
As Dario says at one point, “I don't play the hero” – rather he is the hero.
Leone's approach to history is also somewhat distinctive here, playing that bit faster and looser in terms of historical details. Though he acknowledged that it would probably take a lifetime's research to pursue authenticity here, it could be argued that in the case of the western he did do this research into its myths and history. Just like his later films, however, Leone also proves inclined to go for what he felt to be right in terms of the impact or effect it would have on the audience, as with a Colossus three times the size of its historical counterpart, positioned in a different place and tricked out with all sorts of fancy gadgets.
The Colossus reveals one of its secrets, raining fire down on a ship trying to pass beneath it
The film's approach to identity and allegiance is also somewhat reminiscent of Leone's later films, as when the difference between a Macedonian slave and a Phenecian warrior comes down to a uniform or the way in which Dario's love-interest Diala and uncle Lissipus do not revealing their true allegiances until late in the day.
There are also some surprising reversals of expectation, as with the way it looks like these selfsame slaves are about to be sacrificed to the god Baal rather than be housed in the dungeons of the temple until the moment to strike arrives, or the attempted forcible abduction of Dario by the Rhodean rebels after he stubbornly refuses to come along quietly and listen to what they have to say.
While the film is very much on an epic scale, it also largely succeeds at the more intimate level. In particular two of the female characters rank amongst the best developed ones to appear in a Leone film for some time, albeit with a relatively straightforward good girl / bad girl, if not madonna / whore, distinction emerging as the film goes on.
There's also an intriguing aspect to the rebels' motivation. It's not entirely clear what Sirse has done to incur their enmity other than following what they feel – admittedly correctly – to be the bad counsel of Thar and, perhaps, putting his own personal glory above that of Rhodes and the welfare of its people.
Some Blondie-style sharpshooting threatens to send a rebel to i leoni
Nevertheless, the other citizens of the Island seem happy enough with the building of the Colussus and the promise of prosperity and security that it offers, or are at least not generally that vocal in their complaints.
As such, there is perhaps the hint that the conflict is, much like the subsequent representation of American and Mexican civil wars in The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Duck You Sucker, primarily between two elite factions and the kind of thing which the masses would do best to avoid getting entangled in.
A somewhat unexplained, Duck You Sucker style massacre scene
There is a difference from these later films in that it is more idealism rather cynicism that eventually triumphs. Given Leone's remark that the distinction between his and Ford's westerns could in part be attributed to their respective backgrounds – Roman pessimism and American optimism – this may be a reflection of the film's own historico-mythic setting or that Leone was not interested in undertaking a wholesale re-invention of the peplum in the same way as he would later be with the western.
Two of the rebels undergo torture in a classic piece of homoerotic sadism
It is perhaps somewhat curious in this regard that the film is credited to Leone whereas A Fistful of Dollars was originally accredited to the pseudonymous Bob Robertson, such that he moved from being identified with his work to a position non-identification – albeit with a name that referenced his director father, Roberto Leone – before going back to identification from For a Few Dollars More onwards.
Presumably this loss of authority on Fistful can be accounted for by the fact that at the time it was still a relatively untested genre for Italian directors. Whereas the the historical and mythical epic was actually invented by the Italians in the silent era, such that the contemporaneous work of Cottafavi and others could be understood as a post-fascist reclamation of Italian cinematic heritage, the western, like the Gothic horror, was initially perceived as a foreign genre which Italians had no obvious aptitude for, leading filmmakers to attempt to pass off their product as of US or UK origin as generically appropriate.
This said, just as the practiced viewer can easily spot the stylistic and thematic differences between Hammer and Italian Gothics, part of the whole reason for the spaghetti westerns proving so fresh and attractive to many audiences at the time was their evident differences and departures from the Hollywood models.
It is this, despite Leone's attraction to The Colossus of Rhodes as a project apparently residing mostly in the opportunities it afforded him to ironicise the form after his uncredited and unofficial, straight debut on The Last Days of Pompeii, is perhaps where the finished product proves lacking compared to its immediate successors.
The deceptiveness of appearances, as we think the slaves are about to be sacrificed to Baal's gaping maw
The balance between following convention and introducing innovation is more heavily weighted towards the former than would later be the case here, such that cliché and pastiche tending to appear as such rather than as parody, subversion, deconstruction or any of the other preferred oppositional critical terms of choice.
Though some horse riding sequences outside of the city of Rhodes and some brutal and inventive torture scenes could easily have seen service in one of the later westerns with different musical accompaniment, costuming and design, the urban and sea-front locations that dominate elsewhere tend to makes Leone's direction generally that bit more anonymous than it would later become.
