Reeling Backward: "Duck, You Sucker!" (1971)

Like a lot of Sergio Leone's films, "Duck, You Sucker!" has some big ideas lurking beneath a gaudy facade of violence and miscreant behavior. This is personified by the character of Juan Miranda, an illiterate bandit who likes to pass himself off as a meek peasant, but is quite cunning at his craft and, in his own brutish way, has a better grasp on human nature than his learned would-be betters.

"Duck," set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20, was the Italian master's final Spaghetti Western and his second-to-last directorial effort. He lay fallow for 13 years before making his final picture, 1984's "Once Upon a Time in America." This served as a bookend for "Once Upon a Time in the West" from 1968.

This movie is usually slotted as the middle picture between those two, and indeed an alternate title sometimes used is "Once Upon a Time... the Revolution." Frequent collaborator Sergio Donati pitched the story to Leone while he was still filming "West." Certainly there is some thematic continuity between the two that is a bit forced when applied to "America."

But "Duck, You Sucker" also hearkens back to Leone's early Westerns, and the film was largely issued under the title "A Fistful of Dynamite" to better evoke memories of the Clint Eastwood hit. Juan's character is essentially an extension of Tuco from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" -- a sniveling thief with (deeply) hidden reservoirs of nobility.

Eli Wallach, who played Tuco, was hired for the Juan role but the studio decided he wasn't a big enough name. Wallach, who'd dropped out of another part to play for Leone, ended up suing him.

Juan is played by Rod Steiger, who's about as Mexican as I am (or Wallach, for that matter). But the character actor of German, Scottish and French stock was a classic screen chameleon who played all sorts of nationalities and creeds throughout his long and illustrious career, from European Jew to Italian-American mobster to Deep South bigot. So his casting is not as disagreeable as it might seem at first to modern sensibilities.

Besides, Leone's Spaghettis were marked by a flippant tossing aside of national boundaries, shooting stories set in the Americas on locations in Spain using largely Italian casts and crews, with actors speaking their own native language on-camera with dubbing taking over as needed.

James Coburn plays Juan's counterpart, John Mallory, an Irish IRA revolutionary on the lam after some explosive troubles back home. John is an expert in dynamite, nitroglycerin and pretty much anything else volatile. He himself presents a serene, nonchalant exterior, in contrast to the little baubles he whips up to blow up anything bothersome to him.

Their first meeting takes place about 20 minutes into the movie, after Juan has robbed a stagecoach of spoiled rich folks. Juan employs a gang comprised of his six sons, ranging in age from about 8 to 18, all by different mothers, along with his aged father and an indeterminate gaggle of add-on banditos.

Juan has used his ruse of the dumb, barefoot peon to beg entry to the coach, where he is continually insulted and his kind compared to loathsome beasts. Leone swoops his camera in for an uncomfortable series of extreme close-ups as the people gnash their food while letting loose a barrage of unpleasantries.

He gets his revenge by taking them for literally everything they've got, setting the men to march bare-assed up the road, as well as the (implied) rape of a snooty woman.

Having commandeered the elaborate coach for his roaming home base, Juan and his gang are bewildered when John comes motoring by on his bike, ignoring their threat as if it weren't there. Juan puts a bullet into the motorcycle to stop him, and John responds by coolly sauntering up and blowing a hole in the roof of Juan's royal carriage.

Juan is convinced not to plug the upstart Irishman because he's festooned from stem to stern with explosives, along with John's warning that the resulting boom would be big enough "they'll have to change the maps." After a little more back-and-forth, the thief hatches a plan to enlist the wayward bombardier, who's come to Mexico to work in the mines of a silver oligarch, to help him knock over the bank in Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde...

The very words evoke a hallucinogenic vision in Juan's mind somewhere between glory and salvation. Everything from the gates to the spittoons are made of gold, he promises. The vault is spilling over with money. Never mind that he's recalling a boyhood visit decades ago. You make the holes, Juan promises, and I'll fetch the money to split 50-50.

Noting the continuity of their names, he offers to dub their new gang "Johnny & Johnny." Maybe they'll even take their act north to the United States afterwards, mi amigo, where every little town has a ripe bank, Juan coos agreeably.

It's a fake brotherhood that eventually develops into a real one, as two men with nothing left to lose become unwitting heroes in the Revolution. Turns out the bank in Mesa Verde is housing nothing other than political prisoners these days. John knew this, having hooked up with the head honcho of the local insurgents, a physician named Villega (Romolo Valli).

