The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[knives]

I've only got one more, but I doubt The Undefeated will be good enough. So if in two hours nobody pleads in it's defense I'll give you my list.

[Cold Bishop]

Never seen it. However, I remember being a big fan of McLaglen's The Last Hard Men, although it sounds like night and day to his John Wayne films of the 60s.

[knives]

The only other McLanglen film I've seen is the terminally okay The Rare Breed and I'm assuming that this one is sticking around there. If not for my love of cheesy B-movies I'd be watching this now.

[domino harvey]

McLaglen directed dozens of westerns, none particularly memorable. In fact, there are like eight of his films in my unwatched westerns pile, so don't feel too bad that you didn't top off that Fox Wayne box.

[knives]

I actually didn't get the box, but this other thing Fox re-released with the three that aren't on Blu. It's the same discs, but in one compact case. Can't resist a good room saver.

[Nothing]

I do hope folks have watched Tepepa before turning in those lists, given that the film is freely available on You Tube. Oh, but I forgot Rule No.5 = any European western with commie overtones is to be brusquely dismissed, whether or not the star and co-director is Orson Welles.

Anyways, Stars in My Crown = First of all, this is a social picture, not a western (despite the brief saloon flashback in the opening). Second: wtf?! After Canyon Passage and Stranger on Horseback, I was really starting to get into Tourneur and then this (his favourite film, no less!!) comes along... All of the things that one associates with Tourneur - the ineffectual hero, the moral ambiguity, the realistic and subversively horrible supporting cast - all go out of the window in favour of a fervent upbeat bible-bashing love-in, climaxing in an abhorrent sequence in which McCrea's preacher shames the Klan into putting down their hanging rope and going home (b/c they're all good folks at heart really, just a little misguided...) Jesus-fucking-Christ... Makes me want to reconsider the previous two films, but I don't know if I'll have time. Thankfully, the disc was skipping a little at the beginning, so I'll be sending it back for a refund.

[Cold Bishop]

Or maybe no one wants to watch a film on Youtube? In a language they don't speak?

[Nothing]

I prefer not to watch stuff on You Tube too, but the quality is reasonable considering, and the only alternative in this case is plonking out $60+ for an OOP edition (and the DVD wouldn't arrive in time now anyway...). It's a spaghetti western, the dialogue is of secondary importance (if anything, you lot will probably prefer it without the Marxist invective...) And yet folks will sit through any number of rote formula westerns from the 40s and 50s.. It's very hard not to read this indifference as ideologically grounded.

[matrixschmatrix]

That's because you have no distinction between your taste and your ideology, so you constantly conflate the one with the other- anything you don't like automatically becomes ideologically offensive, you dismiss things you haven't seen based on largely fanciful ideological disagreements, and anything you do like and others don't can only be because they aren't as ideologically advanced as you. You push this view constantly, in spite of the fact that it's based on cobwebs and imagination.

[Mr Sausage]

It's very hard not to read this indifference as ideologically grounded.

Let me understand this: the only possible reason people aren't chattering about a movie they've never heard of, know nothing about, and which is only available in unsubtitled Italian on youtube, is because of ideological differences (even tho' I'm pretty sure everyone here has no idea what the movie's politics are)?

Why do you insist on being such a confounded idiot all the time?

[Nothing]

Let me understand this: the only possible reason people aren't chattering about a movie they've never heard of, know nothing about, and which is only available in unsubtitled Italian on youtube, is because of ideological differences?

A movie they've never heard of - starring and co-directed by Orson Welles... Under any other circumstances such a thing would have folks here frothing at the mouth with anticipation...

I don't believe this is a question of taste, given that no-one, as far as I am aware, has even bothered to look at the film. Certainly, there hasn't been one single response or expression of interest in Tepepa ever since I first brought it up two or three pages ago - and this chimes with the general disinterest in spaghetti westerns throughout the thread. There's been the very occasional reference to Django Kill or Keoma, a couple of knee-jerk dismissals of Quien Sabe (despite being the most widely respected non-Leone spaghetti alongside Il Grande Silenzio). There's been no discussion at all of Requiescant (which made the Time Out List) or Death Rides a Horse (ripped off by Tarantino for Kill Bill) or Faccia a Faccia or The Big Gundown or Companeros or The Mercenary or many of the other major Spaghetti titles, most of which are freely available in English dubbed or subtitled editions on DVD. Given that literally hundreds of these films were made, the level of discussion has undoubtably been disproportionate... In short, the attitude amongst many of the Americans here seems to be that if it isn''t a 'proper' conservative American western in the Stagecoach mold then it isn't even worth considering. But we'll see what happens in the final tally, I guess...

