THE BIG GUNDOWN (1966)
It´s time to set aside our undying love for horror and other things as culturally high brow for a while, friends! While horror may be the favorite one of our movie children we still have to give some attention to the other kids as well. Just think of how attention-craving and unwilling to cooperate they will become when they grow up if we ignore them. That is why, my friends, I want to point your directions today towards an old Spaghetti western called “La Resa dei Conti” but most commonly known as “The Big Gundown”.
I love Spaghetti westerns! I know that there are a great many that are quite crappy but in almost every Spaghetti western I can always find some element that I love. There´s almost always at least one really inspired moment in most of them! And “The Big Gundown” is definitely no exception to this rule. It stars the late, great Lee Van Cleef and next to his roles in Sergio Leone´s “Dollars”-films, this is probably his best role. Next to “Death Rides A Horse”. That one was pretty goddamn great too, come to think of it.
Anywho, this one has a lot of things in common with Leone´s films. Sergio Donati who helped write the scripts for those are a co-writer and Leone´s frequent set designer Carlo Simi´s name show up in the credits, too. And then there´s the music… Apparently it´s written by this dude called Ennio Morricone. I don´t know about him but he seems like a pretty talented guy. The song during the credits is pretty catchy and the orchestral score is pretty cool, too.
All kidding, as we all know Ennio Morricone is one of the greatest composers ever. Whenever someone starts talking about classical composers like Chopin, Beethoven and Mozart and is trying to act all smart on your ass and starts rambling about their music, here´s what you do: start whistling the theme to “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” and then punch them square in the face, ok? That´ll teach them to shut up about musical geniuses for a while.
Sometimes you gotta show ´em who´s in charge, friends. But anyway, back to “The Big Gundown”. It´s a great frickin´ film! You know how there are certain actors that weren´t just born to play cowboys but somehow comes across as real damn cowboys? You know, actors that doesn´t seem to belong in our time, in a weird way. Robert Duvall is one of those guys. Just look at “Lonesome Dove” and the fantastic “Open Range”. That guy is a genuine cowboy. He´s not faking it, I´m telling ya!
Well, Lee Van Cleef was one of those guys. Whenever you watch a film where he´s not in cowboy-gear, it doesn´t seem right. Well, he was in “Escape from New York” but that one was directed by John Carpenter, so naturally he works in that one. But you know, he did a couple of cop-movies in the 80´s and somehow that didn´t seem right. This was a man who was born to star in westerns and that´s really all there is to it. And thanks to Leone, the man had a pretty damn successful career in Europe, starring in a shitload of Spaghetti-westerns and if I´m not mistaken, “The Big Gundown” was the first one he made after “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. Here´s what the flick´s all about:
Jonathan Corbett (Lee Van Cleef), a famous gunman and bounty hunter, is sent to hunt down a Mexican small-time crook named Cuchillo Sanchez (Tomas Milian), who is accused of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. Corbett is an experienced and successful lawman, but Cuchillo is very clever too. On this long hunt Corbett gets to know Cuchillo, and he gradually starts to doubt he´s guilty.
Not a very complicated story, but that´s the case with many of these types of westerns. It´s the way they´re executed that makes them so damn interesting. There were a whole string of Spaghetti westerns that were political in what they were trying to convey to the audience and “The Big Gundown” is no exception.
When you look at Leone´s work some might argue that they were indeed political, especially his last “western” “Duck, You Sucker” aka “A Fistful of Dynamite” starring James Coburn and Rod Steiger. That was a political film but what Leone was trying to say with it was how disillusioned he had become with politics and its machinery. That´s an opinion that I´m sure we´re all familiar with and that´s why I think that while it may not be Leone´s best film, it´s definitely one of his more interesting. Maybe not the first time around you watch it but it is if you take a closer look at it. Director Sergio Sollima hadn´t reached that state of anger or disappointment with this film. He does seem to have his filmmaker heart proudly placed to the left because this, at first glance deceivably simple western story, deals with such topics as prejudice, the working man being exploited for economic purposes and political trickery.
But like the great John Carpenter film “They Live” , which I´ve rambled about here, these layers are not hammered home too hard. It´s there if you wanna look for them and embrace them but if you don´t want to, this movie is just as easily enjoyable as a straight up western flick. Exactly the way I want my politics to be served!
