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PROLOGUE ONCE UPON A TIME
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (2019)
Well, it looks delicious.
-Thank you. -Enjoy, sir.
After that Musso & Frank's lunch meeting, Marvin did provide Rick job opportunities
in the Italian film industry.
Rick Dalton, Marvin Schwarz here. Hold on.
Hennessy X.O on the rocks.
Yes, Mr. Schwarz.
Two words.
Nebraska Jim, Sergio Corbucci.
Nebraska what?
Sergio who?
-Sergio Corbucci. -And who's that?
The second-best director
of Spaghetti Westerns in the whole wide world.
He's doing a new Western. It's called Nebraska Jim.
And because of me, he's considering you.
First things first.
Rick didn't understand Spaghetti Westerns. He didn't like Spaghetti Westerns.
But he wanted to continue being the lead in movies, and he wanted make some money.
So Marvin arranges for him to meet with Corbucci for Nebraska Jim.
So, he goes to Rome,
and Sergio and his wife Nori meet with him, with Marvin,
at Sergio's favorite restaurant, in Rome.
They talk, and Rick likes the script. He likes the Nebraska Jim character.
So he's talking to him about the role and everything.
They're trying to get to know each other a little bit, but Rick made a big mistake.
He thought Sergio Corbucci was Sergio Leone
because Marvin had him watch A Fistful of Dollars,
so he would get a better understanding of the Spaghetti Western.
Then he hears "Sergio," so he thinks it's the same guy.
So he's sitting there with Corbucci and Nori, and he's like,
"You know, I gotta tell you. I cannot believe that performance
you got out of Clint Eastwood."
"That's the best work he's ever done and will ever do."
"I can't believe a director got that out of him."
"You did a great job directing him. I thought that was terrific."
And then both Sergio and Nori realized that he thinks he's Leone.
So he goes, "I didn't direct that film."
"My friend Sergio Leone directed that film,
but I will be sure to tell him that you like it."
Marvin is completely humiliated.
He's like, "Why did you show me the movie?"
"I showed it to you, so you'd better understand the genre."
He's like, "I don't even know what that word means! What does 'genre' mean?"
"I don't understand what that word means."
"I think you're showing me a movie directed by a Sergio,
and I figured this guy was the same Sergio. This is not my fault."
Nori takes him off the hook, "Hey, Marvin. It's okay, you know,
he doesn't speak Italian… All these Sergios, a bit confusing."
"He doesn't understand. It's okay."
And Sergio, "Marvin, it's okay. I barely know who he is."
"He doesn't need to know who I am."
But Rick sticks his foot in it again.
They ask him, "Have you seen any Italian Westerns?"
And he mentions he saw a really bad one on an airplane.
And they go, "What's the bad one?"
He says, "A horrible movie with Burt Reynolds,
where he's wearing a wig that makes him look like Natalie Wood."
"I think it's called Navajo Joe."
And he's going on and on.
Sergio stops them all so they don't reveal that it's his movie,
and then he says, "I directed the movie."
After Rick has literally referred to it as a piece of shit.
Then again Sergio takes him off the hook.
"Did you see the English version?" "Yes." "I hate the English version!"
"The English version's terrible. I agree with you. It's terrible."
But the, after a certain point,
he has Nori and Marvin leave, and Sergio talks to Rick and goes,
"Look."
"You don't respect me. You don't respect the Italian films."
"You call my movie a piece of shit. Why should I work with you?"
"I think you're interesting. You're an arrogant bastard."
"Nebraska Jim's an arrogant bastard, so I like that."
"I like that about you, and I like you in your TV show."
"I like you, but why should I work with you if you think our stuff is shit?"
Rick goes, "Sergio, I don't understand Italian Westerns."
"I will give you that."
"I grew up watching Hoot Gibson and Lash LaRue."
"I don't get this Mario Banananano. I don't understand that."
"I don't understand this whole Italian thing."
"But I don't know about movies. You know about movies."
"What does it matter if I don't get it?"
"What does it matter if I like Nebraska Jim or not?"
"I'm good in Westerns. I'm a good cowboy."
"You put a hat on my head, you put me in a cool costume,
you put me on a horse, you're gonna like what I do."
"It doesn't matter if I get them."
"It doesn't matter if I like them. It matters whether or not you like them."
"I'm good in Westerns. I'm a good cowboy."
"I'll give you a good Nebraska Jim. You'll be happy with my Nebraska Jim."
And that convinces Corbucci to hire him.
But it's his first movie,
so he's not used to the Italian way of shooting.
He's not used to the Tower of Babel shooting style,
where the bad sheriff is German,
the girl is Hebrew,
the other bad guy is Spanish, and everyone else is Italian.
So the Spanish guy says his line,
and then the German guy says his line, and the Hebrew girl says her line,
and you knew when the Hebrew girl stops talking, that's you're line.
So he didn't understand that. He thought it was crazy.
"Wow! We thought television was bad. This is horrible!"
The whole non-synced stuff,
everyone speaking their own language, was ridiculous to him.
And he couldn't believe the intense conditions.