The contrasts between close-ups and background vistas are less extreme and more conventional, the former serving more in a classical Hollywood manner than as the exploration of the geography of weather-beaten, life-worn, distinctly unglamorous physiognomies. (As an aside, there is perhaps also a connection to be explored here between Dreyer's Joan of Arc, as the film of the facial close up, Pasolini – who, as Bertolucci notes in an interview, greatly admired Dreyer's film and drew inspiration from it when making his directorial debut, Accatone – and Leone's mature work a few years later.)
The camera assumes an independence from Dario's point of view, circling back to incorporate the seer within the seen of the set.
Leone's rhetorical, mannerist camera style is however in evidence when Dario pursues Diala into the crypts of her ancestors, where a 360 degree pan starts from his point of view and concludes by incorporating him within the camera's gaze as it comes to rest once more. The same sequence also sees a (wo)man with no name incident when Dario, reading out the names atop each mummified noble, encounters Diala standing in a vacant spot and plays along with her – “Hm, no name here” – before continuing on his way as if he had not seen her.
Likewise, traces of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly can perhaps be seen when a galley full of rebels proves to have been beneath Dario at the quayside all along and in a colisseum sequence where ranks of Phenecian archers are dramatically revealed at the back of the arena as Thar makes his bid for power.
Somehow Dario remained unaware of the ship's presence until it was pointed out to him
Similarly no-one in the coliseum seems to have noticed the rank of Phenecian archers amassing above them
As with the likes of the shoot out between Blondie and Tuco and Angel Eyes' gang and in the remarkably silent battlefield the two magnificent rogues stumble into shortly afterwards, there is here the sense of Leone experimenting with off-screen and on-screen space and the relationship between visual and aural data sets, formulating these for the first time along the lines that if you can't hear it or see it within the frame then it doesn't have any existence.
There's perhaps also vague hint of Tuco and Blondie's repeated riffs on “two kinds of people” in Dario's ironic references to Rhodes as the “Island of Peace” every time someone gets attacked or murdered.
A number of the performers like George Rigaud and Roberto Camardiel would go on to be spaghetti western regulars, the two actually appearing together as Scots and Irish patriarchs in Seven Brides for the McGregors, with Camardiel also appearing in For a Few Dollars More.
Ten years in the making, the giant statue over the entrance to the island state's main harbour promises to alter the balance of power in the Mediterranean, giving Rhodes and its allies a near impregnable base.
Two views of the Colossus, in benign mood / mode
A later fight on its shoulders, giving an idea of the film's scale
Accordingly the Phenecians, the first villains of the piece, have sent an emmisary to Rhodes to negotiate with King Sirse for access to the harbour, the plan being to raid Greek ships and split the proceeds.
Sirse is wise enough, however, to impose a limitation on the number of Phenecian ships and men permitted into the harbour at any one time, both as a means of securing his own position and hopefully avoiding arousing suspicion amongst the Greeks, Rhodes traditional ally.
Sirse's advisor Thar has his own plans and is secretly plotting to overthrow his ruler with the aid of the Phenecians, hundreds of whose troops are being brought into the island in the guise of Macedonian slaves.
Sirse, Thar and the Phenecian emissary negotiate over a model of the harbour – a precursor to McBain's simulacra of Sweetwater station?
In addition another faction amongst the island's nobility also hopes to bring about a regime change, being dissatisfied with Sirse's rule and what they see as the vainglories of the Colossus. Unlike Thar they are loyal to their homeland and are looking to Greece for assistance.
All this means that everyone wants to know where the loyalties of the heroic half-Rhodean warrior visiting his uncle after his recent wartime exertions for Greece, Dario, lie and if he is just the innocent abroad that he appears to be...
Though entirely enjoyable in its own right, the main interest that The Colossus of Rhodes holds for many viewers today – myself included – is likely in its status as the official directorial debut of Sergio Leone and the extent to which it contains the same signature touches and themes as can be found in his later films.
The chief differences from the westerns are that the distinctions between the good guys and the bad guys are more straightforward and obvious, and the failure of the protagonist to play different factions against one another for his own benefit.
As Dario says at one point, “I don't play the hero” – rather he is the hero.
Leone's approach to history is also somewhat distinctive here, playing that bit faster and looser in terms of historical details. Though he acknowledged that it would probably take a lifetime's research to pursue authenticity here, it could be argued that in the case of the western he did do this research into its myths and history. Just like his later films, however, Leone also proves inclined to go for what he felt to be right in terms of the impact or effect it would have on the audience, as with a Colossus three times the size of its historical counterpart, positioned in a different place and tricked out with all sorts of fancy gadgets.