[knives]

Well the lack of Spaghetti discussion is probably fueled because it's easier to get the American films. On the other I brought up the East German westerns near the start of this list and I haven't been complaining that people aren't talking about it. Also if this film you're yammering on about was a serious Welles project than I definitely don't want to see it in the condition you described. I respect him enough to wait for a better copy to become available.

[Nothing]

I did purchase the East German production Apaches following that discussion but wasn't unduly impressed by it. Can't fault the film ideologically, but the production values, script and performances were too amateurish for me to be able to take the film very seriously, sadly. The best political spaghettis do much the same thing in ideological terms, but with a far greater degree of cinematic flair and imagination.

[Mr Sausage]

I don't believe this is a question of taste, given that no-one, as far as I am aware, has even bothered to look at the film.

You're right, no one is watching it because it's Marxist, just like no one watched Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck, You Sucker, or Bullet For the General.

a couple of knee-jerk dismissals of Quien Sabe (despite being the most widely respected non-Leone spaghetti alongside The Great Silence).

A Bullet for the General has gotten a favourable reaction in this thread. I can't think of a single member who said they didn't like it. Zedz thought it was incoherent and unlikely (if just barely) to make his list, but he said he was glad he saw it and preferred it to Django. Domino called it entertaining and well-made. I thought it was quite good, if somewhat unlikeable, given that pretty much everyone is either psychotic, a sadist, or both. Everyone weighed its virtues and faults pretty evenly, and no one said anything about disagreeing with its politics (Domino even called its points cogent).

In summary: you're a crackpot. The narratives you invent to explain and understand differences in taste and opinion are inchoate, self-serving, unhealthy, and beneath someone of your intelligence. Stop derailing good threads with your disagreeable personality traits.

[knives]

#-o The reason I brought those up was to give an example of not overly caring and becoming defensive about people not talking about your pet films (an other example is the almost Spaghetti I brought up A Town Called Hell, everyone you can still search that one out). Also I couldn't care less about those films politics which mostly care across as odd to me. I like them because I thought the stories were fun and executed in a delightful way. No politics there.

[Lighthouse]

That Tepepa was co-directed by Welles, or that he at least directed some of the scenes he was in, is only a rumour, and one which you seldom read about, even if you read very much about Italian Westerns.
And why should Welles direct a film in which his acting seems to indicate that he was totally bored and uninterested? In fact his non-acting is one of the faults of the film.

It was a comparatively lavish production, but Petroni's directing doesn't help the film very much.

Tepepa isn't a very well known film because because the film was most of the time only available in heavily cut versions. But since there is a fan dub floating around in English and with subs for the not dubbed scenes it has won a certain reputation amongst fans.

[Wu.Qinghua]

Tepepa isn't a very well known film because because the film was most of the time only available in heavily cut versions.

This apparently applies to the German case, too. I did a tiny bit of research on the reception and appropriation of Italian westerns within the German leftist milieu around 1968 and have found no traces of Tepepa yet. Maybe this will change in the nearest future because of Fisher's PhD, which seemingly features Tepepa in a prominent way?

[Nothing]

A Bullet for the General has gotten a favourable reaction in this thread.

You can hardly sell not voting for it as being favourable! And dismissing the ending as "incoherent" is an ideological statement, since the ending makes complete sense from a leftist perspective: finally, Chunco has been offered the material wealth and comfort that he has been dreaming of throughout the film - and yet, when he sees Il Nino mistreat the peasant boy, it triggers an epiphany, releasing a discomfort that has been growing inside him, the realisation that he could never enjoy such wealth if it comes at the expense of his fellow countrymen, at the expense of the working poor, a realisation and absolute conviction that the only goal worth pursuing is that of total revolution - not tomorrow ("don't buy bread,...") but NOW ("...buy dynamite!") - this being a conviction and a message that had real popular meaning and purpose in 1966, helping to drive a tide which would peak and sadly fade two years later in Paris in May '68.

Lighthouse - check out the firing squad scene in Tepepa 1/4 at 13:00; it is extremely Wellesian + his acting is very subtle (and very good / funny) in this scene! There's no dialogue in this scene, either... The film just needs a US release to turn its fortunes around, basically. I hope Blue Undergound pick it up, it would fit perfectly into their catalogue.

[zedz]

A Bullet for the General has gotten a favourable reaction in this thread.