They were in a trailer in the middle of nowhere.
If they gotta blow stuff up, they're using real dynamite.
Whoa!
So he was problematic during the making of the movie,
and he had some temper tantrums every once in a while.
He liked Sergio,
but he let it be known that he thought this stuff was beneath him.
Then he goes off, and he makes four more Italian films,
including Operation Dyn-O-Mite!
He actually worked with good directors, to tell you the truth.
The entertaining Antonio Margheriti,
Calvin Jackson Padget,
and one of the best Paella Western directors out of Spain,
Joaquín Romero Marchent.
But in the course of making those movies,
he realizes that Corbucci was a class act.
And so, as he's wrapping up his Italian sojourn,
Corbucci is getting ready to do The Specialists,
and Rick really wants the part of Hud.
He gets together with Sergio for dinner,
and Sergio is moved by Rick's new humble attitude.
He likes Rick, and he liked what Rick did in the movie.
But Rick just had one temper tantrum too many,
and it's really hard for a director to forget.
You can forgive,
but it's hard to forget an actor when they have one tantrum too many.
One tantrum where they put themselves over the movie they were making.
And so, he considers Rick for The Specialists.
But at the end, he went with Johnny Hallyday.
THE SPECIALISTS (1969)
For you, young people!
Your records, your problems, your topics.
Hosted by Renzo Arbore and Anna Maria Fusco.
-How are you? -All good.
I wasn't asking you. I was asking our audience.
Today, as usual, at 5:10 p.m. sharp, we start our show of music and songs.
The first record by Ohio Express, the "Yummy Yummy Yummy" band,
well known in Italy too, The Ohio Express.
GOD FORGIVES… I DON'T!
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
A MOVIE BY SERGIO LEONE
FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
A FEW DOLLARS FOR DJANGO
FOR A FEW EXTRA DOLLARS
A PISTOL FOR RINGO
RINGO, THE MARK OF VENGEANCE
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
SHARP-SHOOTING TWIN SISTERS
WHO KILLED JOHNNY R.?
THE TOUGH ONE
ROME
CHAPTER ONE THE OTHER SERGIO
After I did Inglourious Basterds,
I had it in my mind that I wanted to write
a book on Sergio Corbucci.
I was gonna call it The Other Sergio or something like that.
And so, in watching these films and breaking them down,
that's when I started coming up with my theory
about everything was about Fascism,
and that was the subtextual aspect of the films.
And then breaking down the archetypes,
and seeing how they carried over from film to film.
COMPAÑEROS (1970)
-Who do you vote for? -I vote against Diaz.
Put him against the wall.
Dad!
Squad, load!
Aim!
Fire!
One of the things that I think is fundamental to his work
is the idea that Corbucci, as a little boy,
grew up in Italy dominated by the Fascists.
He grew up in a World War II Fascist Italy.
His father was a uniform-wearing Fascist.
His father wasn't into the Fascists. Apparently, when he got home,
he took off the uniform and threw it in the corner,
but he was made to be a Fascist. He had to wear the uniform.
Not only that, when Sergio was a little boy,
he was part of the kind of Fascist Boys Choir
that Mussolini had.
And there actually was a moment
where sort of kinda Sergio met Hitler.
Hitler was visiting Rome to visit Mussolini,
and so, when Hitler came up, they actually had the Fascist Boys Choir.
They're singing for him.
And so, apparently,
where Corbucci was sitting in the choir.
He was, like, five feet from both Hitler and Mussolini.
Like, you know, shaking hands and hugging each other.
And Hitler looking and like, "The boys are doing a very good job."
"It's very lovely. The cream of Italian youth."
I believe that once Sergio Corbucci got into
doing the Westerns that we know him for,
I think he had a theme, and I do think every single one of them,
of those Westerns, works with this theme, you know.
I think they all were his treaty on Fascism,
on the Fascism that he experienced growing up in World War II.
The Fascism that Italy had come out of,
but that was, you know, he knew his whole life.
And he had witnessed World War II.
And so, I think the Westerns were all in response to that.
I want to know who you vote for,
pig.
Answer!
Now, do I really know that this is exactly what Corbucci
was thinking about at the time,
and this is what he was executing?
No, I don't actually know that.
But I know I'm thinking about it now.
The Great Silence,
which refers also to Vietnam as well as to the Third World,
is a movie about Fascism, against Fascism.
I think everyone should fight against Fascism and Nazism.
Camera!
CHAPTER TWO THE NEW WESTERN WAVE
Silence!
-Action! -Started.
ON THE SET OF THE SPECIALISTS
I'll show you what happens to those who touch the Sheriff!
I can shoot too, and even better than you!
I could kill you if I wanted to!
That whole group, the first group of Spaghetti Western directors,
Leone, Corbucci, Duccio Tessari, Franco Giraldi, they were all friends.
They all were critics writing for…
I think his brother Bruno was one of them too.
They were all critics writing for magazines
and newspapers on movies,
and…
and they all loved Westerns.
They loved Westerns above all other movies,
even though they liked other movies. That was their thing.