The Colossus reveals one of its secrets, raining fire down on a ship trying to pass beneath it
The film's approach to identity and allegiance is also somewhat reminiscent of Leone's later films, as when the difference between a Macedonian slave and a Phenecian warrior comes down to a uniform or the way in which Dario's love-interest Diala and uncle Lissipus do not revealing their true allegiances until late in the day.
There are also some surprising reversals of expectation, as with the way it looks like these selfsame slaves are about to be sacrificed to the god Baal rather than be housed in the dungeons of the temple until the moment to strike arrives, or the attempted forcible abduction of Dario by the Rhodean rebels after he stubbornly refuses to come along quietly and listen to what they have to say.
While the film is very much on an epic scale, it also largely succeeds at the more intimate level. In particular two of the female characters rank amongst the best developed ones to appear in a Leone film for some time, albeit with a relatively straightforward good girl / bad girl, if not madonna / whore, distinction emerging as the film goes on.
There's also an intriguing aspect to the rebels' motivation. It's not entirely clear what Sirse has done to incur their enmity other than following what they feel – admittedly correctly – to be the bad counsel of Thar and, perhaps, putting his own personal glory above that of Rhodes and the welfare of its people.
Some Blondie-style sharpshooting threatens to send a rebel to i leoni
Nevertheless, the other citizens of the Island seem happy enough with the building of the Colussus and the promise of prosperity and security that it offers, or are at least not generally that vocal in their complaints.
As such, there is perhaps the hint that the conflict is, much like the subsequent representation of American and Mexican civil wars in The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Duck You Sucker, primarily between two elite factions and the kind of thing which the masses would do best to avoid getting entangled in.
A somewhat unexplained, Duck You Sucker style massacre scene
There is a difference from these later films in that it is more idealism rather cynicism that eventually triumphs. Given Leone's remark that the distinction between his and Ford's westerns could in part be attributed to their respective backgrounds – Roman pessimism and American optimism – this may be a reflection of the film's own historico-mythic setting or that Leone was not interested in undertaking a wholesale re-invention of the peplum in the same way as he would later be with the western.
Two of the rebels undergo torture in a classic piece of homoerotic sadism
It is perhaps somewhat curious in this regard that the film is credited to Leone whereas A Fistful of Dollars was originally accredited to the pseudonymous Bob Robertson, such that he moved from being identified with his work to a position non-identification – albeit with a name that referenced his director father, Roberto Leone – before going back to identification from For a Few Dollars More onwards.
Presumably this loss of authority on Fistful can be accounted for by the fact that at the time it was still a relatively untested genre for Italian directors. Whereas the the historical and mythical epic was actually invented by the Italians in the silent era, such that the contemporaneous work of Cottafavi and others could be understood as a post-fascist reclamation of Italian cinematic heritage, the western, like the Gothic horror, was initially perceived as a foreign genre which Italians had no obvious aptitude for, leading filmmakers to attempt to pass off their product as of US or UK origin as generically appropriate.
This said, just as the practiced viewer can easily spot the stylistic and thematic differences between Hammer and Italian Gothics, part of the whole reason for the spaghetti westerns proving so fresh and attractive to many audiences at the time was their evident differences and departures from the Hollywood models.
It is this, despite Leone's attraction to The Colossus of Rhodes as a project apparently residing mostly in the opportunities it afforded him to ironicise the form after his uncredited and unofficial, straight debut on The Last Days of Pompeii, is perhaps where the finished product proves lacking compared to its immediate successors.
The deceptiveness of appearances, as we think the slaves are about to be sacrificed to Baal's gaping maw
The balance between following convention and introducing innovation is more heavily weighted towards the former than would later be the case here, such that cliché and pastiche tending to appear as such rather than as parody, subversion, deconstruction or any of the other preferred oppositional critical terms of choice.
Though some horse riding sequences outside of the city of Rhodes and some brutal and inventive torture scenes could easily have seen service in one of the later westerns with different musical accompaniment, costuming and design, the urban and sea-front locations that dominate elsewhere tend to makes Leone's direction generally that bit more anonymous than it would later become.
The contrasts between close-ups and background vistas are less extreme and more conventional, the former serving more in a classical Hollywood manner than as the exploration of the geography of weather-beaten, life-worn, distinctly unglamorous physiognomies. (As an aside, there is perhaps also a connection to be explored here between Dreyer's Joan of Arc, as the film of the facial close up, Pasolini – who, as Bertolucci notes in an interview, greatly admired Dreyer's film and drew inspiration from it when making his directorial debut, Accatone – and Leone's mature work a few years later.)
