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Leone's Duck, You Sucker profits mightily from the Irish revolutionary in Latin America, Georges Delerue's score ponders the configuration, "criminelle ou justicière?" The Dublin bomber's tomboyish daughter (Brigitte Bardot) learns the trade and treks to the New World, on the run she joins a traveling troupe of acrobats and strongmen and becomes a sensation after discovering the art of the striptease. "Las Marias Desnudas," she and the veteran chanteuse (Jeanne Moreau), blonde and brunette as halves of a frisky Venus. (The camera literally goes dizzy when both share the frame in close-up.) The music hall, "the best training you can get," from there to the campesino uprising and the slaphappy switcheroo—guerrilla turns showgirl, showgirl turns guerrilla. Louis Malle back in Zazie mode, all gags and glitter for a double-bill of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Vera Cruz, a parody of epics. "I'm not a brute, I'm very modern," exclaims the evil landowner (Carlos López Moctezuma) whose electric chandelier is powered by slaves on a mammoth treadmill. Behind him is the villainous abbé (Francisco Reiguera), whose inquisitors have studied The Three Stooges and who reacts to a grenade decapitation with a sigh ("Ah, les petites femmes"). Nouvelle Vague references for days: The dove shot down in the saloon is resurrected with a Franju gesture, Julius Caesar serves the heroine facing her biggest stage, even the Chuck Jones ACME cactus has its role to play. All in all, the funniest joke might be the casting of George Hamilton as the rebel firebrand, chained and spread-eagled as a treat for the ravenous Moreau. "Now they're performing miracles? Sacrilege!" Discarded by Malle, the rollicking style is taken up by Parolini in the Sabata trilogy. Cinematography by Henri Decaë. With Claudio Brook, Paulette Dubost, Poldo Bendandi, and Gregor von Rezzori.
--- Fernando F. Croce |