This group of guys started working as critics,
and then little by little, became screenwriters.
Sometimes credited, sometimes not,
but they all got into the Italian film industry through screenwriting.
Then through screenwriting,
they became second unit directors.
And so, that's where they really learned their craft.
Where both of the Sergio's careers really changed
was when they did second unit work on a movie called
The Last Days of Pompeii, directed by Mario Bonnard.
And the thing about it was
they were enlisted to do second unit on that,
and they did so much second unit
that they were really kind of given credit for the success of the movie.
Actually, both Leone and Corbucci have denied this, saying,
"We did a lot of work on the film,
but the film is definitely Mario Bonnard's film. It's not our film."
But they shot so much of it,
that it was known in the Italian industry how much they shot.
And because it was known in the industry how great their contribution was to it,
that was where they were able to get into the director's chair
in a way that would be significant.
And so, Leone did his first movie, which was Colossus of Rhodes
with Rory Calhoun,
and Corbucci did his biggest movie at that time,
which was Duel of the Titans,
which starred Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott,
which, at the time,
at least as far as peplum was concerned,
was like having Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt starring in your movie.
They were the two biggest of the peplum stars.
For them to actually be in the same movie together was amazing.
You are an ambitious man and often a cruel one.
Be quiet, old man!
You shouldn't have done that, Remus!
I know what should be done and what shouldn't be done.
You keep out of this, Romulus. There's only one leader here, me!
That's a decision you made on your own.
Our mother's dying wish was that we live in agreement
and together build the city.
The gods have chosen me, and by the gods, I'll convince you!
If you're trying to provoke me, you won't succeed.
I'd never fight my brother.
After doing those movies,
that's when Corbucci started heading into doing Italian Westerns.
But his first Westerns he did, which he did before Leone,
they were done pre A Fistful of Dollars.
You can absolutely tell Corbucci did them,
and you can tell they're Italian.
But they don't have exactly the surrealistic quality
that we associate with the Spaghetti Western
that the Leone pictures did,
and then the ones that came out after, post A Fistful of Dollars.
But there is a reason for that. He wasn't looking for that.
He liked American Westerns.
He had grown up on them.
And so, he wanted to do
cool American-style Westerns, just do them in Italy.
And the two that he did,
Massacre at Grand Canyon with James Mitchum
and Minnesota Clay with Cameron Mitchell,
are the two movies that fit into that category.
And Minnesota Clay is like a superior version
of a Glenn Ford, Delmer Daves Western.
The whole movie could have been done starring Ford and Daves.
I like the Ford-Daves Westerns,
but amongst them, it'd be one of the best ones.
And as much as I like Massacre at Grand Canyon,
I prefer Minnesota Clay.
I think Minnesota Clay is one of Corbucci's best films.
Water.
We don't serve water around here, buddy.
I'm looking for a man called Fox, Five Aces Fox. A smart guy.
Hey, buddy, you must be new around here if you go around asking these questions.
Whereas…
you must be hard of hearing.
I asked you where I can find a man called Fox.
You ask too many questions.
And we are trigger-happy here.
I think when he does Minnesota Clay, he does everything he wanted to do.
Then his colleague, Sergio Leone, does A Fistful of Dollars,
and that changes everything.
It changes the landscape of Italian Cinema.
It changes the Italian film industry,
and even though no one knows it yet, it's changed Westerns.
American… It's changed Westerns forever.
The world doesn't quite realize it yet, but it has.
CHAPTER THREE THE WILD BUNCH
All those are authentic Roman images.
Yes, the vestiges of the conquest.
The conquest of the Wild West,
which has left a deep mark on the soul of the eternal city.
Every year, we would make 150 Westerns
of varied quality. Truly different quality.
Marco, it was okay, but I didn't see you smile.
Let's do it again. Let's change it.
When we made Django, the horses ran away.
Action. Go! Start going…
The horses ran away and went to a different set.
But that happened all the time.
Another set, another movie, just 30 meters away.
The director, Count Guido Celano is ready for the kidnapping scene,
which is the spotlight of his movie Gun Shy Piluk.
Okay. You got it. I can tell you…
Nobody knew which one was the right set anymore.
There were the Elios studios, which were done first,
by the photography director, Alvaro Manconi.
After that, they made even smaller ones.
There was one in Manziana,
another one in Abruzzo.
-Why do you make Westerns? -Pardon me?
I make Westerns because Abruzzo is my home,
and Abruzzo is the real Italian West. It's like America.
I remember, as an assistant director,
I started with Rossellini,
then I had a period with Bragaglia,
then I worked with Sergio Corbucci, then Bolognini, with all the directors,
with Autant-Lara, with Losey…
And then they'd also send me with boneheads
because I had to teach them how to be a good director.
They really were boneheads. They knew nothing.
Rome in the '60s was incredible.
And Sergio was always at the Dolce Vita in Via Veneto,
with a big entourage.
At that time, his name, Sergio Corbucci, already had a place
among the intellectuals, like Piero Piccioni and all the others.
I was still young.