You can hardly sell not voting for it as being favourable! And dismissing the ending as "incoherent" is an ideological statement, since the ending makes complete sense from a leftist perspective: finally, Chunco has been offered the material wealth and comfort that he has been dreaming of throughout the film - and yet, when he sees Il Nino mistreat the peasant boy, it triggers an epiphany, releasing a discomfort that has been growing inside him, the realisation that he could never enjoy such wealth if it comes at the expense of his fellow countrymen, at the expense of the working poor, a realisation and absolute conviction that the only goal worth pursuing is that of total revolution - not tomorrow ("don't buy bread,...") but NOW ("...buy dynamite!") - this being a conviction and a message that had real popular meaning and purpose in 1966, helping to drive a tide which would peak and sadly fade two years later in Paris in May '68.

Oh god, you just won't let it go, will you? (Let me guess. . . only child?)

I don't dispute that the political allegory of the film is 'coherent' (I suppose) - in fact, it's blatantly schematic - what's 'incoherent' is the way it's grafted onto the fuzzy psychology of the characters. It's an ideologically imposed epiphany that the character as written can't plausibly sustain, and I was arguing that the alternative, 'gay panic', reading is similarly strained in terms of character, so what we have is a dramatic ending that had to happen to suit the film's message but which, in my opinion, fails to convince at the fundamental level of plot and character. It's hardly a flaw that's unique to this film.

Not that I actually expect you to stoop to parsing a differing opinion.

[knives]

It's times like this that make me wish we had Barmy back instead. He at least had a sense of humour.

[PillowRock]

I've only got one more, but I doubt The Undefeated will be good enough. So if in two hours nobody pleads in it's defense I'll give you my list.

Off hand, I'm not convinced that it's even in the top 20 John Wayne Westerns. It's fairly inoffensive, and works on being politically progressive, for the time, with respect to inter-racial marriage (white / Native American); and there are a couple moments that are vaguely amusing (when they let Ben Johnson or Dub Taylor have the camera for a moment). That's about the most that I can say in favor of it. Of course, you're talking about a movie where non-bit-part supporting roles went to people such as Jan-Michael Vincent and Merlin Olsen, plus his Rams teammate Roman Gabriel (they're all higher in the credits than Ben Johnson is).

[domino harvey]

Thank you to those who've been getting their lists in early (though you don't have to, so don't stress). Six lists received so far. I think we may hit that 100 mark after all, as already there are 71 films eligible, and several not will almost surely before it's all said and done. So far, only three films have appeared on every list, each by a different director.

[knives]

I predict Wild Bunch, Man of the West, and Stagecoach as the three though Winchester '73 or The Naked Spur might also be the Mann film.

[domino harvey]

Only one of your five guesses is correct

[Lighthouse]

Lighthouse - check out the firing squad scene in Tepepa 1/4 at 13:00; it is extremely Wellesian + his acting is very subtle (and very good / funny) in this scene! There's no dialogue in this scene, either...

Not sure if I really would call this acting. At least he does something in this scene, while for the most parts in Tepepa Welles looks like being totally drunk and seems to do absolutely nothing.
And Welles was such a great actor in other films.

And as a director he had a very unusual style. In the longer version of Touch of Evil I spotted the parts not directed by him immediately.
I don't think that there is anything in Tepepa which looks like Welles.

The ending of Quien sabe!
A great ending for me, one of the great scenes of a film which is in parts a bit incoherent.
For me Chuncho has learned nothing. Like all of his other major decisions he shoots Nino out of the whim of the moment.

Quien sabe? is a "serious" film because it treats his subject seriously. And it is a "thoughtful" film because it differentiates about its content.
The content of Quien sabe? is not the most complex in the history of cinema, but surely anything else than primitive. Primitive are maybe the politics of the people portrayed in Quien sabe?, but not the "politics" of the film itself. The "buy dynamite" ending is also a tricky end as it is shouted by a man who changes his attitudes and behaviour every minute, and who has killed the "imperialistic agent" not for the reason of understanding, but only out of a feeling. And don't forget that Chuncho's Who knows? answer to Nino's Why? is also the title of the whole film. In connection with this title it is not a real optimistic ending. And surely not a simple one only done to suit a message.

But the best of those political westerns is The Mercenary. A brilliantly directed western with Brechtian undertones, which at the same time seems to be a parody of the seriousness of Quien sabe!. It combines Leone with Solinas and is still a real Corbucci, even if much different from his dirty masterpiece The Great Silence.