Mank’s Movie Musings
Mank
June 9, 2019
Sergio Corbucci’s iconic Spaghetti Western Django (1966)
which made a star out of Franco Nero looks better than ever in a newly restored
print.
When one thinks of adaptations of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the name that first
comes to mind is Sergio Leone’s A fistful of Dollars. Of course it was the
first of the lot and was the most famous ; launching the big screen careers of
Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone and starting the trend of spaghetti westerns.
But the true remake of Kurosawa’s classic film was made by another Sergio,
Sergio Corbucci in 1966 called Django. Though the film did not take scenes or dialogues
directly from the film as A Fistful of Dollars did, the film replicated the
socio-political dimensions and the psychological depth of the characters from
the original. A fistful of Dollars had sidestepped these aspects for a new kind
of stylish, operatic film.
Django is a strong political film: with its anti-racist,
anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and perhaps even its anti-American worldview.
Though all the European westerns made at the time were clubbed as spaghetti
westerns, Corbucci’s films were completely different from Leone westerns. While
Leone made his Films more operatic, fantastical and baroque; taking his
westerns into the Fellini, Puccini territory. Corbucci took his westerns into
the realm of neorealist masters like Rosselini and Pasolini. Django is a
perfect example of this. It’s a very down and dirty, ugly looking film; with
characters and scenery caked in mud and scenes dripping with blood. The film
takes the basic template of Yojimbo; A stranger comes to a ghost town
controlled by two rival gangs. He sets up one against the other and ends up
eliminating both of them. As opposed to the heroes of Yojimbo and A Fistful of
Dollars who were drifters who aimlessly drifted into the town, Django, who is a
former union soldier, has a definite personal motive for coming back to the
town. His lover was killed by Major Jackson, a former Confederate soldier and a
white supremacist who is running his own private war now on the border with
his group of Proto-Klansmen. The other
gang that is terrorizing the region is a band of Mexican revolutionaries lead
by General Hugo Rodriquez.
Django opens with the title character (Franco Nero),
under a dark, gloomy sky, trudging across a dun brown wasteland, towing a
coffin behind him It’s an iconic image taken directly from the opening of
Yojimbo, where the camera follows tightly behind the lead Ronin. It also immediately
sets up a contrast to Leone’s westerns. Leone’s westerns are very harshly lit ,
with action unfolding in blinding bright light. The hero is not on a horse,
though he is carrying his saddles. We don’t know what happened to his horse.
The image seems to be a tribute to John Wayne’s introduction in Stagecoach,
where we see him with only his gun and his saddles. This ‘cinema cinema’ aspect
is one thing common between the two Sergios, where they make references to the
traditional Hollywood westerns. The image also sets up a parallel with the
image of Christ dragging his cross on his way to his crucifixion. Django
emerges like a specter from the middle of nowhere, like a Divine force. The
film plays out as a sort of Last temptation of Christ set in the West, with
Django as the Christ figure . But he is a godly figure more out of the old
testament: a lonely gunman out for revenge, sullen and taciturn; Dressed in all
black, covered with dirt and grime, Nero’s performance as Django: vulnerable,
angelic and strangely robotic
complements this mythic nature of the character perfectly. We soon realize that
he is carrying a machine gun – an instrument of death- in the coffin that he is
dragging along. When someone later inquires him about the content of the
coffin, he simply says ‘A man named Django is in the Coffin‘.
Django quickly sketches out both its racial and religious
politics in the scene immediately post the title sequence; where Confederate
and Mexican troops alternately attempt in vain to execute the prostitute Maria
(Loredana Nusciak) on the spot for consorting with the enemy. In a scene that’s
straight out of Jesus saves woman taken into adultery, Django Rescues Maria by
shooting down the soldiers who are planning to burn her on a cross. From that
point on Maria becomes Django’s ardent disciple and she follows him wherever he
goes. The two of them continue their journey and finally reaches a desolate,
mud-choked town with absolutely no inhabitants, except for a group of overly made up whores and their saloon-owner
pimp, Nathaniel (Ángel Álvarez). The only other resident appears to be a
hypocritical Bible-thumper called Brother Jonathan (Gino Pernice), Major
Jackson’s spy, who would soon have his ear mutilated by the Mexicans and fed to
him in shocking act of violence that would inspire a similar scene in Quentin
Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.. This town; without a name, with nothing in it
except for a trunk of a petrified tree that sprawls in front of the saloon and
nothing worth fighting for, as the
battleground between the rival gangs represents the dark, nihilistic nature of
this film. This is an unapologetically ugly film; ugly locations, ugly sets,
ugly people and appallingly ugly violence. There are mutilations, massacres and
slaughter. The main antagonist, Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo) and his
henchmen, are introduced in a scene where they are using Mexican peons for target
practice, gunning them down mercilessly as each one is made to run for his
life.
The final massacre happens when General Hugo and his troops are ambushed by Maj. Jackson
on their way to Mexico. Meanwhile , Django somehow makes it to the town with
the wounded Maria. He tells Nathaniel to inform Jackson that he will be waiting
for him in Tombstone Cemetery. Jackson reaches town and learns about Django’s
plight. After killing Nathaniel, he reaches the cemetery to confront Django.
This is the the moment of Django’s Christ like resurrection. He rests his gun
on the back of his lover Mercedes Zaro’s cross .Believing that Django cannot
fire the gun with his mutilated hands; Jackson shoots the corners of Zaro’s
cross. Django then kills Jackson and his men by pushing the trigger against the
cross and repeatedly pulling back the hammer. His mission accomplished, Django staggers
disconsolately back into the hazy distance from which he came from. Though
bleak and pessimistic in its worldview, the film ends on an optimistic note in
which it is hinted that Django would start a new life with Maria.
Django took the Spaghetti Western to the next level. The
stylistic, operatic westerns of Leone was embellished with deeply political and
psychological depths by Corbucci, even as he amplified the blood and guts
associated with the genre. Apart from Corbucci, other directors like Damiano
Damiani also came in to make politically charged westerns like A Bullet for the
General. Even Leone seems to have been inspired by Corbucci’s westerns and his
later films like Duck you Sucker had a strong political viewpoint. The film
made a star out of Franco Nero, who was just 23 years old when he made the film.
The film inspired many future directors, including Quentin Tarantino who made
Django Unchained (2012),with Franco Nero
in a guest role, as a tribute.
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