With Juan tricked into heroism, the two debate the merits of the revolution. John is the sort who needs a cause to fight for, while Juan demands to know what the endeavor will gain for himself, and by extension the common man. The book-readers whip the peasantry to take up arms against injustice, he says, but after all the blood is spilled their lot never changes. They've just exchanged one set of overlords for another. He'd rather just grab the loot and go.

"What about me?" is Juan's repeated lament. At first comic, it takes a poignant turn when the "uniforms" slaughter his entire family.

John has his own history of loss and woe, as shown in flashbacks to his days in Ireland. Shot in gauzy slow motion, they depict a young John romancing a beautiful lass with a best friend joining in their revelry. Later this friend betrays him to the British, and John guns down both police and informer. David Warbeck plays this role, outfitted with a large prosthetic mole on his forehead, both to make him physically distinctive and provide a target for John's avenging bullet.

This experience is replicated when Dr. Villega is captured by the uniforms and tortured to identify revolutionaries before the firing squad. John eventually confronts Villega about his betrayal, but declines to judge him, even proclaiming him a "grand hero of the revolution" with his dying gasp.

Disillusion may be John's bread and butter, but he recognizes the importance symbols hold for others. He'd rather not make Juan drink from his own bitter cup. Let the good doctor, who sacrificed himself aboard a locomotive loaded with John's dynamite, die with grace.

"Duck, You Sucker" contains some of Leone's most ambitious camera work, including a crane shot of a mass shooting of political prisoners that deserves an iconic place in his filmography -- lines of soldiers firing down into long, deep pits of dying men, who scramble like ants set on fire by a lonely boy exploring his capacity for malevolence.

I also loved how he framed little throwaway scenes, such as Juan bidding good-bye to his sons as he and John prepare for a seemingly futile two-man assault on a column of army soldiers. As Juan embraces the boys, Dr. Villega watches on serenely while John loads a machine gun with a belt of bullets.

Any competent director can compose a great shot for the big "wow" moments in a movie. I love it when a filmmaker sneaks in elegant mise en scene when we're not looking.

As always, the great Ennio Morricone provides the score, and it's a testament to his prodigious creativity that the man never seemed to repeat himself after 500+ soundtracks. It's a combination of orchestral instruments, tinny sound effects and post-verbal singing ("shom, shom" is as close to formal language as the lyrics get).

I'm always astounded how Morricone can slalom from silliness to violent tension to grandiosity, often within the space of a few bars of melody.

It's probably the most non-political film ever made about a revolution, casting all sides of the Mexican conflict as amoral and power-hungry. It's the sort of film an angry young man makes as he transitions into middle age, and Leone, then in his early 40s, clearly evokes a sense of pointlessness that was bound to be interpreted as counterrevolutionary.

Unsurprisingly, the film was banned in Mexico until 1979.

There isn't even really a bonafide villain, though Colonel Reza (Antoine Saint-John) comes closest, an Army officer who hunts the pair after they double-handedly destroy his entire command. (John rigs a bridge with explosives, then he and Juan use machine gun fire to drive the soldiers underneath it for cover, than kaboom.)

Reza has a very Nazi SS look and feel to him (despite being played by a Frenchman), another example of Leone deliberately mixing up nationalities and political causes to suit his cinematic aesthetic.

A failure at the time of its release, "Duck, You Sucker!" has since been rediscovered by audiences and critics -- including this one -- as one of Leone's best films.

Reeling Backward: "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966)

Is "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" really a sequel to "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More?" After having experienced the entire "Man with No Name" trilogy in short order, I think "The Good" is more a continuation of an ethos and a filmmaking style than a literal expansion of the same character's travels.

As I noted in last week's classic film column, "A Few Dollars" seems to be a pretty straightforward extension of the "Joe" character from "Fistful," now referring to himself as "Manco." (The Man with No Name actually has a name in every movie, it just changes from one to the other.) He still bore the wounds of his severe beating in the first film, most notably a leather brace on his shooting hand after having it crushed.

In the last film Blondie -- the moniker Clint Eastwood bears in "The Good," despite having dark brown hair -- has no issues with his right hand. It's also interesting that he favors a long duster coat instead of the Mexican blanket poncho he had worn so memorably in the first two films. (The rest of his get-up -- sheepskin vest, jeans, hat, gun belt -- remain pretty consistent throughout.) He does eventually don one for the final showdown, the three-way "Mexican standoff" that remains one of the most iconic film scenes of all time.

My other hesitation in calling the final pairing of Eastwood and Italian director Sergio Leone a literal sequel is the timeline. The first two films appeared to take place in the hallowed Old West days of the 1870s to the 1890s. But "The Good" is quite consciously set during the Civil War, which would seem to be going backward in time.

