Synopsis
Mr. Ugly comes to town!
Unofficial lawman John Corbett hunts down Cuchillo Sanchez, a Mexican peasant accused of raping and killing a 12-year-old girl.
The Big Gundown
1966 ‘La resa dei conti’ Directed by Sergio Sollima
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Alternative Titles
O Dia da Desforra, Een Verdoemde Te Meer, El halcón y la presa, Colorado
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Some days, you wake up and say, "I need Lee Van Cleef in my life at this moment." And so you put on the latest Spaghetti/Zapata Western that you acquired and you let the sunrise with Van Cleef gunning down people with remarkable speed and appreciate the film's depiction of the corrupt upper classes' villainy and the cunning of the jackrabbit of a man that Van Cleef is hunting. You enjoy the score, which is always a notch above in these films because Morricone could make a masterpiece of a film score in his sleep.
You also note how the film gives most of the women in it some form of agency, which is a nice touch. The Mormon girl…
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"you're too damn smart to be a senator."
the violent, impulsive lawman realizes that he is an unwitting tool of power and capital; the laws themselves (and who they apply to) determined based on the ease with which they provide the service of removing inconvenient groups of people. also contains all the brutal gunfights, exposed lee van cleef chest hair and operatic, morricone-scored character gestures you're looking for. great stuff.
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Action! - Spaghetti alla Sergio: Le grandi avventure di Sollima
Talk about a film that made me reevaluate my previous opinion and ponder how I could have given it such a low score.
Even though Van Cleef had been in the industry and the Western genre for decades, I would venture to say that it was his role in For A Few Dollars More that helped catapult the actor's popularity, and it is clear that Sollima leveraged this to his advantage in his official entry into the Spaghetti Western with a character that feels very much like a anti-hero version of Colonel Douglas Mortimer. Tomas Millan excels as the antagonist, and his chemistry and rivalry with Cleff's Colorado are fantastic…
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The man who has no masters is beholden only to the faults of his own sins in Sergio Sollima’s “The Big Gundown.”
In a time of violence brought from constant terrorist attacks and assassinations from extreme right and left radicals, Italian spaghetti Westerns conjured up onscreen heroes that belonged no side, no belief, and no man. Among these were Blondie of the “Dollars” trilogy, Django, and here - Lee Van Cleef’s Jonathan Corbett.
A bounty hunter that sees attempts at manipulation by narcissistic tyrants of the powers that be - Corbett finds his freedom in making his own code of justice.
But as Sollima implies, even that solution, too, is imperfect. Justice without good and evil actors is a concept…
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On masters and obeyers and all that keeps their relationship in place. Sollima's genius is both in turning Solanas social tract into a western and then in turning said western into a Roadrunner cartoon in which Coyote is a self righteous American who believes all the lies about how things work and dedicated his life to upstand them and Roadrunner is his third world prey who knows it is all pure bullshit. Van Cleef gets one of the coolest introductions on movies and then gets to be the end of the joke and lecture on time and again without changing his hubris (tip: when corrupt Mexican cops are explaining you are a fool, you really are a big one) until…
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One of Morricone’s finest works!
Given that it’s my first non-Leone spaghetti western, it’s interesting separating the stylings of the genre from Leone’s personal style. While it has quite a bit in common with Leone, it doesn’t have his flair and signature close-ups.
That being said, the Morricone score and Lee Van Cleef make this an awfully fun time. It’s much grittier and dirtier than the westerns Hollywood was churning out at the time, so despite its quirks it’s pretty engaging. Unlike Leone, Sollima doesn’t try AT ALL to make the dubbing seem at all authentic, but you get used to that aesthetic after a while. Highly recommend checking it out!
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*Uncut version with original Italian dubbing*
La Resa dei Conti has it all, including prior expectations, and then surpasses its required fan bill:
✓One of the top 3 best soundtracks of the Italian subgenre
✓One of the best openings ever designed by men
✓One of the best final duels ever filmed
✓One of the most violent films of the decade, where violence serves a clear social statement beyond being present for stylized glorification of gunplay. 1966 surely kept challenging audiences.
✓Lee Van Cleef in (probably) his best role, irradiating a huge amount of coolness authenticitySollima transforms Spaghetti into an entirely different look at revolutionary causes, Mexico and the corruption of established authorities, and doesn't kick the evils of capitalism…
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Maybe I’m biased, but Lee Van Cleef has to be the coolest motherfucker to ever look exactly like a human-sized rat.
I love a good Western that can spend a cool 110 strutting it’s stuff like the freshest stranger that just walked into town; The sly tip of the hat, the duel-ready stance. The inexplicable sharpshooting. The half-glance and the squint of the eye to let them know who means business.
…It’s the way the sound of an all-encompassing valley can start to hum to a different tune, the cries of fear sounding different just by the mere grace of their presence alone. Where even one-on-one against Morricone’s liquid golden strings, legend still harks first. The dreaded whisper along the…
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Wile E. Coyote vs. Road Runner cartoon but it’s a spaghetti western with Lee Van Cleef as Wile E. Coyote and Tomás Milián as the Road Runner and it has one of Ennio Morricone’s best scores outside of his collaborations with Sergio Leone and it’s a metaphor for political radicalization and revolutionary awakening.
Next essay will be on The Big Gundown.
Expect to see it here late June (and on Patreon a week or two early!).
Edit: here it is!
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Stefano Sollima's dad borrowing from 3:10 to Yuma for a spaghetti western gem released the same year as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Corbucci's Django, starring Lee Van Cleef with a Morricone score to boot. The ease with which we can see these kinds of movies now—this one is on The Criterion Channel—is truly astonishing. The future is horrible and yet spectacular.
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So I finally get around to Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown, one of the Spaghetti Westerns that almost everybody has recommended, and after taking advice from my own personal Spaghetti Western expert and guide (Einar), I watched the Extended US version on my new Limited Edition (no.669) Indicator Blu Ray that Mel got me for Valentine's Day. Needless to say, I should have been watching the original Italian version apparently, but I still found this to be well worth waiting for.
The Big Gundown begins with the introduction of Lee Van Cleef's bounty hunter, Jonathan Corbett, a man with a reputation for bringing criminals to justice, regardless of the task. When approached by a wealthy businessman, Brockton, about running for…
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