"Aim for the heart, Ramon"
The man with no name
(A Fistful of Dollars
Sergio Leone, 1964)
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1870, Cleefville, Texas.
Viper Kid's hand slides quickly on the colt, but the bullet of the stranger is faster to pierce his heart.
Rapidly his strengths and the hatred permeating the air
fade away.
Viper Kid's knees buckle and hurtle down to the ground.
"Die bastard! And carry with you the damnation of my son and my husband!"
Screams a stern faced woman keeping her fists clenched on her womb.
In Sergio Leone's duel scenes, framing revises the space with bold perspectives and expands the time with dreamy melodies.
The masterpiece is the mexican standoff in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" that was a source of inspiration for many filmmakers. One for all Quentin Tarantino.
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Viper hardly retrieves from memory. Sheryll O' Brien, Sheriff Martin's wife…
but the son?
He didn't kill the son…
Yes…now he remembers.
The son was there too,
in the Blanco Canyon.
What a wind that day,
it stopped his breath…
like now, but it didn't hurt this much.
In Spaghetti Westerns (a sub-genre of western movie, born in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique style) the desert is the place where heroes come and go away.
Actually, it was Almeria province, in Spain.
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Viper feels cold.
He tightens the warm earth in his hand and draws his last breath.
"Viper Kid! You lived like a snake and like a snake you'll die slithering"
Says the stranger addressed to the renegade's soul.
In the "Dollar Trilogy", Clint Eastwood's character has no name. It's a lone rider, without past or identity, therefore he doesn't need a name.
This trilogy is also known as "The Man with No Name Trilogy".
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"And you'll follow him, worm!" talks back a woman's voice behind him.
Close. Too close.
"When a man with a .45 meets a (wo)man with a rifle, the man with a pistol will be a dead man. That's an old Mexican Proverb...and it's true"
Ramon Rojo
(A Fistful of Dollars
Sergio Leone, 1964)
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The shot booms suddenly,
as the light that dazzles him.
Stranger's hand is on the colt's stock, but he hasn't got the strength to draw it.
Heavy as a log he hurtles down to the ground, while his arms are branches which dance a mortal ballad.
During the shootings, Sergio Leone played the melodies composed by Ennio Morricone in order to inspire actors: each leading actor followed the rhythm of his own "ballad".
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Astonished, Sheryll looks the lifeless body of the stranger and turns slowly towards the woman who has shot him.
She clenches her jaws and astonishment becomes anger: Mary Shelton, the rival of a lifetime.
Air overloads with new hatred.
Extreme close-ups, often on heroes' faces, is a trademark of Sergio Leone's style. It is said that the director Quentin Tarantino used to ask his cameramen "give me a Leone", when he wanted to have one of those framings.
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Only now Sheryll realizes that each of their choice was dictated from hatred.
Sheryll's choice to start a family with one of the most important man in town.
A husband and a son,
both dead.
"Sad Hill Cemetery", the most famous cemetery in the Old West, does not exist! It was built by the Spanish army in two days for the filming of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966).
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Mary's revenge in binding to a powerful outlaw.
A dead man.
Sheryll's revenge in asking for help to a deft gun fighter.
A dead man.
Sergio Leone (who used the alias "Bob Robertson" for his first western movie) was very careful to iconographic details about his movies' historical period. For "For a Few Dollars More" (1965) he has read up a lot on bounty hunter figure.
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Too many dead people.
Men have always been pawns in their mortal game.
Sheryll feels empty.
She looks for a sense in the end but she doesn't find anything, only pain and blood.
Tears stream down her face.
With "For a Few Dollars More" (1965) Sergio Leone starts the use of flashback framings, that he will use in all his following movies.
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"Kill me!" cries out loud Sheryll, offering her chest to the rifle's muzzle of her rival.
Mary Shelton hesitates a moment before pointing the Winchester.
Uselessly.
The bullet will find an already dead heart.
In Sergio Leone's opinion, western movies were the representation of virile friendship, but in "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) the destinies of male characters of the movie revolve around a woman, the beautiful italian actress Claudia Cardinale, the only female role of relief throughout the director's works.
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