I had just made two movies with Rossellini,
when I got a call
from Titanus,
and they said, "You'd need to leave the day after tomorrow to Egypt
to play The Slave."
And I made myself noticed. Since then, Sergio always called me.
I did 13 movies with him.
CHAPTER FOUR V FOR VIOLENCE
Ready? Go.
Right. That's good. Show me.
It needs more blood. Add some more blood.
THE GREAT SILENCE (1968)
As far as I am concerned,
Leone creates the greatest trilogy in the history of cinema
with the three dollars movies.
Each movie is a bigger epic than the last one.
Each one is a bigger statement of Westerns.
Each one is a bigger statement on him as an artist,
on who he is and what he wants to do.
Each one is a bigger recreation of the Western as seen from his eyes.
Corbucci is different.
Corbucci decided to not do that.
Once he started doing Spaghetti Westerns,
he didn't go out for epics.
He went for the more violent cowboy picture kind of movie.
He wanted to keep them genre. They're not epics.
They're cowboy pictures. They're vengeance pictures.
He wanted to make
a Japanese movie.
You know, a dark one,
with black humor.
So, every day, he was, "Fra, how many shall we kill today?"
"I don't know. Shall we say 20, 25?"
We'd have a laugh about that.
This Western director created the most violent West possible.
As violent as the real West was, Corbucci's West was more violent,
and that ends up giving it this operatic quality.
Well, Bolognini taught me elegance,
which helped me work on 1,700 adverts.
It was thanks to the elegance that Bolognini taught me.
Rossellini taught me how to tell stories. I can tell a story in 15 seconds.
And I got all the cruelty from Sergio Corbucci.
He was really cruel.
I mean, the slicing off the ear, you know.
But that's how he was.
He was bloodthirsty. He didn't give a damn.
He was also ironic, though.
Yes, absolutely.
No!
Go.
Hey, Yankee.
Do you like the scene where he stabs the hand with a fork?
-Do you like Westerns? -Yes.
-Yes? Which type of Westerns? -Violent ones.
Violent? Do you also like war movies?
Because here they're shooting a war movie.
-If there's violence, yes. -There's always violence in those films.
In Westerns, there's more violence.
-You like horses then… -Blood. I like blood.
In Westerns movies, I like fistfights.
We're a bit sadistic. We like seeing blood, fights…
What do you mean, "sadistic"?
We like blood, fistfights, killing…
Now tell me who gave you the money to buy my brother's house.
Say it!
You'd better say it, Boot.
-I'm losing my patience. -I know nothing.
-I know nothing! -Tell me who paid you to shoot Charlie.
Tell me!
Say it!
The villain is the most important character in the whole movie,
The villain runs the show.
The villain tells the story that's being told.
The villain creates the landscape.
Everything Corbucci wants to say about Fascism,
he says it through his villains,
and his villains
are always stand-ins for 20th century or BC villains.
So his films are always a standout for the National Socialist Party,
THE MERCENARY (1968)
with a brown shirt, Fascist movements,
for Manson-like, gangs of killers…
No! Let go of me!
Now we'll show you what we can do!
-Cowards! -We will show you!
…a Fascist Police Force,
that has unlimited power,
or Caesar,
or Caligula.
In the later films,
it's only his heroes' combat with the villains
and the evilness of the villains that even allows the avengers
to even be portrayed anywhere in a heroic light.
It's only by contrast to the antagonist.
In this film, Mr. Corbucci, have you much death and violence?
Well, you probably know that I am a Roman,
and at home, in some closets, it's presumed to be the skeleton of Nero,
who is proving to be a good example for me.
Yes, I am killing a lot of people.
I have killed more people than Nero and Caligula.
But each time, it's more difficult for me to find a new method of murder.
That's why I hate Westerns.
After this, Mr. Corbucci, what films will you do?
A Western, naturally.
CHAPTER FIVE THE PROTAGONISTS
He really wanted me for The Great Silence,
a movie he did on the snow,
where the main character dies.
The bad one survives and the hero dies.
There is a mute character,
and the other one is played by Klaus Kinski.
I said, "Sergio, I'm off to the US," and he didn't take it well.
"Why the heck do you want to go to the US?"
"You'd better work here now that we've had a big success with Django."
I said, "Sergio, I'm going to America."
He was very disappointed, and he hired Trintignant.
Jean Louis Trintignant is now doing his first Western,
an Italian Western, with me.
It's an unusual one because the main character is French,
and then, it's entirely set in the snow, in the winter.
We'll be shooting in a region where, we are told,
it'll be 21 degrees Celsius below zero, so it will be challenging.
Among other things about this movie, which is called The Great Silence,
and which is my sixth Western, yes, the sixth one, I think,
the main character never speaks. You never speak in the movie, right?
In fact, he's mute. A mute gunslinger.
You could at least answer me.
Can't you speak?
I'm sorry.
He has other archetypes. He has his lead protagonist.
His lead protagonists
are never heroes. They're not what you would call a hero.
The best you could call them is an avenger.
That's the nicest thing you can say about them, an avenger.
In another Western,
they could be the villain.
