Movie Review: The Sword And The Cross (1958)

A Biblical story on a budget, The Sword And The Cross (also known as Mary Magdalene) is a clunky Italian production elaborating on the story of the woman closest to Christ's inner circle.

Roman Centurion Gaius Marcellus (Jorge Mistral) arrives in Judea to help control the restless region, with rumours of preacher Jesus Christ inspiring the people. Marcellus rescues Jerusalem courtesan Maria Magdalene (Yvonne De Carlo) from the clutches of local bandit Barabbas (Andrea Aureli). Marcellus and Maria then embark on a torrid affair, but recognizing no relationship between a Jewess and a Roman can be allowed, she abandons him.

Maria resumes her activities as a seductive dancer at high-society parties. Her sister Martha (Rossana Podesta) and brother Lazarus (Mario Girotti, later known as Terence Hill) are both early followers of Christ, and as she is exposed to His presence Maria starts to question her lifestyle. With local Roman governor Pontius Pilate (Philippe Hersent) growing increasingly concerned about rumours of rebellion, Marcellus is given orders to arrest Jesus.

With a juvenile script, wooden acting and plastic sets, The Sword And The Cross trudges through the story of Jesus from the perspective of Mary Magdalene. Christ is never fully shown on screen, His presence intimated and voice amplified to echoey spectral levels for full effect. The Sandro Continenza script takes some liberties with traditional Biblical stories to increase Mary's involvement in Christ's life, and director Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia puts in a decent shift to tighten the circle of characters and connect the Romans, bandits and disbelievers to Mary and the trail of events leading to the Crucifiction.

But this is an unfortunately cheap production, blank stares and theatrical delivery exposing a depressing lack of talent. The skirmish scenes are poorly directed, the extras often spotted standing around wondering what to do. Yvonne De Carlo descends to the level of the material with a vacuous performance, and Jorge Mistral never comes close to convincing as a Roman soldier. 

The Sword And The Cross is neither comically campy nor soulfully stirring, just dismally dull.

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Movie Review: My Name Is Nobody (1973)

A comedy spaghetti western, My Name Is Nobody explores the passing of the old west through the story of an old gunslinger being helped into a legendary retirement by a mysterious admirer.

Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda) is the undisputed fastest gun in the west, but tired of all the killing and seeking to sail to Europe and a quiet retirement. After fending off killers from the Wild Bunch gang, he meets a stranger calling himself Nobody (Terence Hill) who claims to idolize Jack and wants him to confront and kill all 150 Wild Bunch members in an epic showdown as a career exclamation point.

Beauregard is not interested, but Nobody persists, shadowing the older man's every move and demonstrating knowledge of Jack's gunfight history. Meanwhile, the Wild Bunch are the enforcement arm for a criminal money laundering operation centred on a fake golf mine managed by Sullivan (Jean Martin), who used to be partners with Jack's now-dead brother Nevada. Fearing revenge, Sullivan wants to either kill or buy-off Jack.

Among the final batch of decent spaghetti westerns, My Name Is Nobody bolts together the sub-genre's late-cycle penchant for slapstick-level comedy with more serious epoch-defining themes. The results are decidedly mixed. The quest for a definitive showdown to draw the line under the era of hard men taming the land and each other is admirable. But between defining the goal and achieving it the film spends an inordinate amount of time in childish prank territory, and some of the jokey scenes are interminable.

The concept was devised by Sergio Leone, who also directed a few scenes, although the bulk of the film was helmed by his former assistant Tonino Valerii. My Name Is Nobody often looks gorgeous, and Valerii achieves some astounding shots of the 150 Wild Bunch riders galloping across the terrain, in wide angle and towards the camera. With Ennio Morricone providing a playful music score featuring the rousing theme from Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, these scenes are spine tingling in their beauty, but also repeated often in an admission of the minimal narrative content besetting the film.