That fucker who directed that flick “Crash” a couple of years back should sit up and take notes. You hear me, Paul Haggis? Don´t try to act like you don´t know what I´m talking about, ok? You hammered home the message so hard that I walked out of the theatre with a concussion and that´s not the way to go about it. Just remember that for future movies, ok? Thanks to “Crash” I haven´t yet dared to watch that “In the Valley of Elah” or whatever the hell it was called despite the fact that it stars one of my favorite actors, Tommy Lee Jones. That´s what you´ve done to me. You should stick to writing Bond movies and boxing films for Clint Eastwood. You see the difference there, Paul Haggis? Clint Eastwood didn´t hammer home his point, ok? Not like you did, with a god damn jackhammer, anyway.
Sorry about going off on a tangent there. I don´t know why I did that. I guess that I dislike “Crash” more than I knew I did.
Anyway, one of the things that Sollima does that I absolutely love about this film is that he has his hero, Corbett, start out as basically Eastwood´s character from the Leone films. He´s sort of a bounty hunter. He does his job and he´s very good at it. He doesn´t stay up at night around the campfire to sing songs or ponder the mysteries of life, ok? He catches the bad guys, brings the fuckers in and then that´s that. That´s how Lee Van Cleef rolls. But you see, when he starts pursuing Milians character, Cuchillo, he´s gradually forced to experience what Cuchillo experiences in terms of social injustice and bigotry. These events play out and Sollima handles it in a really great way. Like I said, he doesn´t hammer home his point and never once does it feel contrived or like he´s taking too much dramatic license.
That´s one of the things that I love about Spaghetti westerns: the twists and turns that the stories usually has. They really took the genre in a whole new direction and realized that they didn´t have to abide by the rules that the Hollywood westerns had to do. That´s why your average Spaghetti western is a hell of a lot more depraved, twisted, sadistic, violent, perverse and unpredictable than John Wayne ever got to be.
Now, don´t get me wrong. I love John Wayne as much as the next guy. I know that he was a fanatic republican and that he basically did a commercial for the Vietnam War with his film “The Green Berets” but I can´t help myself. It´s The Duke we´re talking about here! But no matter how great of a film “The Searchers” may be, it´s still a lot more fun watching basically any given Spaghetti western.
I´m not saying that Sergio Sollima is rivaling Sergio Leone´s cinematic genius with but this is a surprisingly competent film. But then again, not many people can beat Leone when it comes to creating spectacular cinematic landscapes and scenarios. The man was a master at every aspect of moviemaking: editing, sound design and cinematography. Christ, watch “Once Upon A Time In The West” again if you have any doubt. It´s a close to perfect film. That kind of showdowns, staring contests and opera-like displays of violence, you´ll only get in Leone´s films. Technical artistry at its best. That´s why a film like “The Big Gundown” is a bit more down and dirty. The camera shakes more, there´s a lot more zooms and stuff like that.
Another thing that they did really well in these old Spaghetti westerns was that they managed to populate the films with really bizarre, over-the-top characters and that´s something you gotta love. In this one we get a pretty crazy lady who runs a ranch and has a staff of lovesick ranch-hands working for her. Naturally, she doesn´t want anything to do with them but has instead her sights set on Van Cleef.
We also get an Austrian Baron who joins the posse. Where the hell did they find these actors? It´s like you´re watching a Fellini-film, with those faces.
This is a really, really good western. And like I mentioned, it has a pretty amazing score by Morricone. The title song is called “Run, Man, Run!”, which is also the name of another Spaghetti western starring Tomas Milian which was made the following year where he reprises the role Cuchillo. That one´s also pretty good but not in the same league as “The Big Gundown”. Unfortunately, there´s no Region 1 release of this and that sucks pretty hard.
However, the good people of Germany (not a phrase you get to say that often) have taken it upon them to release a DVD of this one and it even has the uncut version. It was truncated when it was released in the States and in that Van Cleef´s character doesn´t go through much of a change at all. The German release looks amazing, though! It is unfortunate that it doesn´t have the English soundtrack ´cause it´s just not the same listening to Van Cleef speaking Italian.
So there you have it… Sometime´s a man gotta do what a man´s gotta do, just like Van Cleef does in this film and what you have to do now is seek this one out and give it a try. I mean come on, who doesn´t love a good western? There´s not enough of them being made today but fortunately the Italians made about a thousand of them during their heyday back in the 60´s so we´re not up shit creek yet…
Until next time,
Thomas