In fact, not only that, in another Corbucci Western,
a Corbucci protagonist
could be the villain to another Corbucci protagonist.
One day, Sergio came to me and said, "Rugge,
we have to make a movie."
And he brings me a comic.
There was a guy pulling a coffin.
It was a great idea, a guy pulling a coffin.
Django was inspired by Japanese movies, Seven Samurai,
Rashomon, which were movies
a bit dark, full of mud.
Maybe a bit macabre because there was a coffin.
A lot of my movies had a coffin.
Even in movies with Totò, there were often coffins.
Because a coffin in a movie always brings good luck, not sure why.
So I went to the Elios.
A big mess.
It was really basic, dirty.
And so much mud.
A run-down village.
The extras were horrendous,
but they were cheap and were already there, so I said,
"Sergio, shall we put some red hoods on them?"
During the shooting,
the movie with Clint Eastwood by Sergio Leone was already out.
Since they were friends,
they spoke, and Sergio said to Leone,
"Come and see me on the set, and I'll show you the actor I chose."
So, one day, Leone showed up.
There was mud everywhere. We were at Elios, and it was full of mud.
I will never forget how Leone started staring at me.
He kept looking at me, and Sergio went, "So what do you think?"
"You hit the jackpot!"
Meaning, you won the lottery.
These were his words, Leone's words.
More mud brought good luck.
Red hoods brought good luck.
Franco Nero brought luck.
He also said,
"I think this movie will be a big hit, and do you know why?"
"Because it addresses the working class."
And he was right
because it had become a great political movie,
where the Mexican peons were the oppressed ones.
When it comes to those Westerns that we're talking about
of that period,
my two personal favorites are The Hellbenders
and Navajo Joe.
What's your name?
Joe.
I've never known an Indian named Joe.
And I've never seen a Navajo so far south before.
And me an Indian girl that asks so many questions.
Navajo Joe
was the most violent movie
ever released by a studio
to American screens until The Wild Bunch,
which was about two years later, I think.
Navajo Joe was fun
because there was Burt Reynolds who was meant to replace Marlon Brando.
He was so ill-humored. I used to go to his trailer to call him,
"I'm not coming. I'll come when I feel like it."
He was young and just started his career.
So once, I told him, "Fuck you, asshole!"
After 15 years, he came to Rome.
He went to an actor's house, in Zagarolo,
and he said, "Let's call Ruggero."
And so, he went…
Lucio Rosato, the actor,
said to me, "Burt Reynolds wants to talk to you."
So he puts Burt Reynolds on, and he goes,
"Ruggero, fuck you, asshole."
After 15 years, he remembered that.
His physical performance is astonishing in that movie.
It's one of the great action physical performances.
One of the things that's fantastic about his performance in Navajo Joe,
it's such an athletic performance.
Joe has a fighting style
that is recognizable when you watch the film
as he attacks Duncan's men.
Burt Reynolds had this blitzkrieg, football attack against the bad guys.
He's, like, leaping and jumping on them and doing somersaults in the dirt.
And he practically killed himself making the movie.
Until martial art movies, that was not a thing.
Lead characters didn't have a fighting style.
They didn't have a style you could notice fighting from this film to that film,
this opponent to that opponent. It was just donnybrooks.
It's just usually Big Valley. I hit you. You hit me.
And eventually, I hit you more.
If you look at a lot of the Westerns from the '50s, and even in the '40s too,
those Western heroes
they weren't cool.
They were tough.
They were badass,
but, you know,
some version of righteousness
was enabled in their character and then their story.
Even if they were a bad guy, they were trying to do good
at some point in the film.
They weren't sexy.
Their costumes were more functional.
And, you know, there's nothing…
And I'm not putting them down.
Those '50s Westerns
would have a second…
Some of them would have a secondary character,
secondary lead, and that was more of an antihero character.
Were they gonna turn up being good or bad?
You almost had to watch the whole movie to find out.
And those kind of characters were, like,
Richard Widmark's Comanche Todd in The Last Wagon,
which was a direct influence on Navajo Joe.
Burt Lancaster's character in Vera Cruz.
Even Marlon Brando's character, Rio, in One-Eyed Jacks.
They all fit into an antihero,
dubious morality.
Were they gonna work out good or bad? That was almost the point of the movie.
You had to watch the whole damn thing to find out what was going on.
But those characters were not righteous. They all had their problems.
They all had their demons.
They were played sexier
than the stalwart lead.
There was a sexy quality about them, and there was a sense of panache
to the way they were costumed.
They didn't just pick a shirt that fit. There was a comic-book panache.
And this is something Leone did, and Corbucci took it further.
I don't know if he took further, but he double-downed on it for sure.
He gave them
slightly comic-book prowess.
They were faster than fast.
There was something about them that was more than just…
that went beyond a realistic Western.
There was a comic-book panache to their prowess.
The one that I have a special affection for is Sonny and Jed.
But I have a different reading on Sonny and Jed than the rest.
Sonny and Jed was sort of his Bonnie and Clyde.
It's a Western, it's one of the he did into the '70s.
