The first thing to note about this film is the implications of its Italian and English titles. The Italian title translates as The Bastards, whereas the English title and the English lyrics to the theme song (“he’s a bastard”) refer to The Bastard. This plural/singular distinction is an important one, since the English version is likely to make the viewer think that the titular bastard is Jason (Giuliano Gemma) whereas the Italian is likely to make the viewer also think of Jason's older, hypochondriac, half-brother Adam (Klaus Kinski) and perhaps also Jason’s girlfriend Karen (Margaret Lee) and the rest of their gang.
The narrative begins in medias res as Jason flees with a bright yellow bag filled with jewels into the waiting getaway car. Having got out of town, Jason and his two accomplices find their way blocked by a police car. Jason encourages his driver to slowly go forwards and then suddenly accelerate. The stratagem works, but the police car pursues and eventually traps the robbers. The three men get out and the two accomplices are then summarily gunned down by the two cops, who prove to be other associates of Jason’s in disguise.
Jason is the bastard.
Then, however, the cops in turn seek to betray Jason.
Everyone is a bastard.
Jason, however, had predicted as much and, having chained the bag to the floor of the car, manages to take them out.
Having disposed of the getaway car and removed the false fittings from the ‘police’ car, Jason arrives in the next town, stops off for a glass of milk – this an apparent nod to Gemma and co-writer/director Duccio Tessari’s earlier collaborations on the Ringo spaghetti westerns – and then meets up with the waiting Karen.
After dealing with another attempted betrayal in a night club – Karen turning the music up so Jason’s shots will not be heard – the duo rendezvous with Adam, their mother, and the other members of the gang.
At this point also we get a more diegetic explanation for Jason’s avoidance of alcohol, his mother being an alcoholic. This said, he later sends his mother a crate of whiskey as a gift; Adam, whether out of concern for his mother and/or a desire to discredit his half-brother, has the bottles watered down. When Jason learns of this, he gifts his mother another lot of the proper, good stuff. Amusingly, this time we see the bottles, complete with telltale J&B labels.
Rather more important in relation to the narrative, however, is that Jason announces he is not going to share the loot with his brother and the others, instead intending to use the $100,000 to bankroll setting up his own gang. To this end, he has hidden the loot; it may be significant that we do not see him do this.
Jason is the bastard.
What Jason proves not to have foreseen, however, is Karen’s betraying him to Adam. Worse, Adam has his surgeon associate (an unrecognisable Umberto Raho) shoot Jason up with drugs and sever the tendons in the wrist of his gun hand.
Jason is taken in by ranch-owner Barbara (Claudine Auger) who helps him to recover (Gemma here displays his athletic prowess by jumping backwards and somersaulting into the swimming pool, apparently on the first take). Barbara’s kindness makes Jason begin to question his previous life, but not to the extent of foregoing revenge.
Jason may not be the bastard, but he is still one of the bastards.
It is somewhat ironic that, having made some comparably Hollywood-style westerns in Spain, Tessari and Gemma should go to New Mexico to do a crime film with a contemporary setting. This said, the trope of the gunman with a maimed hand is a common one in the Italian western (cf. Django, The Great Silence) and a scene of Jason practising by shooting out the strings of a harp and his donning of a leather wrist-guard seem inspired by A Fistful of Dollars.
Tessari makes good use of the landscape, contrasting its brown and green exteriors with some yellow, blue and red interiors (Dante Ferretti has an early design credit here). Tessari's direction is similar, the obvious stylistic flourishes in some scenes (e.g. Jason’s flashbacks/hallucinations as he stumbles deliriously through the near desert landscape) forming a nice contrast with the less emphatic functional approach elsewhere.
Gemma, Kinski and Lee each acquit themselves well, even if none is being called upon to deliver anything outside of their comfort zone. Hayworth's performance is harder to judge, on the grounds that she was afflicted by undiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease at the time. Without seeing the original script, it is thus difficult to know the extent to which her character's drunkenness was there from the outset or was improvised during filming as a response to difficulties.
One aspect of the script, as written or rewritten, that comes across as rather unsatisfactory is the somewhat deus ex machina ending with its rather too-neat settling of accounts (this term, referenced within the dialogue, is yet another spaghetti westernism).
In sum, a film that starts off well, but loses its way a bit towards the end – much like its lead character, admittedly.
Showing posts with label Giuliano Gemma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Giuliano Gemma. Show all posts
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Il Prefeto di ferro / The Iron Prefect
To some extent the Italian crime cinema divides into two.
