Suckers Don't Duck (Fistful of Dynamite, A (DVD))

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	Fistful of Dynamite, A (DVD)
Date:	28/03/09 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Complex and mature Leone film

Disadvantages: Some of the performances may feel a bit dodgy and the plot may be too heavy for some

Sergio Leone was done with westerns after Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968, not wanting to do another western again. It had a lot to do with how his perception of the old western ideals had began to sour and how he could not get that enthusiastic about it anymore than he had in the past. Not to mention he felt like he had already done just about everything he could with the genre, so there was no point in continuing. He would still continue writing and producing westerns, but he didn't have any real interest in directing any more or to be involved in the extensive work this would require. However, it was in 1971 when a new film, written by him with Sergio Donati and Luciano Vincenzoni, detailing the popular subject of many other contemporary Italian westerns of the time, the Mexican Revolution of 1913, that he ended up in making something like this for one last time. Leone was very leftist when it came to politics and Giù la Testa was his take on the rampant Zapata western. However, instead of doing one of those hopelessly patriotic films, he instead wrote something that was a lot grimmer and certainly not light-heartedly amusing at all. He was very critical of fascism and how higher classes would oppress the lower by ruling with violence instead of advocating peace. In his mind violence could only breed more violence, and revolution should be one to advocate change toward a more peaceful solution and friendship should be a ruling doctrine in which individual change and personal reform would outdo the need of guns and death. Therefore Giù la Testa set out to severely criticise the way a lot of other people were viewing revolution as being and instead went off to take a distinctly leftist approach to the rules of Maoism. What came out of it was Leone's most politically and socially heavy script he ever tackled, completely removed from the simple worlds inhabited by the profiteering bounty hunters of the Dollars films.

However, despite being very much into the story and was willing to produce the film, Leone didn't want to personally direct it. In fact Leone tried anything to get away from that charge by trying to appoint somebody else to the job. Originally the film was to be directed by Peter Bogdanavich, but he in the end didn't suit Leone's style of making films, and every other director outlet also fell through, one of those approached even being Sam Peckinpah who obviously was not interested in doing another director's film. The final nail for Leone came when two of the film's main stars, James Coburn (Leone's original choice to play Eastwood's character in A Fistful of Dollars), who only agreed to star in a film of this kind due to Henry Fonda's praise of Leone, and the studio draftee in place of the originally planned Eli Wallach, Rod Steiger, refused to perform for nobody else but Leone. After all, if the main incentive in the first place was that it would be a Sergio Leone film, then of course it should also be directed by Leone himself, otherwise why bother. Thus Leone ended up being essentially coerced into directing, but what came out of it was perhaps his most adult and serious film. It doesn't really start that way, though, and in many ways the first half of the film is indeed more in line with a lot of standard western shenanigans. With Steiger's roguish peasant Juan going around the Mexican deserts with a band of poor robbers, in the beginning stealing a luxurious stagecoach and properly defiling its high society occupants who look down on the peasants and are meant to be disgusting caricatures of the aristocracy, the merry bandit meets an Irish explosives expert John (or Sean) on the run from his past.

The two then through various circumstances end up teaming together, with Juan wanting to harness John to help rob the bank of Mesa Verde, only to find that everything doesn't go exactly as planned. Before he knows it, he is thrown right in the middle of the revolution, a reluctant hero, who in the midst of it all loses everything. Now Giù la Testa is a film that is highly satirical for a lot of its running time, upping the ante on the violence shown as something almost ridiculous as Leone had already done in a lot of his other films, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly most notably. But unlike his previous films, Leone also brings about it the new thought of consequence. Whereas there was essentially no true fallout left after the duels, or the deaths, or the murders in his other films, Giù la Testa has a very strong sense that every action can and will have an effect of some kind. These are explored a lot through John's flashbacks pertaining to his dear friend who, after torture, ratted out to the authorities his part in the IRA, which essentially made John an exile from his home country and his whole look on life taking a decidedly cynical outlook. This same is later repeated as another lead member of the revolution is tortured (though this is never shown) and as a consequence because of his inability to take it anymore ends up bringing a lot of other people in front of the firing squad, prompting John's painful memories back again. It more than anything shows Leone in a mood to not make a comic adventure like the Dollars films and that he was after something considerably more weighty.