The weaponry certainly doesn't seem to fit. Blondie and his fellow gunslingers all use revolvers with fully jacketed metallic cartridges -- not the ball-and-cap varieties employed during the War, which were much more difficult to reload. I'm not sure cartridge revolvers were even available until after the war. I own a pair of .36 caliber Navy Colts handed down from a relative who was in the war, and I can tell you they're a completely different animal.

The mythology of "The Good" is a bit uncertain, though, so one could read it as Blondie & Co. picked up and dropped into the middle of the nation's bloodiest conflict. Perhaps it was Leone's way of retorting to those who criticized his Spaghetti Westerns for being too violent -- placed against the backdrop of wholesale slaughter, the few dead men who litter his films seem like a meager trickle.

"I've never seen so many men wasted so badly," Blondie comments upon witnessing a battle between North and South over a meaningless bridge.

The first two films featured effective villains, but "The Good" really ratcheted things up with the presence of Angel Eyes, a remorseless assassin played by Lee Van Cleef, and Tuco "The Rat" Ramirez, a slithery scoundrel that Eli Wallach made into one of his finest roles. Van Cleef, of course, played Eastwood's erstwhile partner in the last movie, but Leone was known to re-use favored actors again and again.

I would make a bold argument that Tuco is actually the hero, or at least the protagonist, of "The Good." He's the only one gifted with any kind of backstory or emotional motivation, and if you count up screen time and lines of dialogue, Wallach probably comes out ahead of Eastwood.

Tuco is a thief and a liar, more than happy to double-cross or sacrifice his partners in crime, but operating by an internal -- though deeply hidden -- sense of honor. He and Blondie start out the movie employing a neat scam: Blondie rides into town with Tuco as his prisoner, collects the reward money, then saves his life by shooting out the hangman's noose when the local lawmen go to execute him.

But then Blondie decides the partnership has gone its course and leaves Tuco in the desert, riding off with both halves of the loot. Tuco is incensed -- not so much that a double-cross has occurred, but that Blondie beat him to the punch. He spends much of the rest of the movie looking for his revenge, even as he pretends to be friendly again.

I found myself wondering why Blondie and Tuco know who Angel Eyes is, despite the fact that their paths never cross until midway through the movie. Purely by reputation, perhaps.

All three have gotten a line on $200,000 in stolen gold buried in a cemetery, and through a chain of happenstance Tuco knows only the name of the place and Blondie only knows the name on the grave. They've temporarily re-formed their partnership to find the loot, but are captured by Union soldiers and taken to a camp where Angel Eyes is hiding out as a sergeant. He tortures prisoners for their valuables and any information about the buried gold.

This brings us to another one of the film's most iconic scenes, where captured Confederates are made to play a song to cover up the sounds of their comrades getting beaten to a pulp. It's one of several instances where composer Ennio Morricone's score not only comments on the action but actually drives it.

Morricone's abilities had reached their height by the last of the "Man with No Name" trilogy, and few serious observers of movie music fail to count the score of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as one of the greatest ever composed. Most remember the hyena-ish caterwaul theme repeated with both voices and instruments -- quite possibly the most effective use of two musical notes this side of John William's score for "Jaws."

But I would argue that Morricone's other themes from this film are just as terrific. There's that sad torture song, whose melody is used several more times during the more melancholy points of the story. And the martial march, punctuated by a harsh steel guitar, is the driving force of many scenes. My favorite is when Tuco and Blondie team up again to take on Angel Eyes' gang. Tuco looks over to his left, sees Blondie there to back him up, and it's game on. This same theme, slowed down and layered with a screeching trumpet solo on top, also plays during the final standoff.

At the end of my column on "Fistful," I stated that I like the idea of the "Man with No Name" more when he's a me-first mercenary, rather than a do-gooder wearing the proverbial black hat. I think that's also why I admire "The Good" the most, because despite the title affixed to Blondie he's a pretty heartless character in his final go-round.

Blondie was quite content to abandon Tuco to a suffering death in the desert and make off with all their ill-gotten gains. And it's worth pointing out that while "Manco" was a quasi-agent of the law in the second film, here Blondie is an out-and-out bandit twisting the Western code of justice for his own profit.

The reason the finale of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is so effective is because we -- and Tuco -- really believe Blondie is capable of leaving him hanging for his life, literally.

