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Pretty poor all round
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This is a European film about revolution rather than a Western but as it is usually listed as a Western in TV schedules, stocked in the ‘Western’ racks of DVD stores and appears in some books about Westerns, it is included here. At best you might call it a post-Western.
It was directed by Sergio Leone and it shows: too long, endless hyper-close-ups of people’s eyes, those interminable shots of people staring at each other or at the camera interspersed with action climaxes, including much use of dynamite and machine-guns.
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The music (Ennio Morricone) is of that unpleasant jangly + vocal kind we have become used to, accompanied by those irritating high woo-woo vocals whenever we get to romantic parts. The ‘romantic’ parts don’t concern women or love, of course (except very briefly in flash-backs of the terrorist’s youth), but might accompany death or an attempt to suggest regret after a slaughter (not that there is much regretting slaughter). Many people regard Morricone as talented but I’m not one of them.
The weakest part of this movie is the acting. Rod Steiger, an awful ham, is wide-eyed and chews the scenery. James Coburn is unusually poor for him. Both have very phony accents (Mexican and Irish) that would make a Mexican or an Irishman cringe. None of the supporting actors (mostly Italian) shines.
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The Steiger part was written for Eli Wallach. He would have been better, though it wouldn’t have improved things much.
Set in 1912 Mexico, it tells of revolution and perhaps tries to suggest the different motives for which people become involved. The Irish terrorist (Coburn) tries to politicize the Mexican bandit (Steiger). There’s an attempt to understand betrayal. That’s about all there is of ‘message’. There was to have been a Brechtian theme of the younger man educating the older one but that seems to have been discarded, presumably because Steiger and Coburn were more or less the same age. Most of the movie is just the couple mowing down endless soldiers.
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It’s a big-budget picture with hordes of extras and a spectacular train crash. It has little or nothing to do with history (not that this would disqualify it as a good Western if it were one). The Federales are like Nazis and the revolutionaries like Italian partisans. There are quotes from Mao. It can’t really make its mind up whether it’s 1912, 1943 or 1968. But it’s fake for all three.
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There’s a curious huge stagecoach like a luxurious Pullman car, which holds the interest for a short while.
I suppose as a comic it’s OK. If you like comics. But you’d have to be no more than 12 really.
Giù la testa really means ‘Keep your head down’. Leone insisted that Duck, you sucker was common American slang. Maybe it is on the upper west side of Rome. The other title was an obvious nod to Leone’s earlier picture.
The movie starts with Steiger pissing and that rather sets the tone. Some art-film buffs probably think this is a great film. Personally I think that even if it were a Western it would be a poor one. Leone and his team were usually hopeless and I don’t know of a quality film they made. Once Upon a Time in the West was the nearest they got, but even that… This one certainly isn’t any good.
A Bullet for the General (Argent Films, 1966) is better. It’s well acted at least. If you want a Mexican revolution spaghetti, watch that.
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3 Responses
Another misfire by Leone. A few powerful scenes. Steiger is abominably bad, though nearly tolerable when I watched the French dub. A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL, from 1966, is a reasonably great Spaghetti western – for those of us, like me, who enjoy the genre.
I’d say A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL was the best spaghetti western they made. It reached the dizzy heights of the mediocre.
Based upon my experience with Once upon a Time in the West, another sprawling Sergio Leone western, I hesitate to be too criticial of A Fistful of Dynamite. The first couple of times I viewed the earlier picture, it didn’t do much for me. But the third viewing was the charm and I now regard OuaTitW as a masterpiece. Will that happen with Fistful of Dynamite? My first watch didn’t exactly leave me smitten.
The film struck me as flaccid, flabby and borderline convoluted. But that was my immediate impression of OuaTitW, too. Moreoever, does Fistful really qualify as a western? It felt to me more like a war picture set in the Old West. And yes, I consider northern Mexico circa 1910, which is when this film is set, to be part of the Old West. But this is not an example of US cavalry versus Indians. Far from it. Instead we see mechanized regular army columns pitched against tatty insurrectionists equipped with small arms.
And even the hats, such an aesthetic marker of the western, don’t really fit. Instead of the ten gallons with tall crowns and wide, curled brims, or even derbys or top hats, the dramatis personae are wearing something akin to fedoras. These hats would be more appropriate to gangster films set in the 20s than westerns.
Regardless, this is one weird flick. We’re treated to Rod Steiger wizzing on an ant bed, prolonged and highly distasteful shots of masticating mouths, a scene containing a Monty Pythonesque caption saying something about a bank in Mesa Verde, repeated flashbacks to a presumed love triangle in merry ol’ Ireland, and a transmundane Ennio Morricone score. But the strangeness was certainly in keeping with the time when the picture was made; 1971 was peak weird in the West.
But this is not to say OuaTitW doesn’t have much to recommend it. Steiger and James Coburn are excellent as a Mexican revolutionary with base arrieres pensees, and an IRA demolition expert, respectively. And contrary to what others may have said, the actors manage the Spanish and Irish accents quite well. Steiger, incidentally, was recruited to do his best Eli Wallach (El Tuco) impersonation and he pulls it off remarkably well.
That odd score I mentioned is, by the by, nevertheless tremendous. It is atmospheric and ethereal.
This film also features the most impressive explosions you’ll see in a western, or just about any other genre, come to think of it. If you like the sight of boiling orange fireballs and huge bridges being obliterated, you’re sure to get a bang ouf of Fistful of Dynamite. Coburn’s John Mallory was a bipedal weapon of mass destruction.
And I must give Leone credit for puncturing supercilious revolutionary idealism. This film exposes revolution for what it almost always is–lofty bafflegab obscuring the reality that revolutionaries merely want a chance to do to establishmentarians what they accuse the establishmentarians of doing to X (proletarians, women, homosexuals, blacks, etc.). It’s all about power and vengeance, not equality or tolerance or inclusivity or diversity or democracy, or whatever else pap the revolutionaries claim is the summum bonum.
If all this sounds like your cup of tea, then by all means do give Fistful of Dynamite a spin. However, you’ll need to carve out over 2 1/2 hours to do so. This is a very long film and it doesn’t exactly fly by.