Sergio Leone, 1966
Dun nuh nuh nuh nuh... mwah mwah mwah!
So let's all admit that little snippet of music is pure genius...eerie, anticipatory, and atmospheric all at once. It manages to convey a whole slew of western iconography (that lone figure slowly approaching in the distance) with just a handful of notes. (Though take heed, ladies: if you meet a gentleman at a party and he has this as his ringtone, he is probably a douchebag.) In spite of its genius, one feels tempted to say that Leone & Co. probably dipped one too many times into that particular well, I'm damned if I didn't enjoy it every single time.
I got a level of sheer enjoyment out of this film that I haven't felt...well probably since Le Cercle Rouge (no offense, Andrei Rublev, you know you're just a different kind of film.) And I think the reason I found it so easy to dive into, as opposed to a lot of other westerns, is that it's so operatic and Italian in its tone. Leone tends to operate in two chief registers -- that of the extreme close-up and that of the extreme long shot -- and tends to alternate between the two very rapidly to ratchet up the tension. Also, the film starts off in very disparate places and you don't know how they're going to come together, so it's fun to see how all the bricks are going to fall into place. So while it takes about an hour for the main narrative thrust to get going, you're not bored waiting for that to happen. Leone proves very good at plotting, and he has excellent reveals, like when a soldier wipes the dust off his uniform to reveal it's blue, not gray. He expertly deploys montage to build a scene, as in the scene where Tuco is running through the graveyard (where he expertly moves from close to far away to emphasize the gargantuan task Tuco faces, and uses swirling frenzied camera movement to express the manic element of his search) or the scene where the three main characters stand off (where he keeps cutting from their guns to their eyes until you go cray.) Indeed, Leone's characters tend to look at each other so often and so intently that it almost becomes a parody of the concept of "the gaze" and, while may one be tempted to seek and find homoerotic content here, I don't think you can say that of this more than you can any film taking place in a hypermasculine, male homosocial environment.
I think another reason this proved such a relatable western for me is that it takes place in a very postmodern ethos; the corrupt world of the film decays before our eyes. The action occurs under the aegis of a war, fought with little to no enthusiasm and a great deal of bloodshed. We find the leaders either corrupt and brutal or impotent and incapacitated. (I tell you, these filmic alcoholics haunt me of late. Aldo Giuffre's captain maintains the common illusion that everyone else drinks like he does, coupled with what I now call the William S. Burroughs "Wouldn't You?" school of thought -- basically, wouldn't you drink if you had to deal with this crap? Like many alcoholics he nourishes grand dreams that he can't quite get it together to accomplish.) The best plan for this world: look out for yourself and catch as catch can. Exactly what our heroes do, only hanging out with each other cause they have to to find the treasure.
In spite of the encouragement of many men in my life, I could never work up much enthusiasm for Clint Eastwood. That voice proved a real stumbling block to taking him seriously, and what I've seen of his films suggests a showy, often misogynistic masculinity that feels like it's got something to prove. (Although, if you're going to have male hysteria, do it a la The Beguiled -- an awesomely ludicrous film that I strongly suggest you check out.) But the voice didn't bother me so much here, and I found something really captivating. Fred Astaire famously said elegance of refusal; and Eastwood draws his performance in strikingly stark lines by refusing to conform to our expectations or basically overact or play it up in anyway. He basically engages in a kind of Dylanesque negation, never playing the role of the "good" guy that the title endows him with. Indeed sometimes he gives so little that it proves difficult to judge or discern him, though I suppose a sense of mystery and wanting more of an actor are not necessarily bad things. When he does show his hand, those inscrutable, scrutinizing eyes, surrounded by those wonderful lines and creases, convey something sometimes hawkish, sometimes wolfish, and sometimes vulnerable. His face turns from charm to menace on a dime; you'll see a soft, almost sweet reaction to something highly unpleasant, and the result unnerves you. As you watch the end of that cigar burn down, you wait tensely, wondering what the hell he's going to do next.
For me Eli Wallach's Tuco ended up more of a focus than Eastwood's Blondie. To modern eyes this role might look like a racist stereotype of a Mexican, but to me it only felt like that in very fleeting moments. more often I found myself struck by how a renowned Method actor like Wallach could do such fine caricature work, in the Lindsay Anderson sense of the term. As Tuco he plays a buffon who walks into every trap set for him, yet you cannot help rooting for him. With a series of twitches and scowls he blusters his way through the film through force of sheer will. Lee Van Cleef reminded me a bit of Julian Barratt playing Rudi on The Mighty Boosh, but on the whole his squinting and sneering made for a pleasing baddie.
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