On a final note, the version I watched as part of the "Man with No Name" trilogy on Blu-ray is the restored film that's just a hair under three hours long. I have to say the new additions add nothing to the movie -- they're essentially connective scenes that show how, for example, Tuco finds his three henchmen and where Angel Eyes' gang comes into the story. One useless bit shows Tuco, having just rescued Blondie from a horrible death in the desert, stopping to get directions to his brother's monastery.

These new scenes don't advance the plot or add anything to the characterizations, and are just dead weight on a great film.

4 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "For a Few Dollars More" (1965)

Merry Christmas Eve, and welcome back to the second installment of my look-back columns on the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone "Man With No Name" trilogy.

Like with last week's column on "Fistful of Dollars," it soon became clear to me that I had never actually seen "For a Few Dollars More" in its entirety. I'd obviously viewed portions, especially Eastwood's scenes with Lee Van Cleef, but most of the middle section was completely new to me.

Regular visitors to this space may have noticed that I did not comment in last week's column on the musical score by Ennio Morricone. That might seem puzzling since he's one of my favorite film composers, and I rarely miss an opportunity to talk about how much I love his work. And there was a reason for that: "Fistful" was simply not a very memorable score.

The famously prolific Italian already had more than a dozen scores under his belt by the time he did "Fistful," but he had not quite reached his creative plateau yet. That score is rather minimalist, just a few punctuations of sound and musical accents -- most notably, a descending flute arpeggio that is evocative of dripping water.

With "For a Few Dollars More," one can hear Morricone growing bolder and more confident. Reportedly it was recorded before production on the sequel began, and Leone actually shot certain sequences in time with the music.

There's much more use of non-instrumental sounds, percussive thwacks and plonks that act like a rhythm section keeping time with the action. But you also hear more human voices and swelling full orchestras knocking you over with a wall of sound. If the music in "Fistful" felt like experimentation, then the sequel registers as an artist finding his full voice, and letting fly.

And "More" is definitely a sequel to "Fistful," in a way that "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is not. The final film is more a culmination of a movement than a continuation of an individual story. The middle firm serves as the bridge, sharing more of The Man With No Name's adventures.

I noted last week that Eastwood's character actually did have a name, "Joe," though only one person, the coffin maker, calls him that. Perhaps he called every American who wandered south of the border by that name. In "More" he again has a name, Manco, though it isn't used very often. What's notable is that this is not a name foisted upon TMWNN, but one he chooses for himself. "I never heard of him before, but he calls himself Manco," is how we first hear of him.

Manco translates to Spanish and Portuguese as roughly "one-armed" or "lame of hand," and you may recall that in "Fistful" he gets beaten to a pulp by his enemies, including having his shooting hand crushed. Joe/Manco has to heal and re-learn to shoot before the final showdown. In "More," he wears a leather brace on his right hand and performs virtually every non-critical action with only his left -- lighting matches, flipping up a deck of cars, etc.

His shooting ability, neither his speed or accuracy, doesn't seem to have diminished one bit from its unnatural level. So why favor the hand? It seems more like Manco simply prefers to preserve his right hand for killing, rather than because he has any sort of disability with it. But the continuity of the injury between the first two films serves to underscore that they were intended as literal sequels featuring the same character.

Leone reputedly wanted Charles Bronson for TMWNN, and Bronson again refused to take on the second lead role in the sequel. Bronson probably came to regtet it -- but remember, the "Dollars" films weren't released in the U.S. until 1967 when all three came out a few months apart, launching Eastwood's career as a leading man. So Leone found another character actor rambling about Hollywood, Lee Van Cleef, to take the one Bronson had refused.

He plays Douglas Mortimer, a former soldier turned "bounty killer" like Manco. The two clash, then join forces, then split up again ... sort of. Mortimer prides himself on his marksmanship and careful methods, which have allowed him to survive and thrive to "almost 50 years of age" in a business that is filled with reckless young shootists like Manco. (Point of fact: Van Cleef and Eastwood were actually only two years apart in age.)

Mortimer carries around quite an array of odd firearms, including a ridiculously long revolver to which he attaches a shoulder stock for impressive long-distance accuracy. In one of the movie's most memorable sequences, Mortimer and Manco engage in a bit of one-upsmanship upon first meeting. First they step on each other's boots, exchange blows and then take turns shooting each other's hats off. Mortimer eventually "wins" this contest when he's able to use his gun gizmo successfully at a distance Manco cannot.

It's more like an encounter of male animals in the wild feeling out each other's strength than a true fight to the death, and indeed it ends with them sharing drinks and stories, and agreeing to partner up. In fact, one of the young boys who witnesses the standoff exclaims, "It's just like our games!"

