The IMDB Top 50 Challenge #22 Once Upon A Time In The West

Once, the western ruled Hollywood. John Ford and John Wayne dominated the cinematic landscape, cowboys triumphed over Indians and American heroes were white men wearing Stetsons. But as the 1960s drew to a close, the genre was dying. The reasons for this were myriad: the end of the studio system; the growing distance between modernity and the frontier; the inexorable rise of technology and science fiction; the increasingly uncomfortable portrayals of women, blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans and the proliferation of cheap western TV shows which so badly diluted the brand.

Perversely, as the western’s appeal faded, Italian director Sergio Leone produced its most ambitious, original and epic movie: Once Upon A Time In The West. A sprawling 160 minute running time, stunning cinematography, Ennio Morricone’s masterful score and Leone’s artful direction combined to produce one of cinema’s most loving tributes to America’s bygone era. Seen by many as Leone handing over the cinematic baton to the younger directors who would come to dominate the seventies (Coppola, Scorsese, Kubrick, et al), the film is the triumphant final flourish of cinema’s most iconic genre.

Once Upon a Time in the West is rightly revered for its riveting opening scene: three rough and ready cowboys waiting quietly at a railway station to kill a new arrival in town. Virtually nothing happens - but it happens wonderfully. The three archetypal desperados stand, leather clad and perspiring in the high noon sun as Leone cuts artfully between them, switching from widescreen vistas to intense close-up. They say nothing, with the soundtrack instead supplied by the amplified sound effects of dripping water and buzzing flies. It’s impossible to describe quite how wonderful the scene is at it builds to one of Leone’s most memorable images: Charles Bronson filmed from ground level through a pair of dusty cowboy boots.

Bronson is the enigmatic Harmonica, in town to meet with local villain Frank (a grizzled Henry Fonda). Rather than keep their appointment, however, Frank has sent his greeting party – who Harmonica quickly and ruthlessly dispatches. Quite why Harmonica is in town is a mystery –although he quickly finds himself involved in local drama and politics – with beautiful local widow Jill McBain (the utterly gorgeous Claudia Cardinale).

In an apparently motiveless attack, Jill’s husband and children were cut down in cold blood by Frank and his goons – with Frank himself shooting dead his youngest son before framing local crook Cheyenne (a wonderfully laconic Jason Robards) for the massacre. Into the moral breach steps Harmonica, accompanied always by Ennio Morricone’s evocative musical motif, shaking up the established order and attempting to restore justice to the burgeoning frontier town.

There’s nothing particularly original in such a storyline. Indeed, many of its characters are typical Western clichés: a widowed femme fatale, a framed man, a mysterious stranger, a criminal businessman and his collection of lackeys, and the narrative has little new to say, treading the well worn path of justice being dispensed for previous misdemeanours. To criticise Once Upon A Time In The West for this, however, would be a huge mistake.

Where Leone’s film differs from so many previous genre films is in its execution. It’s a sumptuous, beautifully produced film of enormous creativity and style. Leone’s camerawork is masterful, moving elegantly between sprawling panoramas to tight close-ups of weather beaten faces, each frame composed perfectly. One scene, particularly, encapsulates this wonderfully controlled cinematography: Frank and Harmonica circle each other with vicious intent whilst Leone’s camera sweeps around the pair. Harmonica is static, the camera gently moving around his impassive face. Frank is edgy and skittish, filmed in mid-shot with the camera swooping around him. Their respective characters are reflected brilliantly – but never at the expense of the tension of the showdown.

Sound, too, is key to Leone’s artistic vision. With the supreme Morricone providing the musical score, this is hardly surprising – but Once Upon A Time In The West does not rely on music and dialogue for its rich soundtrack. Amplified sound effects bleed into one other, climb to crescendos or disappear altogether at moments of tension. Occasionally the score masks the dialogue – a deliberate ploy to keep the audience guessing. Where many directors rely on weather to replicate mood and tone, here Leone is robbed of that opportunity by the relentless sun. Instead, his sound mix does what the weather cannot – creating tension and danger through its motifs and haunting music.

There’s sadness here, too. The relentless march of the railroad across the American plains represents both progress and sadness at the passing of an era – just as Leone’s movie mourns the passing of the greatest American genre. A noble tradition ends here, replicated in the film’s moving final act as Harmonica concedes that he and Cheyenne belong to ‘an ancient race’ – one which now belongs to our cinematic past.

