They say the pen is mightier than the sword.
And so we place into a single room
the greatest writer of all time
and a schmuck with a sword.
The writer has his pen…for self-defense.
But we feel the Yojimbo trappings are too antiquated (1961)
so we give the bard a typewriter…no, a laptop
and the schmuck…a gun.
Who will draw first?
For speed, it is the gun which wins (assuming the schmuck knows how to fire it).
It is a big assumption.
So, let us add some lag time…
as the schmuck experiments with the mechanics of his weapon.
And then we stop the test and replace the schmuck with a professional assassin.
By now the poet is sweating blood.
Will he hit “send” in time?
Ah, but now we have overshot the mark with our rhetoric.
So let us back up to the computing of the 1960s.
Computation #1: Westerns are no longer in vogue. American Westerns are the subject of ridicule in Italy. Laughable.
Enter Sergio Leone into the equation.
A smart guy. Sees a gap in the market. How would Rossellini direct a Western? Or Fellini?
Do they make revolvers that hold 8 1/2 bullets?
And who gets the half-a-bullet?
I had intended to talk about Guantanamo Bay. Moral disgust.
But the sands of time in the Tabernas Desert are pouring away…a steady stream of grains.
And so the faceoff makes imperative that I get the most bang for my click.
Eastwood. Leone. Savio. Savio? Morricone. Ah, that’s better.
Gian Maria Volonté (the bad guy) would go on to play in the first (and one would assume only) Marxist Western. A subgenre which never really caught on. The film Vent d’est (1970)–director Godard–filming location Mozambique.
Sounds too weird to be true, right? Just don’t be fooled by Robert Enrico’s Vent d’est from 1993.
Just because a film is Franco-Swiss (like Godard, Franco-Swiss)…uh-uh, not the same thing.
But the assassin schmuck is getting the lay of the land. I digress, I die.
I am not the worst writer to ever live. Give me time. I may yet claim that title.
We cannot, however, forget Marianne Koch. So long…
Never forget a woman from Munich. The beautiful Renate Knaup, for instance.
A double umlaut for your trouble. Amon Düül II. Zwei.
But time is unkind to me…merciless.
Will we reach José Calvo in time? With our heart of iron?
Well hello Joe, what do you know? The “Man with No Name” and Une Femme est une femme.
I’ve hardly talked about the film. That’s what some call “no spoilers”…
But I can make no such guarantee.
Only brilliance. Leone. Eastwood. As good a Western as could possibly be made.
A triumph.
If you feel your heart in your throat…your tears well up
then maybe you think of Guantanamo Bay.
Inmates list.
One by one.
No charges.
No charges.
Suicide.
No charges.
Certainly it would help to know that Abdul so-and-so knocked off an Army Ranger medic.
The medic part is no superfluous detail.
But the rest?
No charges.
No charges.
Held for three years.
No charges.
It seems, from the outside, that the war has been run by the CIA.
There are no armies to battle.
No high-value targets. I’m not the first to comment on the ludicrous situation of a $200,000 bomb being dropped on a mud hut.
Bad guys torture.
Idiots torture.
And so Clint Eastwood does not torture. Here. In 1964.
If you jump down the rabbit hole you will be disgusted.
How does this in any way have to do with a Spaghetti Western?
It is the message.
We might not have a hell of a lot of time.
Find the quote by the general…about the detainees at Guantanamo who arrived with mental problems and left with “none.”
That’s rich.
I also have a bridge to sell you in Arizona. And I’ll throw in the Seven Dwarfs as maintenance crew.
You see, it’s a hell of a lot easier to just write a film review and not worry about all this stuff.
That’s what happens in totalitarian countries.
Hang on, someone’s knocking at my door…
-PD
paulydeathwish 
Here is the thing it took 5 years for the film to come to The US. Warner brothers bought it finally it was a big hit in Europe. I was very young when it came out My parents were blown away by the visual. Leone wanted to do on other one and Clint di not there was too little money and he had to go back to Italy. Leone sent him a copy of the film in Italian Clint show it to his friends and they were blown away by the visual. And the rest is history. Nice review. I saw it at least 6 times never gets old.
Yes, it is a damn good film! Thank you!!
It is interesting how the moral disgust that people feel against the bad guys never translates to moral disgust against morally disgusting actions of their own military/paramilitary forces.
Strangely, I never before thought of this film as being a kind of rethinking of Yojimbo. It seems ridiculous given the massive similarities, even in details like the casket. This has been revelatory for me.
Also, don’t answer that door.
Ha, yes…the door. I feel fortunate it was just a rhetorical cliffhanger. As for Yojimbo, I was unaware too till I did a little reading about Fistful of Dollars. The paramilitary point is crucial. For all of Alex Jones’ shortcomings, I think he described the situation well: Stockholm Syndrome on a massive scale. Geopolitics are so far-out now that it’s hard to fathom the worst things which have been done. It’s much easier not to believe (or investigate) the underbelly of espionage. One thing is sure: it is tiring to learn the disgusting (and likely true) alternatives to mainstream news. But nothing is quite so disgusting as the condescending hypocrisy of the big news outlets. The insult to intelligence is too much for some of us to take. And thus begins revolution.
Too true. Like a person in an abusive relationship, defending the one that brutalizes them. And in this age beyond trench warfare, intelligence agencies have become powerful beyond belief.