On the one hand there are the art house films of directors like Francesco Rosi. These giallo-politico films emphasise dietrology. This means the study of looking behind events, or what lies beneath, hidden from all but the investigator. As such, these films have what Burch and Deleuze term a small form structure, in which an action, A, is required to disclose a situation, S, leading to a new action. The narrative revolves around what Deleuze terms the index, the small but revealing detail – in other words, the clue. In films like The Mattei Affair and Lucky Luciano politics is also a key concern, with the stance taken invariably an oppositional, anti-establishment, left-wing one. In these films architecture is often used symbolically, with a constrast being drawn between the clean, angular lines of modernist and brutalist styles and the hidden of the baroque.
On the other hand there are the vernacular films of directors like Umberto Lenzi. These poliziotteschi emphasise action. They have a large form structure, in which an initial situation, leads to an action, leading to a new situation. The narrative revolves around the binominal or duel – in other words, the protagonist’s need to catch his enemy in the act of committing a crime and then bring him to justice. In these films politics is less important, with the stance taken also being more ambivalent in critiquing left and/or right alike. In these films architecture is used more as something that is there to provide a backdrop for chases and shootouts.
But if we then place these two approaches as opposite ends of a continuum rather than as opposites, we come to films like this one.
The first issue for such films is whether they can manage to produce a satisfying cocktail out of their arthouse and grindhouse type ingredients.
The Iron Prefect succeeds here, such that it should have something to offer all but the most narrow-minded of enthusiasts in either camp.
The title refers to its protagonist, Cesare Moro. He was the police chief who was appointed to bring down the Mafia by Mussolini himself, using whatever means necessary.
The notable thing about Moro was that he himself was not a Fascist. Rather he was a pre-Fascist who implicitly agreed with both Liberal and Fascist Italy (and political theorists) that the state should have the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
What this meant, as portrayed here, is a blurring of the boundaries over what counts as acceptable and unacceptable violence. A potential model here – or at least a film that came to mind – is Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, specifically the sequence in which the new French commander outlines the options (as he understands them) to critical and even hostile French journalists: Do you want Algeria to remain part of France? If so, then this follows.
Here this translates, without the need for a wider national appeal, as: Do you (the good Italian) want to defeat the, the Mafia (the bad Sicilian)? If so, then cutting off the water supply to a Mafia stronghold village until the women are compelled to respond – albeit after a show of piety and/or (misplaced) faith – follows logically.
Moro is played by Giuliano Gemma. His scar makes him recognisable, although he is otherwise obscured beneath a severe haircut and grey dye job.
Gemma’s heritage in the Italian western is however also invoked in a number of tropes – Moro as the Sheriff riding into the corrupt town to bring law and/or order; the Mafia as the figures of campanelosimo, or Bell Tower Loyalty over any wider, more abstract notions of nation state or party; through the set pieces of men on horseback riding across the rugged countryside; and through some man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do duels – this as one facet of the code of honour, of respect, that Moro and his enemies endorse.
Claudia Cardinale plays the Sicilian woman whom Moro tries to help. While her presence isn’t really necessary and was probably down more to the fact that she is Squitieri’s partner than anything else, her role is suitably unglamorous. It’s also refreshing that her character, a widow, doesn’t become Moro’s love interest, as one imagines would have been the case in a more Hollywood-like version of the story. Rather, we see Moro’s wife arrive with him in Sicily, but soon after being forced to leave for her own safety as she is attacked by the local / native women (where is feminism, that all women are in this together...)?
Some of the dialogue also nicely point to misunderstandings: To the Sicilians Moro is a Piedmontese, but Moro asks why when he is not from that province.
Ennio Morricone contributes a fine soundtrack, with his compositions sounding suitably like Mafia songs.
If all of this, making a quality film that is potentially acceptable to both audiences, is accomplished – as I hope has been conveyed is the case here – then the second issue is then one of finding an audience.
That The Iron Prefect was only recently released on DVD, after a large number of other Italian crime productions seems to further testify to its awkward position; it’s worth noting here that whereas Rosi films like Salvatore Guiliano and Hands Over the City are on the prestigious Criterion label, the likes of Lenzi’s Almost Human and Violent Naples are on cult labels.
Give it a go; you won’t be disappointed. Or, put another way: Why is The Godfather so successful? In part as it has an easy to follow narrative, with violent set pieces? In part because it is The Leopard meets King Lear?