The money laundering fake gold mine scheme is supposed to underpin the plot, but is mysteriously under changed. Between bouts of sometimes admittedly funny comedy (Nobody having fun with a town fair rotating statue is an on-point literal re-interpretation of slapstick), Fonda and Hill debate the destiny of the old men of the west and gradually converge to a time and place where legends are confirmed then confined to history. Both actors are fully invested in their roles, and the film works best in the scenes when Fonda and Hill as the past and future share the screen with no distractions.

Both in the name of the outlaw riders and in a reference to a graveyard headstone, My Name Is Nobody tips its hat to Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, one of cinema's ultimate references to the west's transition. Once the legends ride (or sail) away, only the nobodys are left to succeed them.

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Movie Review: God Forgives...I Don't! (1967)

A slow-moving but confident spaghetti western, God Forgives...I Don't! (also known as Blood River) is a serious story of revenge played out at a deliberate pace. The first teaming of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer generates decent momentum and a few good sparks.

A vicious train robbery has left all but one of the passengers dead and a large amount of gold coins missing. Investigative insurance agent Hutch Bessy (Spencer) believes that the notorious gangster Bill San Antonio (Frank Wolff) is the only man capable of pulling off such a job. The trouble is that Bill is supposed to be dead, having been killed by Cat Stevens (Hill) a year earlier at the infernal end of a crooked poker game.

Hutch convinces Cat that they both have a reason to track down the elusive Bill and his gang, and Cat begins to realize that he may have been used as a pawn in Bill's elaborate scheme to fake his own death. Cat and Hutch overcome Bill's guards, seize the heavy treasure, and bury it. The hunters then become the hunted: Bill and his henchmen set off after Hutch and Cat to try and shake loose the location of the twice-stolen booty, but the climax will have to involve a proper ending to that long delayed poker game.

God Forgives....I Don't! suffers from a lackadaisical stride, at 109 minutes the movie stretched beyond its content. In a case of too much violence rubbing the edge off all the violence, Director Giuseppe Colizzi ultimately includes too many similar, prolonged, and forgettable scenes of too many nondescript men killing or beating each other. While the gore quotient is low, the amount of casual killing is extreme, starting with the piled-up dead bodies on the train and culminating in Cat and Bill clearing a taverna of innocent patrons by shooting them dead because there are "too many people" for their meeting. Scenes of torture and brutal beatings are regularly sprinkled throughout the film.

In a case of aesthetics exceeding plot, God Forgives...I Don't! is more memorable for look and feel than narrative. Colizzi nails an overbearing environment of an unrelenting sun in a sparse hot desert, ramshackle buildings, and sweaty men invariably up to no good. Alfio Contini's cinematography is expansive, the film decked out in unforgiving yellows and browns where plenty of nothing grows. And Carlo Rustichelli contributes a faux epic soundtrack, used sparingly but to good effect.

Terence Hill is badly dubbed but contributes his lithe physicality, while Bud Spencer is more of a presence than an actor, his bestial strength a good complement to Hill's agility. A large part of the movie's appeal is thanks to Frank Wolff's well-developed, bushy pork-chop turn as Bill San Antonio, a spaghetti western villain worthy of the name, demonstrating smarts and cruelty in equal measures. In God Forgives...I Don't!, the treasure is the bad guy, rather than his loot.

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Movie Review: Boot Hill (1969)

A mixture of Italian artistry with western grime, Boot Hill sparkles in patches with clever editing and brash juxtapositions. A muddled story and rather limp climax take some of the shine off.

The mysterious Cat Stevens (Terence Hill) is pursued by a large posse intent on killing him for reasons never made clear. Wounded in a gunfight, he escapes and takes refuge with a travelling circus run by Mamy (Lionel Stander) and featuring trapeze acrobat Thomas (Woody Strode). When Thomas' son is killed by Cat's pursuers, Thomas and Cat team up and join forces with Hutch Bessy (Bud Spencer), Cat's partner from adventures past. The three men come to the aid of a community of miners being bullied by a corrupt tycoon and his brutal henchmen.