With his pinched, hawkish visage and deep-set eyes, Van Cleef was quite an arresting physical specimen. He had one of those faces that you couldn't decide if it was fascinatingly ugly or compellingly handsome. Both, somehow.

He'd been almost entirely a TV guy before this film, but after it made a splash in the States his movie career took off. Most notably, of course, he played the main villain Angel Eyes in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

It might seem strange to have the same actor playing different roles within the same trilogy of films, but Leone often reused his favorite performers over and over. Gian Maria Volonté, who played the chief villain in "Fistful," is back as a different character here as El Indio.

The burly Mario Brega, who played a henchman in the last movie, returns as lieutenant to El Indio. Brega also had a memorable turn as a sadistic soldier in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" -- I think he might be the only actor besides Eastwood to appear in all three films.

Also notable is Klaus Kinski, in one of his first performances to gain attention in the U.S., as an unhinged hunchback bandit.

The plot of "For a Few Dollars More" is rather thin. We establish Manco and Mortimer as formidable characters by watch them warm up on a few minor bad guys, and then they spend the rest of the movie tussling over who will get the big reward for Indio. Meanwhile, Indio and his gang are planning a clever robbery of a seemingly impenetrable bank in El Paso.

I think if this film came out first and had to stand on its own, the "Man With No Name" trilogy, and perhaps even the entire spaghetti Western movement, might not have taken off like it did. The things that stand out are the on-again-off-again rivalry between Manco and Mortimer, and also the attempt to gift Indio with a little depth and psychology.

One of his first acts in the movie is to assassinate the man who ratted him out and sent him to jail -- but not before killing the man's wife and 18-month-old son, too. Indio never shoots in cold blood, but always offers a quick-draw contest to his victims, timed to the musical chime of the beautiful pocket watch he carries with him. Morricone's score takes on a haunting note, and Indio seems to almost sleep into a stupor. Turns out he's haunted by memories of his most despicable deed, one that brought Mortimer on his trail.

If a bit shaky narratively, "For a Few Dollars More" is still a rousing sequel that kept the party going until the "Man With No Name" trilogy could reach its culmination.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964)

I was not sure if I'd ever actually seen "A Fistful of Dollars." Its place as a pop culture fixture is so thoroughly cemented that it's become one of those movies experienced mostly through references to it in cinema and other mediums. Certainly its plot and the iconography of Clint Eastwood's anti-hero were already etched in my brain. But having written about its Japanese predecessor not too long ago, I got to pondering if I had actually viewed "Fistful" in its entirety, other than a few snippets here and there caught on cable television or whatnot.

I also thought it was about time I cracked open the "Man with No Name Trilogy" blu-ray that had been sitting on my shelf, unwatched, for gosh knows how long. (Between my Netflix queue -- both DVD and streaming -- movies DVR'd off Turner Classic Movies and new discs arriving in the mail, it can be depressing how long it takes to get to some flicks.)

I have many times watched and relished the final film in Eastwood's collaboration with Italian director Sergio Leone, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." But it became clear to me after a few minutes' viewing that "Fistful" was still virgin (or at least virgin-ish) territory for me.

As a result, I've decided to finish out the weekly Reeling Backward column for 2012 with a look at each film of the triad. As regular readers of this column are aware, I tend to focus more on obscure movies, since that's where my ongoing cinematic sojourning takes me. But for next three weeks, we'll focus on these high-profile spaghetti Westerns.

A quick word on that name: according to Eastwood himself, the term originated with the Japanese, who referred to Italian-made Westerns as "meatballs" in order to distinguish them from the American iteration. No doubt the first Yank who adapted the linguistic labeling meant it as an insult, focusing on the low-rent production values (at least initially) of the films, complete with Italians and Spaniards playing Mexicans or American Indians, and dialogue dubbing that didn't even come close to matching the words with the flapping of the lips.

In time, though, these flaws came to be seen as simply aspects of the genre, which by and large had Italian crews and paymasters but were often shot in Spain. Eastwood and Leone didn't speak much of each other's language, but the idea of creating a new kind of cowboy protagonist translated to the big screen just fine.

"Fistful" was released internationally in 1964 but didn't make its way to the States until three years later, when it and its sequel "For a Few Dollars More" were released in quick succession, helping to make Eastwood an instant star.

The story is indeed a virtual carbon copy of "Yojimbo," with the warriors outfitted with six-shooters and Winchester rifles instead of katana swords. Even much of Akira Kurosawa's visual style was emulated by Leone, but with the addition of the Italian's signature shot: the long, lingering extreme close-ups of his actors -- which Leone loved to employ not only for the (ostensible) hero, but also the villains and even minor characters.