Giallo

The giallo genre originated in Italian literature where cheap crime novels with supernatural (and often erotic) elements were produced as cheap paperbacks. The word ‘giallo’ is Italian for yellow – the trademark background colour of the books’ covers. For Italian film audiences the term became a catch-all phrase used to describe the all thrillers – but rapidly became a sub-genre of its own. Characterised by gruesome murder sequences and stylish visuals, the theatrical and stylised movies reached their high-watermark in the 1970s – and at the forefront of the movement was Dario Argento. Films like Cat O’Nine Tails and Suspiria proved hugely influential – Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a clear homage to such pictures. Now, following legal wrangling with star Adrien Brody over pay, Argento’s return to the genre will be released on DVD for the first time.

Set, unsurprisingly, in Italy, the film concerns the hunt for Celine (Elsa Pataky), a model who’s been abducted by a serial killer.

Leading the investigation is Italian-American detective Enzo (Adrien Brody) alongside her sister, Linda (Emmanuelle Segnier). Known only as ‘Yellow’, the killer’s modus operandi is to kidnap beautiful foreign females in his unlicensed taxi before drugging, mutilating and murdering them.

Will Enzo and Linda manage to locate Celine before she becomes another of the killer’s fatalities?

Rarely has a horror movie relied so heavily on stereotypes and clichés. Giallo contains not one single original idea, seeming to hope instead that its association with big names like Argento and Brody, as well as proven talent like Segnier, will elevate it above the competition. Sadly, each of the aforementioned individuals fails to raise their game appropriately.

The acting across the board is dubious. Pataky is required to do little other than scream and shout, whilst Segnier looks harassed and bedraggled and little else. It would be churlish to criticise them for this: there is no sense that either Argento or the film’s writers have made any attempt to craft rounded characters – they merely serve the flimsy plot.

Although a ‘twist’ is not a prerequisite for a horror film, audiences have clearly come to expect one. Giallo fails to deliver in a completely linear narrative. The riddle of the kidnapper’s identity and whereabouts (such as they are) are resolved in one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment and the action gets no more interesting after that. Arguably, this can be attributed to the decision to introduce the audience to the villain very early in the piece.

Almost from the outset, ‘Yellow’ is seen on screen, initially as a hooded reflection in a rear-view mirror, but soon afterwards in full frontal. Despite being a mass-murdering sociopath, it’s difficult not to laugh at his very presence. Very clearly played by Adrien Brody (despite being credited as Byron Deidra), he hobbles around the set mouthing threats in a hilariously bad Italian accent. His skin is literally yellow – an affliction explained through a torturously hackneyed back-story – and his face looks like a particularly unthreatening Bo Selecta mask. It’s impossible to take him seriously – not least when he’s seen sucking a child’s dummy.

Brody is barely any better in his larger role as the noirish detective. He phones in his performance as the jaded cop so half-heartedly that it’s little wonder people were reluctant to pay him for his role in proceedings. It’s a real shame, as the opportunity to play two conflicting parts would be attacked with relish by most actors. But again, some of the blame for this must lie with the writers who completely fail to capitalise on the interesting notion that the policeman and the kidnapper are two halves of the same coin. It is an idea which is explored to a degree, but it never goes far enough and seems like an afterthought rather than a key plot-point.

With little beneath the surface, the action is extremely superficial. Thankfully it zips along to the predictable conclusion fairly speedily. Occasional graphically violent episodes punctuate the plot – and these vary greatly in their quality. Some are genuinely shocking, others shockingly bad. There also seems to be a preoccupation with ejaculation as the killer towers over Celine watching her blood pumping from her severed finger as he squirts anaesthetic from a syringe. As with many of the themes touched upon here, the killer’s sexual interest in the girls he kills is only partially explored – yet another strand which might have been expanded on rather than trying to jam every hoary old cliché into ninety minutes of action.

Giallo is a hugely flawed movie. With an unconvincing pantomime villain at its heart and a series of one dimensional characters making up the numbers, Argento needed a strong storyline or some original ideas to carry the movie. Instead, he throws every cliché in the book at his production in the hope that some of it sticks – it just makes a mess. Better writing and a more focused figure at the helm might have rescued a half-decent film from the footage on display. Brody will be breathing a sigh of relief that Giallo never made it to the cinema.

