Power in Four Flies on Grey Velvet and Once Upon a Time in the West

Nina's conception of power can be understood can be understood, in Deleuze and Guattari's terms as a negative one. This concept of power is inspired by Spinoza and Nietzsche (Colebook in Parr, 2005: 215-217). From Spinoza they take the idea of power as potential and of joy the result of fulfilling this potential: “Joy, as the realisation of power, is therefore different from the moral opposition of good and evil, an opposition that impedes power by constraining it within some already given norm.” (215). In itself, this formulation might imply that Nina's murderous activities and desire for revenge are themselves neither good nor evil. Such a reading could accord with a more relativist reading of Nietzsche, insofar as the Christian virtue of forgiveness is read as a slave morality inversion of the preceding master morality of vengeance. This would also accord with the ethics of the Italian western and the vendetta, which Argento has spoken of favourably on occasion [quote from John Martin]. However, Deleuze here emphasises an equally Nietzschean distinction between active and reactive powers: “An active power maximises its potential, pushes itself to its limit and reaffirms the life of which it is but one expression. A reactive power, by contrast, turns back on itself.” (216) Cast in these terms, we may thus distinguish between the positive power of Leone, Bertolucci and Argento's avenger, Harmonica, and the one seeks vengeance upon, Frank, in Once Upon a Time in the West, and Nina and Roberto here.

Harmonica accepts that he is merely one expression of the old west, part of “an ancient race” whose role is now to helps bring into existence a new, feminine, west in which he knows and fully accepts that he has no place. Although Frank initially attempts to use his powers negatively to establish a place for himself in this coming world as a businessman like Morton, this reactive power turns back upon itself. For eventually he positively accepts of his equal obsolescence as one of the ancient race as he and Harmonica finally face off: “The future don't matter to us. Nothing matters now – not the land, not the money, not the woman. I came here to see you. 'Cause I know that now, you'll tell me what you're after.” Regardless of the which man wins this duel, the wider outcome, the birth of the new west, is assured. Their “large form” binominal leads to a new situation. The elegiac qualities of the film depend upon its ambiguity here, as to what this new situation represents: improvement, degeneration or an admixture of both. Cast in these terms, Harmonica and to a lesser extent Frank's becomings, like that of the west itself, are of a deterritorialising, becoming-woman type.

Nina's desire for vengeance upon her father is, by contrast, entirely reactive and negative. As we have seen, she is never positioned as looking towards the future, only the past, through the circling camera work. We get no sense of what her plans for life without her father and/or Roberto are, if any. As such, it makes sense that Nina should die rather than escape when her plans fail. Nina's becoming is of a territorialising, masculine, reactive type, one that can only turns back on itself in a destructive manner.

Some notes on box-office

Neo-realist films had mixed fortunes at the Italian box-office. Rome Open City was the most successful film of 1945, with takings of 25,476,250,000 lire in 1998 terms. However its uncompromising follow-up, Paisan ranked only seventh in 1946. This was behind Alberto Lattauda's more populist Il Bandito, in third place with takings of 37,501,040,000 lire, but ahead of Scuiscia in 22nd place. The most successful film of 1947 was Riccardo Freda's adaptation of Les Miserables; Freda had also directed the second most popular film of 1946, The Black Eagle. 1948 presents a similarly mixed picture: If Bicycle Thieves was 5th most successful, with takings of 32,160,240,00, Germany Year Zero and La terra trema were only 34th and 38th respectively. No significant neo-realist films were released in 1949, although Pietro Germi's In the Name of the Law and Giuseppe De Santis's Bitter Rice, both featuring neo-realist elements alongside more conventional genre aspects, ranked 6th and 7th respectively. Tellingly, however, both were behind the Toto vehicle Toto cerca casa, in 3rd.;; the previous year the comedian's Toto al giro d'italia was in fourth place at the box-office. Even at the height of neo-realism, Italian audiences were clearly selective in the neo-realist films they saw and frequently preferred more traditional fare. This was again evident in 1950, where Marcel L'Herbier and Paola Moffa's version of the oft-filmed Last Days of Pompeii was the highest grossing film of the year, with receipts of 89,082,084,000, whereas Rossellini's Stromboli ranked only 17th; Antonioni's debut feature, Story of a Love Affair, ranked 46th. In 1952, meanwhile, Europa '51 ranked 55th, Umberto D 98th. Finally, in 1957, by which time neo-realism was over, the relative success of Nights of Cabiria, in 12th place, must be considered alongside the 46th and 72nd places achieved by White Nights and Il grido respectively.

Relating figures like these back to most studies of Italian cinema a discrepancy is evident. A minority of neo-realist and modernist films have received a disproportionate amount of critical attention compared to their actual success with Italian audiences. Although many films that were more commercially successful may be dismissed as aesthetically uninteresting, it seems wrong to reject them in toto. It is true that neo-realist and modernist films were more likely to be amongst the ten to fifteen percent of Italian productions that received international distribution. However, so were many filone films.

[All figures come from Maurizio Baroni's Platea in piedi, 1945-58]