And it was Tomas Milian and Susan George
playing a couple of outlaw rascals on the run.
Sonny and Jed tends to turn people off.
One, it has
two of Corbucci's best-directed set-pieces.
The whole opening section,
the whole opening 12-minute section of the movie.
And then there's the scene where Jed is hiding in the corn.
Two of Corbucci's greatest action sequences ever.
But people tend to be turned off by the movie
because they tend to be turned off by Tomas Milian's
cretinous character
of Jed.
Now, I'm turned off by Jed too and his treatment of Sonny,
but there's an aspect about it that's interesting because
it pretty much looks like, not even an allegory,
it pretty much looks like what it is.
It looks like a Western story starring Charles Manson and Squeaky Fromme,
with Susan George playing the Squeaky Fromme character
and Tomas Milian going all out playing Charlie Manson.
I think Sonny and Jed
are not the heroes. I think they are the antagonist.
I think Sonny and Jed are the villains.
Jed is definitely the villain. Sonny…
That's one of the things about Corbucci we haven't talked about,
Corbucci's female characters.
Corbucci's female characters never
fit the role of the standard archetype that I laid out.
They're always doubling up.
Give me that bible, Raschietto.
Swear it's not a trap.
Swear that Clay is really by himself out there.
But be careful, sweetheart.
This will be your last oath
because you'll die soon after.
I'm not scared, Fox.
I don't fear anyone now.
They're hero and victim.
Or townsperson and villain.
Virginia!
-I got him! -Virginia!
Hurry!
-Call the Sheriff, ma'am! Hurry up! -Virgina, help me!
Hurry up!
They're, like…
They usually combine two of the archetypes together,
for his women, which suggests these women are complicated.
And Sonny is a villain/victim in the film.
But to me, the hero of the movie
is Telly Savalas's character, Francisco.
He's the real hero of the film.
Watch the movie from
Telly Savalas's perspective.
Next time you see it, don't watch it from Milian's perspective,
watch it from Telly Savalas's perspective.
He is a Corbucci hero.
And then, even when he gets blinded,
when he's completely blind,
he still goes after Sonny and Jed. He doesn't stop his quest.
Now, that makes him a Corbucci's hero.
Because the thing that Corbucci did with his movies
that was different than any other of the Western directors,
he would give his heroes,
like I said, a comic-book panache when it comes to their prowess.
They were faster than you could be in real life.
They had something that gave them almost superhero qualities.
However,
then he takes their prowess away from them.
The thing that sets them up as…
as a superhero cowboy is gone.
He literally removes their superpowers from them.
Even a skilled gunslinger needs his hands. Isn't that right, Django?
Bye now, Django.
My men and I are going back to Mexico,
to either win or die!
Vamos compañeros!
Adios, gringo! See you in hell!
And then he makes them face the villain.
And it's only them facing the villain
without their superpowers that they can claim to be a hero.
It's only the end, when they actually face up
against these figures of Fascism
without, you know…
without their superpowers in their back pocket,
without their ace in the hole.
That's… There…
From that point on, for the last five minutes,
that's the moment they can call themselves heroes.
And so it shall be!
When you just take the Spaghetti Western as a genre in totality,
I actually think Lee Van Cleef and Franco Nero are the two genre leads.
They are the two most iconic figures, not for just one character,
but it's also for, you know, they did a series of movies.
They created a persona,
and they became New World Western mythology.
All my movies have always been inspired by comics.
Those adventure comic books that when I was little were called
Mandrake, Tim Tyler's Luck…
and that when I grew up, as a director, became many Westerns,
costume movies, Bud Spencer and Terence Hill…
And, for example, I see Terence Hill as a Milton Caniff hero.
Do remember Terry? Or Bud Spencer as Dick Fulmine.
Adriano Celentano…
could also be a Li'l Abner character.
CHAPTER SIX SHADOW AND LIGHT
How are you, Hud?
God knows how happy I am to see you here visiting your brother.
If it wasn't for me and the sheriff, they wouldn't have even buried him.
They'd have said, "He's a thief. Let's leave him to the vultures."
As much as he hates his Fascists, he hates the communities all the more.
The communities represented by every single one of these towns,
whether it'd be Pollicut's little town…
Welcome to Snow Hill.
…or Blackstone…
The people who live in the town,
they're horrible representatives of society.
It's almost a sick joke on John Ford's characters,
of the pioneers, "We are the people that rule the West,
and we're creating a community."
The community that Ford created of his characters,
trying to create a community in this wasteland,
is really what he's about.
And then, in Corbucci's movies, it's like society is a cesspool.
Society is a sewer,
and all these people in this town deserve anything that's happening to them.
They've all got it coming.
He actually makes that subtext actually text in The Specialists.
Come on! Horrible pigs!
-Crawl! -Look! He's coming!
All the three movies I did with Sergio are political movies,
because The Mercenary is a political movie too,
and so is Compañeros, so…
In Compañeros, there was the famous professor,
Fernando Rey,
who taught young people about revolution, in the right way.