Four Flies On Grey Velvet

To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of its original release, Dario Argento’s Four Flies On Grey Velvet has been restored, remastered and rereleased on DVD. This release comes from the original negative and includes a semi-mythical selection of four hitherto unseen scenes. The original English audio (and Ennio Morricone soundtrack) has also been remastered for the release. But aside from the bells and whistles, just how good is the film?

Roberto Tobias is the drummer in a 1970s prog rock band. He’s cool, successful and has an attractive blonde wife, Nina. The only dark cloud on his horizon is the constant presence of a stranger clad in black.

Tired of being followed, Roberto decides to turn the tables on his stalker – pursuing him into an abandoned theatre. Here, a scuffle leads to a knife being pulled and inevitable tragedy: Roberto escapes unharmed, but the stranger is stabbed in the stomach and falls into the orchestra pit. A sudden flash blinds Roberto and when his eyes adjust, he finds himself staring at a camera-wielding figure in a childlike rubber mask. As he stares in bewilderment, numerous incriminating photographs are taken.

The next day Roberto receives the dead man’s ID card in the post and automatically assumes it’s been sent by the masked figure. Puzzled by the lack of a blackmail demand, Roberto becomes increasingly paranoid about his situation – and his state of mind becomes yet more confused when his housekeeper is found murdered in a local park. Who is the cameraman? And what do they want with Roberto?

It seems that Four Flies On Grey Velvet’s reputation has been earned largely in absentia. Having been unavailable to home audiences for twenty years, this repackaged release has not aged well. Whilst absence might have made the heart grow fonder, it certainly hasn’t made the movie any better. The visuals might be slicker than ever, but they are, at times, extremely dark and difficult to make out. The dubbing is utterly appalling – the majority of the actors seem to be mouthing English words but it’s apparent that many of the voices attributed to them are not their own. It’s an unusual way of working and an unsuccessful one – why use a multi-lingual cast and have their dialogue dubbed by English speakers regardless?

The actors are not given much to work with anyway. Characterisation is poor throughout – the cast are asked to fulfil embarrassingly shallow clichés (a gay private detective is particularly lazily written), which they do with the minimum effort. Attempts at humour are even more misguided – a ‘comic’ postman appears periodically for seemingly no good reason whatsoever.

There are, however, plenty of reasons to praise Argento’s visual and technical flair. Four Flies On Grey Velvet is crammed with arresting images, creative camera work and slick set pieces. It seems that the director provided early inspiration for The Matrix’s ‘bullet-time’ sequence with swooping, sweeping shots which feature throughout the film. Scenes of deaths and murders are inventive, too – although one stair-based disaster owes more than a debt to Alfred Hitchcock.

Where the film really falls down is in its narrative – it’s extremely slow and very predictable. A twist early on hints that things might not be quite as they seem – but they are. Guessing the identity of the supposedly mysterious cameraman is absurdly easy – and even Argento seems to be aware that he needs to do more to inject interest into proceedings.

As such, a pretty unbelievable affair and a naked bath time romp are employed to kill a few minutes of screen time before a completely ridiculous resolution to the whodunit is offered by a new medical technique which can record the last image imprinted on a murder victim’s retinas. Although the film doesn’t take itself too seriously, this development is so silly as to be jarring – it doesn’t belong here and the plot could easily be wrapped up without resorting to such a daft device.

The nature of Four Flies On Grey Velvet ensures that such matters do not linger long in the memory. The storyline is easily the most forgettable part of Argento’s creation. Instead, what remains in the memory are images and scenes which show a real horror talent at work: a beating heart, a recurring nightmare and, best of all, a car crash in extreme slow motion. It’s a stunning set-piece – mere seconds stretched out to around a minute with every crunch, pop, scratch and screeched amplified and made hyper real and even more horrific.

Four Flies On Grey Velvet shows enough of Dario Argento’s talent to be of interest, but as a stand-alone film, it’s ultimately unsatisfactory. The occasional flashes of brilliance are not enough to compensate for the movie’s many deficiencies and, as such, it’s a release which will excite nobody other than the most ardent horror fans or Argento completists.