The camera assumes an independence from Dario's point of view, circling back to incorporate the seer within the seen of the set.
Leone's rhetorical, mannerist camera style is however in evidence when Dario pursues Diala into the crypts of her ancestors, where a 360 degree pan starts from his point of view and concludes by incorporating him within the camera's gaze as it comes to rest once more. The same sequence also sees a (wo)man with no name incident when Dario, reading out the names atop each mummified noble, encounters Diala standing in a vacant spot and plays along with her – “Hm, no name here” – before continuing on his way as if he had not seen her.
Likewise, traces of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly can perhaps be seen when a galley full of rebels proves to have been beneath Dario at the quayside all along and in a colisseum sequence where ranks of Phenecian archers are dramatically revealed at the back of the arena as Thar makes his bid for power.
Somehow Dario remained unaware of the ship's presence until it was pointed out to him
Similarly no-one in the coliseum seems to have noticed the rank of Phenecian archers amassing above them
As with the likes of the shoot out between Blondie and Tuco and Angel Eyes' gang and in the remarkably silent battlefield the two magnificent rogues stumble into shortly afterwards, there is here the sense of Leone experimenting with off-screen and on-screen space and the relationship between visual and aural data sets, formulating these for the first time along the lines that if you can't hear it or see it within the frame then it doesn't have any existence.
There's perhaps also vague hint of Tuco and Blondie's repeated riffs on “two kinds of people” in Dario's ironic references to Rhodes as the “Island of Peace” every time someone gets attacked or murdered.
A number of the performers like George Rigaud and Roberto Camardiel would go on to be spaghetti western regulars, the two actually appearing together as Scots and Irish patriarchs in Seven Brides for the McGregors, with Camardiel also appearing in For a Few Dollars More.
Sunday, 13 July 2008
La Mano lunga del padrino / Long Arm of the Godfather
We open with a daring attack on an army convoy carrying a consignment of weapons. But for the technology on display – cars, trucks and submachine guns – it could easily be a scene in a spaghetti western, all the more so when one of the robbers proceeds to make off with the loot, leaving his companions for dead.
As Long Arm of the Godfather's title suggests, however, we're actually in poliziotto territory. In truth, however, the term is something of a misnomer here insofar as no members of the police or other authorities are ever seen ever as taking any interest in the case, which is a curious omission given that you would think that soldiers would be the kind of crime to that attention.
Noir-ish imagery with Lawrence
This is not to say, however, that the perpetrator of the betrayal, Vincenzo, is about to have things easy since his ex-boss Don Carmelo is, as his title indicates, a rather prominent gangster and soon proves to have also survived the incident.
And then there's the issue of actually finding a buyer for the guns...
Erica Blanc, intelligent and charming as ever
Directed and co-written by Nardo Bonomi, whose only credit this is, the latter role in conjuction with Giulio Berutti of Killer Nun fame, this is nasty little crime film where Peter Lee Lawrence / Karl Hirenbach's Vincenzo provides our point of identification almost by default.
About the only things he has going for him in comparison with Adolfo Celi's old school Don are that he is the attractive young underdog aspiring to have his day and is acting at least partly out love, in the form of Erika Blanc's somewhat more level headed and forward thinking moll, Sabina.
Shades of giallo
Otherwise, however, they're cut from much the same cloth, with the action providing that familiar mix of car chases, shootouts, men beating one another and women up to car door slamming type sound effects, and a reasonable degree of suspense over what is going to happen next.
This is the kind of film where the nightclub owner is more interested in whether the dancer can also serve drinks than her primary talents
Yet another savage beating
Though nothing outstanding Bonomi's direction is efficient, with a good use of locations and some eye-catching camera set-ups. The performances are more going through the motions than truly inspired, although there is an added poignancy to the denoument if one is aware Lawrence and Blanc's rumoured real-life relationship and of the actor's subsequent suicide less than two years later.
As Long Arm of the Godfather's title suggests, however, we're actually in poliziotto territory. In truth, however, the term is something of a misnomer here insofar as no members of the police or other authorities are ever seen ever as taking any interest in the case, which is a curious omission given that you would think that soldiers would be the kind of crime to that attention.
Noir-ish imagery with Lawrence
This is not to say, however, that the perpetrator of the betrayal, Vincenzo, is about to have things easy since his ex-boss Don Carmelo is, as his title indicates, a rather prominent gangster and soon proves to have also survived the incident.
