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The title is a signpost in the Andalusian desert posing as Texas, a perfect Monte Hellman carrefour. A bit of virtuosity kicks things off, a close-up of marbles in the sand tilts up to the gallows before pulling back through a barred window to give the view of the prisoner (Fabio Testi). ("A big hunk of dead meat, a little headline" is his jailer's prophecy, "better than being a bag of shit every day" is the riposte.) He's released and hired by the railroad honcho as a gunfighter, the job is to eliminate the dirt farmer (Warren Oates) in their way, his target's wife (Jenny Agutter) is first seen bare in the river. An austere existence enlivened by visits from roisterous siblings, the would-be killer gazes with melancholy envy at the beauty of an al fresco lunch and a foreign-accented rendition of "Red River Valley." Fondness for the prey complicates the hit, the lass leaves her husband for dead and rides off after the wanderer. "A man's life for a moment's weakness. Doesn't seem like a fair exchange." Hellman's most lyrical work, a severe frontier that doesn't rule out true romance or new beginnings. (Italianate lushness suffuses arid settings: The camera dollies back from Agutter sewing to accommodate Oates cleaning his rifle and Testi chopping wood in the same frame, articulating the screen like a painted triptych.) Cocaine remedies at the desert circus, eroticism and madness in a cowboy's ribald joke. Ride the High Country and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid are noted, and there's Sam Peckinpah himself as the dime-store novelist wryly aiming "to buy a little legend, with a touch of pulchritude." A film as succinctly poetic as Whitman's "Reversals," with an ending to reflect Renoir's in The Woman on the Beach. Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno. With Isabel Mestres, Gianrico Tondinelli, Franco Interlenghi, Charly Bravo, Paco Benlloch, and Sydney Lassick.
--- Fernando F. Croce |