On the one hand there are the art house films of directors like Francesco Rosi. These giallo-politico films emphasise dietrology. This means the study of looking behind events, or what lies beneath, hidden from all but the investigator. As such, these films have what Burch and Deleuze term a small form structure, in which an action, A, is required to disclose a situation, S, leading to a new action. The narrative revolves around what Deleuze terms the index, the small but revealing detail – in other words, the clue. In films like The Mattei Affair and Lucky Luciano politics is also a key concern, with the stance taken invariably an oppositional, anti-establishment, left-wing one. In these films architecture is often used symbolically, with a constrast being drawn between the clean, angular lines of modernist and brutalist styles and the hidden of the baroque.
On the other hand there are the vernacular films of directors like Umberto Lenzi. These poliziotteschi emphasise action. They have a large form structure, in which an initial situation, leads to an action, leading to a new situation. The narrative revolves around the binominal or duel – in other words, the protagonist’s need to catch his enemy in the act of committing a crime and then bring him to justice. In these films politics is less important, with the stance taken also being more ambivalent in critiquing left and/or right alike. In these films architecture is used more as something that is there to provide a backdrop for chases and shootouts.
But if we then place these two approaches as opposite ends of a continuum rather than as opposites, we come to films like this one.
The first issue for such films is whether they can manage to produce a satisfying cocktail out of their arthouse and grindhouse type ingredients.
The Iron Prefect succeeds here, such that it should have something to offer all but the most narrow-minded of enthusiasts in either camp.
The title refers to its protagonist, Cesare Moro. He was the police chief who was appointed to bring down the Mafia by Mussolini himself, using whatever means necessary.
The notable thing about Moro was that he himself was not a Fascist. Rather he was a pre-Fascist who implicitly agreed with both Liberal and Fascist Italy (and political theorists) that the state should have the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
What this meant, as portrayed here, is a blurring of the boundaries over what counts as acceptable and unacceptable violence. A potential model here – or at least a film that came to mind – is Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, specifically the sequence in which the new French commander outlines the options (as he understands them) to critical and even hostile French journalists: Do you want Algeria to remain part of France? If so, then this follows.
Here this translates, without the need for a wider national appeal, as: Do you (the good Italian) want to defeat the, the Mafia (the bad Sicilian)? If so, then cutting off the water supply to a Mafia stronghold village until the women are compelled to respond – albeit after a show of piety and/or (misplaced) faith – follows logically.
Moro is played by Giuliano Gemma. His scar makes him recognisable, although he is otherwise obscured beneath a severe haircut and grey dye job.
Gemma’s heritage in the Italian western is however also invoked in a number of tropes – Moro as the Sheriff riding into the corrupt town to bring law and/or order; the Mafia as the figures of campanelosimo, or Bell Tower Loyalty over any wider, more abstract notions of nation state or party; through the set pieces of men on horseback riding across the rugged countryside; and through some man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do duels – this as one facet of the code of honour, of respect, that Moro and his enemies endorse.
Claudia Cardinale plays the Sicilian woman whom Moro tries to help. While her presence isn’t really necessary and was probably down more to the fact that she is Squitieri’s partner than anything else, her role is suitably unglamorous. It’s also refreshing that her character, a widow, doesn’t become Moro’s love interest, as one imagines would have been the case in a more Hollywood-like version of the story. Rather, we see Moro’s wife arrive with him in Sicily, but soon after being forced to leave for her own safety as she is attacked by the local / native women (where is feminism, that all women are in this together...)?
Some of the dialogue also nicely point to misunderstandings: To the Sicilians Moro is a Piedmontese, but Moro asks why when he is not from that province.
Ennio Morricone contributes a fine soundtrack, with his compositions sounding suitably like Mafia songs.
If all of this, making a quality film that is potentially acceptable to both audiences, is accomplished – as I hope has been conveyed is the case here – then the second issue is then one of finding an audience.
That The Iron Prefect was only recently released on DVD, after a large number of other Italian crime productions seems to further testify to its awkward position; it’s worth noting here that whereas Rosi films like Salvatore Guiliano and Hands Over the City are on the prestigious Criterion label, the likes of Lenzi’s Almost Human and Violent Naples are on cult labels.
Give it a go; you won’t be disappointed. Or, put another way: Why is The Godfather so successful? In part as it has an easy to follow narrative, with violent set pieces? In part because it is The Leopard meets King Lear?
Friday, 6 June 2008
Vivi o, preferibilmente, morti / Alive or Preferably Dead / Sundance Cassidy and Butch the Kid
This Duccio Tessari western reunites the director with his Ringo star Giuliano Gemma to intermittently amusing if ultimately decidedly less noteworthy than these and their other collaborations together.
