Giù la Testa (1971) September 1, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Drama, War, 1970s films , trackbackDirector: Sergio Leone Cast: Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Romolo Valli Territory: Italy
A Bandit family headed by Juan Miranda (Steiger) runs into explosives expert John (or Sean) Mallory (Coburn) who is also a terrorist fugitive on the run from the British. Seeing an opportunity to use the Irishman’s skills to get into and rob the Mesa Verde bank, Juan badgers Mallory into working with him. Upon arrival in Mesa Verde, though, they witness the horrors of the Mexican Revolution first hand, and Juan’s priorities change.
The film starts with a quote from Mao Zedong saying that revolutions are not civilized things – and then opens with a shot of Juan pissing on a colony of ants. It’s not terribly subtle, but it does set out Leone’s political viewpoint right from the beginning. As if that wasn’t enough, though, Juan (who is, or at least starts out as, an ignorant Mexican peasant) then hitches a lift on a stagecoach filled with American high society – who condescendingly goad and insult Juan before feasting. The camera gets right up to their open mouths while they eat – really nasty stuff and definitely not for the squeamish. Juan calmly watches this, clearly thinking that the rich and powerful are no better than the peasantry. Like I said, it’s not subtle, but the point comes across very clearly and in true Leone style.
The character of John Mallory is a member of the IRA, and his back-story is told in slow-motion dialogue-free flashbacks (which feature David Warbeck, who would later go on to star in Lucio Fulci’s horror classic The Beyond). He is superficially in Mexico to mine for silver, but on seeing the carnage going on in Mesa Verde, joins the revolution.
The first hour and a half of this film is quite light and humorous in a lot of places, while the last hour (yes, this is another Leone epic, it runs at just a shade under two and a half hours on DVD) is altogether darker. A standout comic scene sees Juan tricked into releasing a whole army of political prisoners on behalf of Mallory. Seeing as how it was Juan who was supposed to be using John makes it all the more funny.
The juxtaposition of comic scenes such as this with scenes of mass executions didn’t strike me as jarring as it did with some viewers, who found the film’s shifting tone too disconcerting. The real stroke of genius is in the filming of the executions largely in the background as if they were routine, banal and not really worthy of great comment. The result is much more shocking and makes one hell of an impact.
James Coburn may be the headlining star, but this is Steiger’s film without a doubt. Although his character initially seems little more than another Tuco from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (in fact, you can almost see Eli Wallach in the role at the start), the character progresses much further and has much more scope than anything Leone had done previously. What’s more, we can buy Steiger’s depiction of the peasant as he turns from a bandit to an accidental hero of the revolution. The only fault is I sometimes had difficulty understanding his dialogue, and had to rewatch a key scene with the subtitles on!
Although this was not initially intended to be a Leone directed film, he did stamp it with his own distinctive style all the way through and is as much part of his oeuvre as anything else, even though it will always be regarded as the “black sheep” of his filmography. Although production values are quite high, this is not as sumptuously produced as Once Upon a Time in the West. The film doesn’t suffer too much as a result except for a slightly wonky special effects shot at the end involving a miniature.
Ennio Morricone once again provides the score, and for a while I thought he’d dropped the ball for once. The themes just did not jump out at me in the same way as in earlier films. However, with repetition, towards the end of the film it all gels together and becomes something quite, quite beautiful. The man’s a genius.
No review of this film would be complete without some comment on the title. This film is commonly called Duck, You Sucker, which is the film’s official English language title, but in the UK is known by the exploitative title of A Fistful of Dynamite. I absolutely loathe both. The first sounds like some screwball Terence Hill/Bud Spencer comedy; not that I have anything against these films (and will probably write a review or two on some of best in the near future), but it’s just wrong for a Leone movie dealing with such dark themes. Legend has it that Leone thought the phrase was in popular usage in the States (how, and in what context, I wouldn’t like to even guess!) and would not listen to his American stars’ insistence that it was not. The Fistful of Dynamite title obviously trades on past glories, which is also misleading as it is nothing like a “Spaghetti” Western, and has no gunfights or laconic anti-heroes who may or may not have a name. By far the best title is the French Once Upon a Time…the Revolution (his previous film was a massive hit there), which even keeps in with the loose idea that this is the second film in Leone’s second American trilogy. Unfortunately, though, this title seems the least well known of all, so I’ve opted to call it by its original Italian title, which I believe translates literally to “down the head”.
Whatever you call it, there’s no escaping the fact that this is by far the least seen of all Leone films since A Fistful of Dollars, with many still unaware of its presence. It did not do great box-office business, probably due to whatever misleading title the film was given in your territory. I’m sure had people known that Leone was only going to direct one more film it would have gotten more love. I’m just starting to realise that Giù la Testa has a lot more going for it than I previously thought, and, like its predecessor, needs to be viewed as a completely separate entity from the world-renowned and ever-popular Dollars films.
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