Nocturno
29/03/2013 - Cinema Bis
By Gianni Garko
That the attitude of the critics of the '60s and '70s to
the Italian western was blinded and losing, it has been proved by the perennial
vitality of that movie ...
The Italian Western was born in 1964 with the film A Fistful
of Dollars by Sergio Leone, after a rich productive season lasted more than ten
years, dies in the first half of the '70s.
Loved by the public of the salt, which had awarded this
new genre with the most successful in the history of Italian cinema, our
western for almost twenty years have been considered by critics left and
Catholic, show low quality, politically reactionary, labeled with obvious
contempt "spaghetti westerns."
Alberto Moravia, to name one of them all, wrote that he
liked those films because of their "misanthropic character ... revealing
... a disregard for human life now considered, due to population pressure, as a
matter of abundant and so vile, worthless ... Men are too many, perhaps, and
can no longer bear their own mutual attendance. "
No one pointed out to the famous critic who use a
demographic parameters, suggestive as bizarre, to explain the success of a film
narrative, the process was incongruous and mildly tendentious. Unfortunately,
given the prestige of the author, those considerations did school on the
Italian western projecting the shadow of contempt.
In the early '80s, after almost twenty years, the
official critics finally realized his mistake and began to work hard to
re-evaluate at least the films of Sergio Leone.
Later, in 1996, Luca Beatrice, one of the most astute
critic, in his book Al-wise heart, Ramon, heart, describes the vast artistic
phenomenon of our western, analyzing it through a complex, stratified into
several levels.
Touching the historical context of the '60s, a time when
it exploded the new epic film which he characterized as Opera sun and violence,
the scholar Turin writes that those western reflect the social and political
reality of Italy in the '60s and ' 70 better than any political film. He argues
that there is more third world, revolt and protest guevarista Catholic in a
spaghetti western that in all the art films of the same period. I remember that
the youth of '68 and subsequent years, ignoring the official critics, left
half-empty halls with movies Vancini, Bellocchio, Maselli and others, while
those filled with movies Leone, Corbucci, Valeri, These, Castellari, Fulci and
others. Breakdown not secondary: many of the writers of the Italian westerns
were from, if not from the ranks of the Left parties, certainly from that
ideology.
Almost all of my westerns, for a completely random, do
not fall into the category of western influenced by the instances cited by
protestatarie '68 Beatrice. The screenwriter and director of the first Sartana,
Gianfranco Parolini and Renato Izzo, declare sympathy for none other than the
parliamentary right of Giorgio Almirante. How to Alberto Cardone, Mario
Siciliano, Enzo Gicca and Giuliano Carmineo, good directors of my other
westerns, had, if I remember correctly, political opinions characterized by
liberal ideas not left.
Sartana, my most famous character, not being a cowboy, a
herdsman of the prairies, but a smart player saloon in a suit and tie, it would
not at all a bourgeois revolutionary. For him, as for the Silver film Gicca or
for Brian de Cowards do not pray Mario Siciliano, is not appropriate,
therefore, the critical recovery cutting leftist.
Luca Beatrice, in his valuable study, includes movies to
western Sartana using titles and the characters equation religion / crime, If
You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death ... etc.. He writes: "People like
Sartana and Sabata (Gianni Garko and Lee Van Cleef) crossing the West dressed
in black, reminiscent of Lucifer, the angel of evil."
I agree that the image of Lucifer expresses effectively
the elusive character, lightness and speed in appearing and vanishing of that
my main character, but the ethical component of the metaphor seems to me not at
all acceptable.
The word death, express or implied, enters the 4 titles
in the series of Sartana, but the creators of the acrobatic poker player,
rather than to Lucifer, are inspired by Mandrake, the magician of American
comics of the '30s, from which it takes the Sartana ' elegance of the black,
cloak lined with red night-and the ability to manipulate objects in the
magician. The character shoots and kills only those who attack on his life.
Pushing the death away from him, he looks like a demigod amused winner thereof.
In the shadow under the brim of his hat his eyes have
flashes of irony and flashes of toughness, but always a slight smile on his
lips almost as sophisticated comedy. At the showdown, the essence of the
character is that of a smiling Superman with spurs and Winchester.
For the viewer of those years at the end of the economic
boom, involved every day in a myriad of conflicts, in which he met many little
deaths, it was easy to identify with that formidable young man with the chrisma
dell'imbattibilità, capable of absolute survival, virtually immortal.
Projecting into the evil-stupid the film's enemies and rivals who wanted him
"dead", the public rejoiced to see them succumbing to the blows of
the colt of his hero.
"In dreams there is no censorship - Freud writes -
in dreams human free aggressive instincts, the primitive passions that lead ...
the murder. " And then he continues, quoting Plato: "The dream of the
good, the bad guys do."
Actually, entering into the most hidden of the character,
I myself as an actor I lived those daydreams. On the set after the clapper
board, during shooting, wearing the clothes of the invincible gambler, moving
in perfectly recreated period rooms, or at a gallop in the open spaces of the
Andalusian ramblas, mimesis with the role was so deep that I felt really l
'unrepeatable feeling of absolute mastery over threatening events I met in
front of me. A total domain of the unpredictable addressed, before the fire
with a gun, with the ironic intelligence which nothing escaped, and every
obstacle in front of which is nullified because unmasked in advance.
It was a dream of freedom and ironic dominion over every
negative circumstance, rebuilt on a set or projected in a dark room. Work and
pastime are both therapeutic for both actors and audiences that crowded our then
cinemas.
These symbiotic relationships between actors and audience
if they were not completely ignored, they were always misunderstood and
stigmatized with poor judgment and pretentious, all approved by the common
denominator of the ideology of the left or Catholic.
That the attitude of the critics of the '60s and '70s to
the Italian western was blinded and losing, it has been proved by the perennial
vitality of that film, which today, after almost half a century since the first
westerns of Sergio Leone, continues to be studied by specialists, imitated by
great directors, admired and protected by legions of fans spread across every
continent.
Gustavo Re
was born in Milan, Italy on July 4, 1908. He started his entertainment career
in the music hall. He arrived in Spain during World War II, and where he joined
a Viennese group along with Artur Franz and Johan Kaps.