Leone seemed fascinated by physical ugliness, and his camera would hover leeringly over a pockmarked cheek or beetlebrowed forehead, the lighting tricked to accentuate the ravages of the flesh. The men populating his films were often glimpsed at their worst, with sweat pouring off their faces or a nasty grimace contorting their visage as they struggled against discomfort and pain.

If John Ford used landscapes as the backdrop for his character-driven stories, then Sergio Leone's primary canvas was the human face -- preferably flawed.

Leone seems to almost relish taking his beautiful leading man and having him beaten into bloody gore by the Rojo brothers -- one half of the two criminal gangs fighting over the dilapidated town of San Miguel, just south of the border. The beating itself is strung out with fetishistic delight, and the makeup to depict Eastwood's pulped face is pretty impressive for such a low-budget (reportedly $200,000) film.

Even after "Joe" -- the only name ever attached to the man who famously lacked one -- has healed up, he's noticeably scarred and scruffier. One gets the distinct sense Leone preferred him that way.

The Baxters, the clan opposing the Rojos, are depicted as being less evil in "Fistful" than the second gang was in "Yojimbo." They're mercenary and quick to use "Joe" for their own purposes, but never go out of their way to harm or kill unless it profits them.

It's an interesting choice, since in the description of innkeeper/conscious of the town Silvanito (José Calvo), the Baxters control the gun trade while the Rojos specialize in liquor. One would think those who corner firearms would have the upper hand, especially given that John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy), the titular head of the enterprise really run by his wife (Margarita Lozano), is also the ostensible sheriff of San Miguel. But here booze bests guns, and it's apparent five minutes after Eastwood strolls into town that the Baxters' days are dwindling.

Like Kurosawa's myriad ronin who dedicate themselves to the discipline of the sword, "Joe" is a practitioner of the six-shooter with unparallelled skill. This was often an aspect of the American Western, the gunslinger who could outshoot all his opponents. But starting with the Leone films and continuing onward most everywhere Westerns were made, the abilities of the shootists were uplifted into mythological territory, where they became capable of feats that simply defied any sense of mortal logic or laws of science.

Note that "Joe" never uses the sights along the barrel of his .45 to take aim, simply holding his weapon at slightly above waist level. Somehow, just by the angle of the pistol in his hands, he can do things like shoot through ropes from 40 feet away. A few years later, the Sundance Kid could shoot the gunbelt off a fellow card player from across the room. By the time of "Silverado" in 1985, Scott Glenn could pepper the individual spines off  a cactus plant at 50 yards.

This aspect serves to elevate the idea of the "man with no name," who is defined not by a past or a reputation, but simply the astounding actions he undertakes. By gifting him with virtually supernatural abilities, it adds to the mystery of the lone gunman.

I should note that in "Yojimbo" the samurai appears to at least anguish over committing altruistic deeds instead of using his skills to turn the gangs against each other, profiting most as he flips sides back and forth. Eastwood's drifter seems bent toward good acts almost from the moment he stops on the outskirts of town, his heart touched by the scene of the young boy kept apart from his mother (Marianne Koch), the kept woman of Ramon Rojo (Gian Maria Volonté), the nastiest of the bunch.

I once knew someone with a story like yours, he tells her when she later begs the reason for her family's rescue -- with the clear implication that the gunman was a party to that previous tragedy. I think these nudges toward making the character sympathetic undercut him somewhat, by giving him a motivation for his actions and thereby something of a mission.

It's better when TMWNN simply arrives with the tumbleweeds, as unpredictable as an ornery rattlesnake who strikes whichever way he will, and then skitters along to the next town. Somehow, I would've liked the concept of "A Fistful of Dollars" better knowing he's capable of evil, too.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "My Name is Nobody" (1973)

By 1973, spaghetti Westerns had descended into comedy, and sometimes even self-parody. There was always an element of laughs and leers in the kitschy Italian/American fusion, but by the time "My Name is Nobody" rolled around, the clown princes with six-shooters were riding tall in the saddle.

The plot of this comedy Western, produced and partially directed by Sergio Leone, is quite spare. An aging gunman, Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda), wants to make one last big score before hanging up his spurs and retiring to Europe. Sullivan (Jean Martin), the front man for a failed gold mine, has a history with Beauregard and is looking to rub him out with the help of his partners, the 150-man-strong Wild Bunch, who launder their stolen gold through him.

(As near as I can figure, all the Wild Bunch -- an obvious nod to Sam Peckinpah, who also has his name on a tombstone -- do nothing but ride around en masse with dynamite in their gaudy studded saddlebags, which eventually proves their undoing.)