The main cast of Rod Steiger and James Coburn offer performances that are far removed from what you could consider as being "authentic". Coburn is certainly no Irishman, and Steiger is equally unconvincing as a Mexican bandit, but by and large this doesn't matter as under Leone's direction the two end up taking part in the satire of it all to not seem terribly unfitting to the film. In that end, their performances are actually pretty good and it doesn't necessarily cause one to roll their eyes at how much they are attempting to be something they are not. Their chemistry is good and their participation in the flow of the story makes one quickly forget such inconsequential considerations. The secondary cast is less constant in their application, but work well for all the things they are needed for. The most notable of these come in the form of the revolutionary Dr. Villega played by Romolo Valli, who is a stout advocate of the revolution, but who even then cannot help but give away to his own human weaknesses, and the other the Nazi-like military commander Gutierrez (or Günther Reza) played by Antoine Saint-John is an imposing and grim looking SS commander, being a clear throwback to the Second World War in order to make the film's message of anti-fascism all the more relevant.

The film also uses flashbacks to an ever increasing degree. There are many instances where John ends up remembering his past in Ireland, which are two-fold in application. The first is the happy times he, his best friend, and their apparently shared girlfriend had in the early part of their lives, something which fleshes out the close relationships John enjoyed before, and which come to a head in a particularly long such memory at the very end of the film (originally edited out from international releases). The second is the betrayal flashbacks I mentioned above, where John remembers his best friend handing him out to the police, which results in his escape from Ireland, and the disillusionment, as well as disappointment, that tainted and embittered his life from there on end. All these flashbacks are shot in slow motion, as if they take place in dreams. The happy memories in particular are so surreal in their dream-like atmosphere one almost questions whether those memories are actually real at all. The flashback is a technique that Leone had extensively used before in Indio's marijuana dreams in For a Few Dollars More, in Harmonica's memories in Once Upon a Time in the West, and he would later use the flashback as a major structural device in Once Upon a Time in America. Furthermore Leone also stacked up more spectacle in the form of some massive explosions the scale of which he had not done before, the most notable being the blowing up of a bridge enemy troops were just traversing across, and another involving a head-on collision of two trains.

Otherwise the film, as always, employs a lot of the basic shooting tropes Leone had been cultivating since A Fistful of Dollars, while the pacing is slow as always, though not quite to the extent of Once Upon a Time in the West thanks to the more action oriented storyline. The music of Ennio Morricone is as well-suited as always, if somewhat unusual than normal in its application of the main characters' spoken names integrated into the music (burping Juans is "The March of the Beggars" and soaring Seans in the Edda dell'Orso accompanied lyricism). However, despite the deeper style of storyline Leone was doing - or perhaps partially because of it - the film was not a success. Many critics found Leone's critique of revolutions to be against what was "right" and "agreeable". Also, as the film was shown in America (the primary target country), the length of it was deemed too much and a lot of important material was cut away to make the film more palatable, only to cause it to loose coherency. Not to mention the subject matter was not what was expected of Leone from the crowd knowing him from his adventure westerns, making the whole film feel alienating. And it certainly didn't help that Leone's title for the film, Duck You Sucker (a phrase Leone believed was a popular one in America), made the film sound like a comedy that it most certainly was not. Consequently in France the film was re-titled as Once Upon a Time... The Revolution, and as the film was given its UK premiere, the title was once more changed to the now more familiar A Fistful of Dynamite, an equally ill suiting name like the original, a clear attempt to cash in on the fame of A Fistful of Dollars. Thus there was a lot going against the film upon release and as a result it has received a bit of a bum rap, undeserved as it is.

But as much as the film is considered as Leone's weakest, and in certain aspects it doesn't really measure entirely up to say The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West, Giù la Testa is not a bad film, and it certainly is a good testament that Leone was not afraid to take risks instead of just repeating past successes, which this film could have easily been. The film is heavy in content, yet also has a lot of boyish charm at the same time until that innocence is soured irrevocably after the half-way point. It is Leone being more aware of society and politics, and not afraid to voice his own feelings on the subject, no matter how unpopular they might be. Giù la Testa is a film steeped in melancholy, yet it doesn't descend to despair even at its grimmest. Juan's final question to us all at the very end that is answered by the title of the film is pure genius and thanks to its release on DVD, the restoration of the edited scenes since its theatrical runs has truly helped make the film a lot more comprehensible and appreciated today. It may not be Leone at his very best, but it is Leone being more deep than he ever was, which is still extremely good.

© berlioz, 2009

Summary: Spaghetti Westerns Vol.5