The third instalment in the loose trilogy that started with God Forgives...I Don't! (1967) and continued with Ace High (1968), Boot Hill was later re-released and falsely marketed as part of the more famous (and less gritty) Trinity series. In Boot Hill, Terence Hill and Bud Spencer still have an edge, with violence and ruthlessness to the fore and any attempts at comedy kept well in control. The result is more serious and closer to the original Spaghetti Western ethic.

Director Guiseppe Colizzi injects Boot Hill with sometimes stunning visual flair. Making the most out of the organized chaos that surrounds Mamy's travelling circus, complete with dwarfs, heavily made-up faces and dancing girls, Colizzi creates the best scenes by intercutting desperately joyous circus performance shots from inside the tent with life-and-death gunfights erupting on the dusty town streets. The results are brilliantly jarring.

Otherwise, Boot Hill has relatively little to offer in terms of drama and compelling plot. The entire miners-under-threat narrative is hurriedly dropped into the film and bungled in terms of building any tension, resulting in a climax that fails to captivate.

Terence Hill works on an effective serious and dangerous western persona but Bud Spencer's late appearance hardly leaves an impact. Woody Strode shines in a relatively rare opportunity as an almost leading man, his physical presence unleashed to cause some serious damage.

Boot Hill climbs about halfway up the hill, enjoys a reasonable view, but is held back by some clumsy boots.

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Movie Review: A Genius, Two Partners And A Dupe (1975)

Arriving right at the end of the spaghetti western era, A Genius, Two Partners And A Dupe contains elements from both the best and the worst of the genre. The last western that Sergio Leone was involved on, he hated the final product and pulled his name from the movie. A Genius, Two Partners And A Dupe is not all that bad, but it could have been so much better.

Joe Thanks (Terence Hill), a creative quick-draw, teams up with the half-breed bandit Steam Engine Bill (Robert Charlebois) and Steam Engine's girlfriend Lucy (Miou-Miou) to steal $300,000 from the evil and racist Major Cabot (Patrick McGoohan). Not much goes according to plan, forcing Joe to constantly update his strategy to outwit the Major.

Leone directed the opening scene, a brilliantly sly echo of the magical pre-credit sequence in Once Upon A Time In The West, and also co-produced the movie. Otherwise he entrusted Damiano Damiani to deliver what should have been another epic of greed, betrayal, and larger-than-life drama.

Unfortunately, A Genius, Two Partners And A Dupe frequently loses its identity in the quest for laughs to suit the Terence Hill persona. Joe Thanks veers too far towards comedy and audience winks, undermining the serious business of trying to construct a memorably weighty western. The result is a disjointed experience, some epic moments paralyzed by awfully misdirected attempts at slapstick.

Two examples summarize the film shooting itself in the foot: a gun-fight between Joe Thanks and Doc Foster (Klaus Kinski, in a brief role to satisfy the German financial backers of the film) is provided with a long, clever, and intense build-up, only for the scene to be destroyed by a climax not even worthy of the local amateur circus act. Later in the movie, Thanks is captured by Major Cabot and held prisoner at a remote fort, oozing with possibilities. However, the escape scene deserves to be in a Benny Hill skit rather than a serious motion picture.

Some of the Monument Valley scenery captured by director Damiano Damiani is breathtaking, and the score by Ennio Morricone is a definite plus, reaching a breathtaking climax on the superlative Cavalcata. Morricone magically melds Beethoven's Fur Elise with his traditional spaghetti western themes in an act of musical wizardry, as Steam Engine takes control of a team of horses on a runaway wagon and Joe Thanks gives chase.

Leone intended the film to be a recreation of the magical quirkiness of the 1974 French movie Les Valseuse, which featured Miou-Miou with two competing outlaw lovers. But ultimately, A Genius, Two Partners And A Dupe in more of an attempt to bolt the grandness of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with the coarse comedy of the Trinity movies.  It doesn't quite work, but there is some fun to be had in the trying.

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