Ft. Worth Star Telegram
November 29, 1964
ROME (AP) – Out here South of the Arno, a man sits tall
in the saddle, shoots from the hip and drinks vino straight.
That’s the way
it is in the movie badlands outside Rome, Amico Mio, because in Italy that’s
where the West begins.
It end in
feature length films that may not be “High Noon” but are usually enough like
workaday Hollywood westerns to be good boxoffice – at least for Non Americans.
And for the
astute cinema wranglers riding herd on Italian filmdom’s latest phenomenon –
the easter western – a good financial return on their art is good enough for
them
To movie fans
who grew up on Tom Mix, Buck Jones, Ken Maynard and William Boyd, it might seem
like pure cinema sacrilege to have celluloid gunslingers with names like Mario
Del Conte and Gianpaolo Francobilli. To get around that, the names are
anglicized.
Unflagging
Market
But the
Italians, Europeans, Asians and South Americans who see the Rome-made westerns
don’t seem to mind. There seems to be an unflagging market for the horse opera
and with westerns now just a minor part f Hollywood production, the Italians
have jumped in to meet the demand.
They see
nothing laughable about it, either. If Americans can make movies about
Michelangelo, they ask, why can’t Italians make films about cowboys?
Italian actors
have quickly learned the ways of the old West and can now sneer, drink from a
dirty glass, fall off a horse, fan off a dozen shots from a six-shooter, and do
the Montana walk like the best of them back in the states.
Language is
another thing. Reluctantly, the film makers have decided that it’s simply too
much trouble to do original western dialogue in Italian (“Come on! mount up
boys. Let’s head ‘em off at the pass” – In Italian “Forza! Saltate a cavallo.
Blocchiamoli nella gola!”)
Filmed in
English
Instead the
films are shot in English, no matter how broken. This makes it easier all
around to dub them for the foreign language outlets everywhere.
Turri Vasile,
producer of “Massacro al Grande Canyon” and “Minnesota Clay,” explains the
Italian rage for the range in terms of a decline in American production.
Hollywood now
concentrates on TV westerns and the so called “big” westerns. The budget
westerns that are bread and butter for distributors abroad have disappeared,
starting a European do-it-yourself trend that also has them shooting it up on
the plains of Spain and Yugoslavia.
Right outside
Rome there’s a whole western town, complete with saloon, bank, and barbershop –
and with plenty of hitching post in the piazza.
Wherever the
location, the lead usually goes to an American actor Cameron Mitchell, Guy Madison,
and Rod Cameron have starred in recent productions.
Italian
Directors
Italians
direct the films but along with most of the secondary players assume American
sounding pseudonyms. One Rome press agent went so far as to say his company’s
current moneymaker was not an Italian western. “We consider it an American film
produced in Italy.” He said.
Ads for the
movie ballyhoo it as “The exceptional American western that is triumphing in
all Italy.”
With titles
repeating words like West, Texas, dollars and sheriff, the illusion is nearly
complete. The action will do the rest.
“A western is a formula, not history,” says director Sergio Corbucci “You have to satisfy the public’s concept of the thing. There aren’t many American westerns that show what America was really like then.
Studied old Westerns
Corbucci has
just finished his first western and is the first to put his own name on the
product. That’s the only thing that’s worrying him now that “Minnesota Clay” is
about to be released. “Chemically, it is excellent,” he observes, “It has all
the ingredients. I did my studying by running off old wsterns.”
Most of the 35
films that he has directed to date have been comic or Roman-spectacular. “A
western is a lot more fun than a comedy, and though it’s pretty tiring – with
horses that don’t fall right and guns that don’t go off – it’s easier than
historical Roman films, with those mass scenes of 3,000 people.”
The fashion
for westerns may soon fade. Italians already show signs of catching James Bond
fever. The transition may be marked one day by something called “007 Rides
Again.”
[A typical Hollywood Western? But the scene for
“Minnesota Clay” is being shot on location near Madrid, Spain, with Italian
Sergio Corbucci as director and Spanish actress Ethel Rojo as the female star.
The male star is American Cameron Mitchell, and the language is English, if a
bit fractured.]
When in Rome, literally. Who WOULDN'T wanna make a Western in Europe? You've got everything you need right at your disposal and you don't have to spend a lot of money. I plan on making a Western out there myself in the future called, "The Man From Ponderosa". It will be one of many Westerns I plan on filming and it will be about a well-known gunfighter by the name of Grant who announces each and every time that he's the "Man From Ponderosa". Wish me luck. And Viva Italia!
ReplyDeleteOh, I forgot to mention, I will be filming "The Man From Ponderosa" in Spain in the near future once I have the money. But still, as always, wish me luck.
ReplyDelete