And then there's the issue of actually finding a buyer for the guns...
Erica Blanc, intelligent and charming as ever
Directed and co-written by Nardo Bonomi, whose only credit this is, the latter role in conjuction with Giulio Berutti of Killer Nun fame, this is nasty little crime film where Peter Lee Lawrence / Karl Hirenbach's Vincenzo provides our point of identification almost by default.
About the only things he has going for him in comparison with Adolfo Celi's old school Don are that he is the attractive young underdog aspiring to have his day and is acting at least partly out love, in the form of Erika Blanc's somewhat more level headed and forward thinking moll, Sabina.
Shades of giallo
Otherwise, however, they're cut from much the same cloth, with the action providing that familiar mix of car chases, shootouts, men beating one another and women up to car door slamming type sound effects, and a reasonable degree of suspense over what is going to happen next.
This is the kind of film where the nightclub owner is more interested in whether the dancer can also serve drinks than her primary talents
Yet another savage beating
Though nothing outstanding Bonomi's direction is efficient, with a good use of locations and some eye-catching camera set-ups. The performances are more going through the motions than truly inspired, although there is an added poignancy to the denoument if one is aware Lawrence and Blanc's rumoured real-life relationship and of the actor's subsequent suicide less than two years later.
5 per l'inferno / Five for Hell
Directed by Frank Kramer / Gianfranco Parolini from a Sergio Garrone story, this is a routine Dirty Dozen inspired World War II action / caper film that illustrates what we might, building on the insights of film academic Christopher Wagstaff and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, refer to as an example of the “hat movie”.
By this, I mean a film whose genre could easily have been altered by the simple act of changing the characters hats and other paradigmatic details of costume and setting: substitute Nazis with Mexicans and occupied Europe with the US-Mexico border and we would have something close to a spaghetti western like Kramer's Sabata.
Luciano Rossi does his look
We begin with Gianni Garko's always smiling Lieutenant Hoffmann recruiting his hand-picked team of misfits, including a safecracker, a baseball pitcher, an acrobat, a strongman and Sgt Johnny White, who doesn't seem to have any special talents but maybe doesn't need any on account of being played by the man himself, Luciano Rossi.
Their mission, which involves the skills of each member in that typical Parolini specialists and gimmicks way, is to steal the details of Hitler's secret attack plan K to save the lives of 50,000 of their comrades, knowledge of the plan and its location having come through Margaret Lee's undercover agent, Helga Richter.
Lee and Kinski, to the manner born
The challenge is the plans are located in a Wolf's Lair like base guarded by troops led by the arrogant and sadistic SS Colonel Hans Mueller, incarnated with typical disdainful relish by Klaus Kinski.
Only in a Parolini film would a baseball and a trampoline be typical military equipment
A good ensemble cast, a high-spirited if anachronistic score, no-nonsense direction and a general sense of everyone enjoying themselves make Five For Hell worth a look for fans of the stars and auteur, though those with a preference for harder-hitting war action or a more realistic and historical approach would do better looking elsewhere.
By this, I mean a film whose genre could easily have been altered by the simple act of changing the characters hats and other paradigmatic details of costume and setting: substitute Nazis with Mexicans and occupied Europe with the US-Mexico border and we would have something close to a spaghetti western like Kramer's Sabata.
Luciano Rossi does his look
We begin with Gianni Garko's always smiling Lieutenant Hoffmann recruiting his hand-picked team of misfits, including a safecracker, a baseball pitcher, an acrobat, a strongman and Sgt Johnny White, who doesn't seem to have any special talents but maybe doesn't need any on account of being played by the man himself, Luciano Rossi.
Their mission, which involves the skills of each member in that typical Parolini specialists and gimmicks way, is to steal the details of Hitler's secret attack plan K to save the lives of 50,000 of their comrades, knowledge of the plan and its location having come through Margaret Lee's undercover agent, Helga Richter.
Lee and Kinski, to the manner born
The challenge is the plans are located in a Wolf's Lair like base guarded by troops led by the arrogant and sadistic SS Colonel Hans Mueller, incarnated with typical disdainful relish by Klaus Kinski.
Only in a Parolini film would a baseball and a trampoline be typical military equipment
A good ensemble cast, a high-spirited if anachronistic score, no-nonsense direction and a general sense of everyone enjoying themselves make Five For Hell worth a look for fans of the stars and auteur, though those with a preference for harder-hitting war action or a more realistic and historical approach would do better looking elsewhere.
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