Gemma plays city slicker Monty Mulligan (his forename presumably a reference to Gemma's frequent Anglophone billing as Montgomery Wood) whose financial worries may be over if he can find his brother Ted, played by Nino Benvenuti, out west and get him to agree to their spending six months together in order to fulfil the criteria of their uncle's will and collect $300,000.
The first obstacle is that there's no love lost between the two brothers with their very different lifestyles and attitudes. The second through umpteenth come via a series of episodic adventures with outlaw Jim and his gang and some bumbling attempts at criminality by the brothers themselves, most notably when they kidnap banker's daughter Scarlett only to discover that he's quite glad to be rid of her and is in no hurry to pay the ransom. (Cue invitable “I don't give a damn” punchline.)
Thought distributed in the US under the title Sundance Cassidy and Butch the Kid and the more defensive please don't sue us tagline of “Don't confuse them with the other two,” one suspects that the more immediate model for the film and reference point for “the other two” were Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, with the brothers relationship and their slapstick antics more remiscent of the Italian than Hollywood caper western.
This is most apparent in the resolution of the bankers daughter subplot: whereas in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the broadly comparable Katherine Ross character is there to attempt to refute the homosexual or homosocial hints that the two men might be something other than conventional red-blooded heterosexuals (how successfully it does so being another matter, in that the selfsame need to make a point of demonstrating their heterosexuality and masculinity also inevitably raises these other spectres) here we get a more juvenile, non-sexual, fraternal resolution to the whole scenario that seems to suggest that boys will be boys but little more. (Unless, of course, one wants to read the film as some sort of paean to homosexual incest.)
The film's main asset beyond Gemma's irrepressible charm, and the sense that no-one – including Tessari or such reliable supporting players as George Rigaud, who plays the wily old banker; Cris Huerta, as comic book sadist bandit; and Sydne Rome, as Scarlett – is taking things all that seriously anyway, is the operatic (well, horse opera) chorus provided by Italian country and western duo John and Wayne, whose yee-ha ballads provide an amusing commentary on the action throughout and a nice counterpoint to Gianni Ferrio's more conventional themes. (John and Wayne are also featured in the Frank Wolff narrated documentary / promo on the Italian western that was included as one of the extras in the old Blue Underground Spaghetti Western Box Set; they were a real duo of Italian country and western fans, not just an invention of this film.)
Gemma plays city slicker Monty Mulligan (his forename presumably a reference to Gemma's frequent Anglophone billing as Montgomery Wood) whose financial worries may be over if he can find his brother Ted, played by Nino Benvenuti, out west and get him to agree to their spending six months together in order to fulfil the criteria of their uncle's will and collect $300,000.
The first obstacle is that there's no love lost between the two brothers with their very different lifestyles and attitudes. The second through umpteenth come via a series of episodic adventures with outlaw Jim and his gang and some bumbling attempts at criminality by the brothers themselves, most notably when they kidnap banker's daughter Scarlett only to discover that he's quite glad to be rid of her and is in no hurry to pay the ransom. (Cue invitable “I don't give a damn” punchline.)
Thought distributed in the US under the title Sundance Cassidy and Butch the Kid and the more defensive please don't sue us tagline of “Don't confuse them with the other two,” one suspects that the more immediate model for the film and reference point for “the other two” were Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, with the brothers relationship and their slapstick antics more remiscent of the Italian than Hollywood caper western.
This is most apparent in the resolution of the bankers daughter subplot: whereas in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the broadly comparable Katherine Ross character is there to attempt to refute the homosexual or homosocial hints that the two men might be something other than conventional red-blooded heterosexuals (how successfully it does so being another matter, in that the selfsame need to make a point of demonstrating their heterosexuality and masculinity also inevitably raises these other spectres) here we get a more juvenile, non-sexual, fraternal resolution to the whole scenario that seems to suggest that boys will be boys but little more. (Unless, of course, one wants to read the film as some sort of paean to homosexual incest.)
The film's main asset beyond Gemma's irrepressible charm, and the sense that no-one – including Tessari or such reliable supporting players as George Rigaud, who plays the wily old banker; Cris Huerta, as comic book sadist bandit; and Sydne Rome, as Scarlett – is taking things all that seriously anyway, is the operatic (well, horse opera) chorus provided by Italian country and western duo John and Wayne, whose yee-ha ballads provide an amusing commentary on the action throughout and a nice counterpoint to Gianni Ferrio's more conventional themes. (John and Wayne are also featured in the Frank Wolff narrated documentary / promo on the Italian western that was included as one of the extras in the old Blue Underground Spaghetti Western Box Set; they were a real duo of Italian country and western fans, not just an invention of this film.)
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