They used to wear the red scarves, you know, the students…
Yes, definitely. They were political movies.
Those soldiers you killed to save me
were human beings.
And killing a human being,
even if he's our enemy,
is a crime.
Haven't I always taught you this?
Answer me!
What should have we done? Let them shoot you?
The ideals I believe are fearless of death,
and they don't need guns to prevail.
Guys,
never forget this principle.
When fighting for the right ideal, you can also win without violence.
Clearly, I am too old,
and you are all too young.
All of Corbucci's films aren't created equally.
There's not much humor in Navajo Joe.
There's not much humor in The Hellbenders.
There's no humor in The Great Silence.
I did The Great Silence for all those who believe in freedom
and for all those who want to fight.
He breaks out of that when he does the…
the Mexican Revolution trilogy.
God, how beautiful this is.
Thirteen red.
They stand separate. They stand separate from Navajo Joe, from Django.
They stand separate from Hellbenders. They're different.
Those are the ones where he's indulging more like Leone,
in, like, more comedy bits.
And it's not always black humor in the Mexican Revolution trilogy.
Paco wants to see you, gringo.
And when Leone does Duck, You Sucker!, that's absolutely his version
of a Corbucci Mexican Revolution Western.
Four Jacks.
Two ladies…
plus two more…
makes four.
The Mercenary was meant to be directed by Gillo Pontecorvo.
Here's the story.
Alberto Grimaldi, back then, wanted to produce four movies,
one by Elio Petri, one by Fellini,
one by Pontecorvo,
and the other one should have been by Corbucci, but not this film,
just a film by Corbucci.
Basically,
Pontecorvo pulled out of making the movie.
Corbucci, with his usual savoir faire,
one day, went to what should have been Pontecorvo's office and said,
"Hey, I'll make this movie!"
So he convinced Grimaldi that he was the right director to make The Mercenary.
Go!
-Thanks. -Come on. Let's run!
The cast should have been made up of
James Coburn, playing the American guy,
and Franco Nero, playing the Mexican.
One day, I went to watch a movie, The Incident,
and I noticed this incredible actor, Tony Musante.
I called Sergio and said, "Go and watch this movie."
"You've found the Mexican, if you ask me."
He watched the movie and said, "You were right."
And he hired Tony Musante.
I must say you're rather fast.
Who are you?
The Polish, but for you, I'm called Bad Luck
because if they don't let me pass, I'll kill you.
You're in bad luck too, buddy,
because they don't care whether you kill me or not.
-You know how to count to ten? -Sure, I can.
I can also add, and occasionally subtract too.
Fine.
Start counting.
While Corbucci specialized in doing
these Westerns, these cowboy pictures,
he never took Leone on,
when it came to the whole concept of the showdown and the Morricone score,
except for the first of the Mexican Revolution movies,
except for The Mercenary.
That's his only time
he actually, "Okay now I'm gonna take Sergio with a full-on showdown,
with a full-on Morricone score."
And as far as I'm concerned, along with the Leone ones,
it's the best of all those ever done.
CHAPTER SEVEN THE LAST REVOLUTION
Of all the great Western directors, Corbucci created the most pitiless West
that there was.
The most pitiless, the most pessimistic, the most surrealistically grotesque,
the most violent.
Nobody is guaranteed safe passage
in a Corbucci film.
The hero could die at the end just as easily as anybody else.
The sheriff's girlfriend.
Chester! No!
A priest. Nobody is guaranteed safe passage.
And actually, their innocence could doom them.
Don't cry.
No!
We said no witnesses, remember?
You boys better decide what to do with the kid.
So…
Wow!
So, if I was gonna try to create that surrealistic, grotesque,
absolutely pitiless West
that Corbucci created for American Mexico, and I was gonna put it in America,
where would that be?
And then I was, "Well, the antebellum South."
That's exactly where it'd be.
It would be Mississippi, it would be Louisiana
during the time of slavery. America under slavery would…
is, actually, that grotesque world
that Corbucci drew on.
And there, the most surrealistic things, the most garish things actually happened.
What makes them grotesque is their reality.
What's everybody staring at?
They've never seen no nigger on a horse before.
Corbucci, ultimately, did Westerns because he's a genre filmmaker,
and that was a popular genre at the time.
The same reason he did peplums.
That was the popular genre at the time.
So Westerns became the popular genre.
Early '70s, when they fizzled out, he abandoned them.
And apparently never looked back.
And then he concentrated on doing comedies.
However,
some of those comedies that he did in the '70s,
are, to this day,
some of the most successful movies in the history
of the Italian film industry.
When he's doing his Revolution trilogy,
it's that third one that's kind of the transition.
The whole film gets this kind of comical aspect.
He used to enjoy trying new things.
He wasn't a director tied to strict patterns,
so probably with Villaggio, jokingly, they went,
"Let's make a movie with the sober Gassman too,
and we'll talk about revolution with a comic twist."
Sergio used to do different things.
That was a great quality he had.
He'd easily go from a movie with Totò to all the other movies.
Something that not all directors could do.
Sergio knew
that he would never win an Oscar.