The X factor in all this is Nobody, as he dubs himself, a goofy young admirer of Beauregard who wants to take his place -- but only after seeing his hero go out in a blaze of glory. Terence Hill, an Italian who adopted an American-sounding name as a publicity stunt, plays Nobody.

Hill has an offbeat but undeniable screen presence. With his perfect bone structure, lagoon-blue eyes and cleft chin, he's almost too pretty to convincingly play a Western protagonist. But he sells the idea of a roving prankster, who's honed his own skills with a revolver (and other forms of combat) to a surpassing edge. He's like a reverse Don Quixote, whose mission is just while his methods are comical ... but deadly.

The "Nobody" moniker is employed for some pretty obvious jokes -- the most notable being for Beauregard's epitaph, after they stage a fake duel in which the old gunslinger is "killed" so he can slip off for his quiet retirement, his reputation assured. "Nobody was faster on the draw," it reads.

Director Tonino Valerii was a Leone protege, an assistant director who soon stepped behind the camera himself. Leone actually directed the opening and closing gunfights himself, according to legend.

It's an interesting and entertaining film, if somewhat baffling. The motivations of Nobody are never really clear. He just sort of sidles around, acting innocent and making strange non sequitur comments, in almost a Buster Keaton-esque fashion. Then it comes time to demonstrate his awesome speed and accuracy.

The stunts and gags used in the movie's many fights are as impressive as they are impossible. For instance, that Nobody could down several large glasses of whiskey, flip the empty mugs over his shoulder and shoot them before they hit the ground. (What would that blood-alcohol level be? Like 3.0?) Or that he can reach into an opposing gunfighter's holsters, pull out his weapons and slap them in the head with them before the man can reach them himself.

Beauregard displays similar skills, despite the suggestion that his vision is failing. (He wears glasses in several scenes, and one shot of Nobody from his viewpoint is deliberately blurry.) At one point, Beauregard shoots Nobody's hat of his head four times in a row -- each time, passing through the exact same hole. I can't imagine what sort of robotic-type calculations would be necessary to make a bullet pass through the exact same millimeters of a hat atop the head of a moving man at about 50 feet. But if one actually could do that, then what makes the hat fly off?

The showdown with the Wild Bunch carries no narrative or emotional weight, since it happens for no reason at all. Beauregard has no beef with the Bunch, other than their association with Sullivan. But Beauregard chooses to take a payoff in gold dust rather than risk raising the ire of the Bunch. Only Nobody's misplaced hero worship, plus the sheer challenge of one man taking on 150, convinces Beauregard to try. Of course, all he has to do is shoot those bags of dynamite to make the whole gang -- or at least a goodly percentage of them -- go kablooey.

(Also, since no one is around except Nobody, Beauregard and the Wild Bunch, who exactly is it that's going to relate this tale for the history books? One doubts the gang would freely share the story of how they were defeated by one near-sighted old man. And Nobody's grasp on coherent facts is somewhat in doubt.)

"My Name is Nobody" is notable for being one of those manly movies in which no significant female characters exist. A woman cook gives Nobody a skillet of beans and bacon, but other than that no female has any lines of dialogue, or are even glimpsed until that final showdown in the street.

The last thing I'd like to talk about for this film is the musical score by Ennio Morricone, a longtime Leone collaborator and one of my personal favorites. It's a bouncy, comic theme with his usual mix of orchestral instruments and non-traditional noisemakers -- including what sounds like drops of water run through a synthesizer. He also borrows strains from Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" for the Wild Bunch sequences, with the notes bent and flattened to make it a mocking tribute.

It's silly, touching and exciting simultaneously -- much like the film it serves to enhance.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Once Upon A Time in the West"

Over the years, I have heard several people point to the moment near the beginning of "Once Upon a Time in the West" where Henry Fonda guns down a small boy as one of the watershed moments in their cinematic lives.

Here was an actor who had played presidents, generals, fathers, everyday decent men. If there was anything close to a movie star who personified everything that was good and true about American circa 1968, Fonda was it.

And then he shows up dressed all in black and blows away a kid -- and smiles leeringly while he's doing it, too.

Sergio Leone had wanted to make a movie with Fonda for years, and by '68 his "spaghetti Westerns" -- Italian in origin, shot largely in Spain -- had gained enough international respect and box office clout to finally interest Fonda. The actor was getting older (63), his star was fading, so it must have seemed like a good time to flip his career on its head by tackling a sinister, even vile character.

