Back with the Italians & Sergio Leone

Like many of us who grew up watching Hollywood movies in the mid-’60s instead of the great Filipino classics, it became obvious that we couldn’t easily shake off three centuries of Latin culture when we gravitated towards what had been disparagingly called the Spaghetti Westerns by critics who deemed them an inferior genre.

Most of the films were made with low budgets, produced by Italian studios, shot in the Tabernas Desert in Andalucia, Spain, and were highly violent compared to drama-oriented Western action films. They had a look and spirit about them, particularly those directed by Italian Sergio Leone, that appealed to the Filipino. The mid-’60s to ’70s was the Golden period for the Spaghetti films, part of the retrospective of Leone featured in the 2nd Edition of Moviemov: Italian Cinema Now screened at Greenbelt 3 cinemas until last week.

With Leone, a new respectability had been given the Spaghetti films. We watched Il Colosso Di Rodi (The Colossus of Rhodes, 1961), Il Buono, Il Brutto e Il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 1966) starring Clint Eastwood whose Hollywood career was launched through this movie.

Billed in DVD releases as part of the Cult Camp Classic — Historical Epics, Il Colosso Di Rodi was based on gigantic historical Greek Titan Helios erected in the Greek island of Rodes between 292 to 280 BC, considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It stood over 107 ft. high, and was destroyed by an earthquake in 226 BC.  

The film directed by Leone with Rory Calhoun as lead, had impressive visuals, beautiful costuming, plus the huge fire spouting Colossus. However, we feel its longish storyline involving treacherous plots could have been edited especially since it didn’t introduce anything new.

Five years later, in Il Buono, Leone had perfected his craft that the film is often billed the best Spaghetti Western ever made. Again it is longish, but the story of three gunslingers competing to find a fortune in buried Confederate gold is priceless. Clint as Blondie-The Good, plays a subdued, cocksure bounty hunter; who teams up with Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes-The Bad, a ruthless, unfeeling and sociopathic mercenary; and Eli Wallach as Tuco-The Ugly, a fast talking bandit wanted for a long list of crimes who provides the comic element to the movie.

There is violence all around, killings, torturing, with each character given his time to shine. It is said that Eli’s role has been a big influence on Johnny Depp in creating the character of Captain Jack Sparrow.

While the Spaghettis served as interesting teasers, we are not to forget that Moviemov is a traveling festival promoting modern Italian movies among Asian audiences. We had met them last year, and for 2012, Moviemov has gone to Rome, Bangkok and New Delhi. For the first time in Asia, Moviemov provided roundtable discussions among Italian and Filipino filmmakers and producers for exchange of ideas and concepts; a competition of contemporary Italian movies judged by a jury of Filipino professionals; and the screening of select Filipino films.

Seven current Italian films released this year were screened. We watched Cesare deve morire (Caesar must die) by 80- and 82-year-old brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, which won the Golden Bear at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, and is the Italian entry for Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th Academy Awards. Caesar is an outstanding docu-fictional account of how actual prisoners appeared in a play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar of Shakespeare and of how it had changed their outlook on life. Critics have praised the film as deeply humanistic, saying “that even a prisoner with a dreadful life sentence is and remains a human being.”

Another current film we saw was Diaz (Diaz-Don’t clean up this blood) by Daniele Vicari which zeroed in on nightly raids by 300 police officers against activists and journalists of the Armando Diaz school in Genova that Amnesty International has called, “The most serious suspension of democratic rights in a Western country since the Second World War.” The movie received the Panorama second audience award for 2012.

Although we understand the film’s purpose, we don’t see it as an artistic rendering of an actual event. How can the actual massacre of a UK journalist left with a punctured lung be artistic? Perhaps a news report would do better in showing the public how this can be dealt with.

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