He said, "I will never win an Oscar."
But he had won the people's Oscar.
And he knew this because he was truly the people's director.
I really don't understand Corbucci's
career once you get past the early '70s.
There was a commercial director aspect to Corbucci,
and it's actually one of the things I actually kind of admire.
There's part of me that kind of wish
he was a little bit more artist-in-residence
the way that Leone was.
I think it's a damn shame that
so few of the Italian directors came to America
to try their hand doing American movies.
I brought it up once about the idea of "What if Sergio had done that?"
And then people, "No, he would never do that."
He would never leave Italy to make a movie in America.
I remember this actor, Tony Musante, who came to Italy to work with me,
and then he also had a great career.
He came for a movie, with Palance and Franco Nero, called The Mercenary.
He was one of those engaged actors, like Kazan.
As he was getting off his horse once, I said, "Look…"
We had a scene where he was going to exit the shot, running.
He was leaving the scene during a bombing, something like that.
He had to get off his horse, run, then throw himself to the ground later.
Because of the next scene requirements,
I told him, for the second shot, when he was meant to come back in,
I said, "Come in the scene running, then lay down on the ground
because I need to lower the camera to film a guy shooting over there.
He said, "Why do I need to go down now?"
I went, "I don't know. Pretend you have a stone in your boot."
"So you need to sit down, take your boot off, let the stone out,
and put the boot back on, which is funny while they're all shooting at you."
"I think it could look nice."
He went, "We'll have to redo the previous scene then."
I went, "Why?"
He said, "Because in the previous one, I left the scene without the stone."
I was like, "What do you mean?"
He said, "This has to start earlier
because I'd have felt the stone as soon as I put my foot on the ground,
so I would have left the scene differently from now."
I went, "Look, we're doing an Italian Western here."
"I mean, you know…"
I said, "If you need to show you have a stone in your boot, just do it now."
"You didn't realize it before, but you're realizing it now."
He went, "That's fine, but I need time in my trailer to focus on how to do this."
I said, "Okay, go. I'll do something else."
Then he came back and said, "I got it."
I said, "I've moved on now. No more stone in the boot."
"We'll do something different. The sun went down. The horse was thirsty…"
Where are we going?
Inside the cannons!
Jump out, quick!
There's nothing wrong with the label
"second-best Spaghetti Western director after Leone," all right.
I don't believe Ford is the greatest of American Western directors,
but if you take that thought, all right,
if you take that place, then who's the second?
Is it Peckinpah? Is it Hawks?
Is it Raoul Walsh? Is it Delmer Daves?
Who is it? Who's number two? All right? That's a dogfight.
It's not a dogfight in Italy.
Number two is fucking Corbucci.
TO NORI CORBUCCI
There's an interesting thing about Django solely…
I haven't talked that much about Django, so I might talk a bit about it, okay?
There's an interesting aspect to the movie.
Who is Mercedes?
And it's never ever answered
who Mercedes is.
All right, and what I mean by that is Django has come to this town.
It seems like he's coming there
for a vengeance.
You see him visiting a grave of a woman named Mercedes.
Who this woman is, is not clear.
The only thing we know about Django is he was probably in the Union Army
or the Union Cavalry, because of his cavalry pants.
So he was in the war, and he was definitely on the side of the North.
He's going to the South.
And the Colonel's character, he's definitely a figure from the South.
He's definitely a figure from the Confederacy,
and he has this Ku Klux Klan,
like, hooded army, all right, that are, you know…
it would appear that they've wiped out all the Black folks in the area,
and now they're working on their way through the Mexicans.
It would appear there were Black folks in this area, and they were all murdered,
and now it's the Mexican's turn.
Who is Mercedes?
Is Mercedes Django's wife?
Well, that's an interesting story.
He has a wife. He leaves her in this village, a Southern village,
and goes off to fight for the North?
He comes back, and she's dead, but it doesn't seem to suggest
that he's just come back the minute the war's over.
He's done a bunch of stuff, and now he's there.
So that's his wife.
That doesn't seem likely.
It doesn't seem likely he would have a wife.
It doesn't seem likely if he had a wife, he would abandon her.
I've come up with a version of it that I think is the case.
I think…
he never knew Mercedes.
I think he was in the war.
And I think Mercedes…
is the wife of somebody he served with.
Mercedes was the wife of somebody in the Union Army that he served with,
that he died,
and he died
in Django's arms or around Django.
Before he died, he gave him something to give to his wife.
"And when the war's over, when you get around to it,
go down to this village and find my wife."
And I'd like to think, since I'm writing this all on my own,
that it was a Black soldier.
And so, finally,
he goes to this village to track down
the wife of the Black soldier that he knew,
in the town that she was living in, to find her murdered.
And he finds the whole history
of how this Ku Klux Klan-like gang
has genocided the Black folks in the area,
and are now working their way through the Mexicans.
And then revenge is perpetrated
against the leader of this Klan Army
by an actor whose last name is Nero,
which is Italian for "black."
That's my version of it.
Subtitle translation by: Angelica Lacetera