I've also read that Charles Bronson was Leone's first choice to play the "Man with No Name" role in his "Fistful" trilogy that made Clint Eastwood a star. Bronson and Eastwood have much the same onscreen persona in the Leone films -- taciturn, hard-hearted but basically good men who say very little, and let their six-shooters do most of the talking.

Ennio Morricone was, in my opinion, one of the greatest film composers of all time. (I say "was," incorrectly -- in his early 80s, he's still going strong with TV and film scores, including 2007's wonderful and underrated "The Weatherman.") He used all sorts of props and human voices in his scores in addition to orchestral instruments -- think of the signature "ayi-ayi-yah" singing that opens the iconic theme for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

In "Once Upon a Time in the West," each of the four main characters has their own musical cue. For Cheyenne, the cagey bandit played by Jason Robards, it's a sad and sweet ditty with banjos and the sound of horse clops. The melody is done sometimes with a whistle, sometimes a banjo, and sometimes a banjo combined with a tinny piano. I just love how that sound captures the essence of the character. Cheyenne is a hard man who's very protective of his badass image -- mainly so people stay out of the way of his robbing and pillaging. But, as he says himself, even he wouldn't shoot a 6-year-old boy.

For Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), the New Orleans prostitute who arrives in the dusty town of Flagstone to join her new husband, only to find him and his three children shot dead, the music takes on a syrupy tone with lots of strings. Jill is acknowledged by all three of the men whose stories revolve around her to be an extraordinary woman -- in some ways, she's tougher than all of them. But still, as in many Westerns the female characters represent society, stability and comfort, and Jill's musical theme reflects that.

The last two characters' music overlaps to a certain extent, and the reason becomes apparent at the very end when their story arcs converge in their quickdraw showdown in the sun.

Bronson's character is called simply Harmonica, and I don't think I have to explain what instrument dominates his music cue. It's not really a melody, though, but a plaintive wail consisting of just a few repeated notes. They echo across the plains in the film's opening scene, where three assassins await his arrival at a train station. We hear Harmonica's theme before we see him, playing the tiny instrument that is his name, his signature expression, his history and his inevitable destiny.

Morricone's score uses mostly just a few chords underneath the harmonica notes to give it some depth and a haunting lingering aspect. But when combined with some harsh electric guitar chords, later dissolving into swelling strings, the harmonica becomes a part of Frank's (Fonda) theme.

Frank is perhaps the most black-hearted villain ever to appear in a Western. With him, there's no prevarication or facade of civilization. He is a killer, who does what he does not only because there's money to be made at it, but because he genuinely enjoys it. Frank is not bothered by his nature; from Fonda's steely-eyed performance, I doubt he even gives it much thought.

Frank despises weakness, which is why he never shows any himself, and immediately preys upon others who do. Frank has spent the last few years working for Morton, a train magnate who dreams of completing the great East-West railroad line, even as his body is crippled by disease.

Morton hobbles around with crutches and a back brace, and uses a special drop-down set of hand bars to navigate the custom train car that serves as his mobile home and office. Frank calls Morton's condition "dry rot," and says any reasonable man would've put a bullet in his own brain long ago. For now, Frank is content to rub out any homesteaders who get in the way of Morton's railroad -- such as the McBains -- but it's clear he has ambitions to push the boss aside.

The story is an interesting and convoluted mix of divergent motivations and alliances. Jill believes Cheyenne and his men were responsible for killing her husband, since the murderers wore the long dusters that are his gang's trademark. But it actually was Frank and his men, looking to throw suspicion off themselves.

Cheyenne visits Jill to try to convince her he had nothing to do with it. Harmonica, seeming to have no allies or motivation, shows up and inserts himself into this vortex, protecting Jill when some of Frank's men return to finish the job. Harmonica and Cheyenne end up helping each other out of convenience, and at one point Harmonica actually protects Frank from his own men, who have been bribed by Barton to turn traitor.

Frank, meanwhile, is irritated by Harmonica's repeated intrusions, and his refusal to give his real name -- only reeling off names of men Frank has killed.

One could write a whole treatise about the sexual politics of this movie. In this worldview, men are all rapacious opportunists who revel in using their physical power to subjugate women. Harmonica, despite being the ostensible hero of the film, holds Jill down and rips her dress. Frank takes her prisoner and forcibly has sex with her. She goes along with it, but Frank correctly surmises that she'd do anything to save her own skin, even accept on her body the hands of the man who killed her spouse. Only Cheyenne maintains something resembling a respectful difference.

"Once Upon a Time in the West" is a great and strange Western, the apex of Sergio Leone's spaghetti movies.

3.5 stars