A Bounty Hunter and a Bandit

Rape, particularly the rape of a child*, is such a despicable crime that it provokes strong feelings of disgust for the perpetrator. This feeling of disgust comes with a desire to see justice done, or as close to it as possible, so to falsely accuse someone of rape could be a powerful political tool, as it is in the 1967 Spaghetti Western The Big Gundown. Anchored by a cool lead performance from Lee Van Cleef as a highly skilled bounty hunter, the film has some nicely edited action sequences and genuinely clever, darkly amusing, writing.

Jonathan Corbett (Van Cleef) casually accepts the job of tracking down Cuchillo (Tomas Milian) from a railway tycoon (Walter Barnes). No bounty ever approaches being slightly difficult for Corbett so he seems to think nothing of offering to get Cuchillo gratis.

But very quickly, Cuchillo turns out to be a suspiciously elusive quarry. Tomas Milian went on to play Tepepa, another puckish Mexican revolutionary, and perhaps Cuchillo was one of the parts that solidified his perceived aptitude for such roles. Van Cleef is so cool in this film and Milian is such a goofball, there's almost a Batman/Joker dichotomy at play.

The film's comprised of several episodes in which it seems Corbett is just about to nab Cuchillo only for Cuchillo to narrowly escape, often taunting Corbett while galloping away; "You'll never catch me!"

In one episode, Corbett finds Cuchillo under the protection of some Mormons and the 12 year old girl Corbett thinks he's rescuing from statutory rape at Cuchillo's hands turns out to be the fourth wife of a middle aged Mormon. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle warned us about this sort of thing in A Study in Scarlet.

In another episode, Corbett finds Cuchillo at the mercy of a beautiful ranch owner (Nieves Navarro) whom Cuchillo spurned--so Corbett can also spurn her in turn. A big gunfight ensues.

With each episode, a grudging respect and even a kind of affection starts to develop between Corbett and Cuchillo, especially as they both react similarly to the hypocrisy of land owners and respectable citizens. The tension surrounding the question of whether or not Cuchillo committed the crimes he's accused of is absorbing but it's also great when that question is gradually answered in subtle ways.

The Big Gundown features some exceptional work from Ennio Morricone (two tracks were used by Tarantino) and is currently featured in a Morricone collection on The Criterion Channel.

*Yeah, fuck all the trigger warnings.

From the Street Sweeper to Kingpin

God minds the stable and Satan offers the only chance for a better life in the 1967 Spaghetti Western Day of Anger. Featuring some of the best music of the genre with a score by Riz Ortolani (borrowed by Tarantino for Django Unchained), the film features some provoking and unusual moral contemplations, a surprising and enjoyable plot, and some good shoot outs.

Its Italian title, I giorni dell'ria, according to Wikipedia, translates to Days of Wrath, a title that may have been avoided to avoid confusion with the Carl Dreyer movie, but the biblical allusion would've made more sense with the film's themes. The protagonist is a handsome young man (Giuliano Gemma) who's the scorn of his small western town, spat on by everyone but the denizens of the brothel, the town drunk, and a stable hand.

Forced to do all the dirty jobs around town and rebuked by the proprietor if he so much as thinks of sitting down in the saloon, it's unclear why the lad is such a scapegoat or why he puts up with it with so much humility. His name is Scott--his only name, he explains, because he's a bastard. Then one day a dangerous man rides into town, Frank Talby (Lee Van Cleef), and tells Scott he should use his mother's name, Mary, for a surname, and encourages him to have more pride.

Scott has two competing father figures--Talby and the stable hand, Murph Allan Short (Walter Rilla), who starts to feel sorry he taught Scott how to quickdraw a pistol, something Scott has been obsessively practising for years with a wooden gun. Talby takes him under his wing, gives him a real gun, and some lessons about how to survive while earning respect and fear.

It feels like there's more of a history behind the story than is ever revealed. Some critics have put down the abuse Scott's suffered to an anachronistic class consciousness but it seems more vicious than that. The fact that he doesn't know who his father was and that two older men seem interested in his well being seems to indicate one of them might be his father. That this information is withheld contributes to the tension in the choice Scott has to make between ruling the town as a subordinate to a warlord or serving the town as a sheriff. But it's clear he needs lessons from both men.

One of the ways you can tell the difference between a Spaghetti Western and an American Western is everyone is beautifully dressed. Even Murph Allan Short gets a little blue and magenta neckerchief.

The actors are generally good, particularly Van Cleef who, as usual, excels in an understated menace that carries an implicit wisdom. Giuliano Gemma isn't bad though someone who looked more like an outcast might have worked better. Day of Anger is free with Amazon Prime.