A Bullet for the General
A Bullet for the General | |
---|---|
Directed by | Damiano Damiani |
Screenplay by | Salvatore Laurani[1] |
Story by | Salvatore Laurani[1] |
Adaptation by | |
Produced by | Bianco Manini[1] |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Antonio Secchi[1] |
Edited by | Renato Cinquini[1] |
Music by | Luis Bacalov[1] |
Production company | MCM[1] |
Release date |
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Running time | 115 minutes |
Country | Italy[1] |
Box office | £687.1 million[3] |
A Bullet for the General (
Plot
During the
After several heists, the gang travels to the town of San Miguel, where Chuncho meets with his old friend Raimundo to overthrow the weakhearted town boss, Don Felipe. Rosaria, Felipe's spirited wife, attempts to defend him; when Chuncho's men assault her, Tate angrily berates them for their behaviour. Chuncho shoots Guapo, a gang member, for attempting to kill Tate. Don Felipe is made to drive Chuncho and his gang back to San Miguel, and he is eventually executed.
Chuncho prepares to stay in San Miguel, drilling the villagers in the hopes of becoming a General himself; Tate convinces much of the gang to leave San Miguel so they can sell their weapons to Elías. Eventually missing his bandit lifestyle, Chuncho leaves San Miguel under the care of El Santo, his priestly half-brother, on the pretext of recovering a gold-plated
Elías' emissary arrives, but is pursued by army troops. Tate and Chuncho use the machine gun to decimate the troops, but nearly all of Chuncho's remaining gang is killed in the firefight. Unseen by the others, Tate also kills the emissary. Adelita, Chuncho's last surviving loyal gang member, abandons the pair after her lover, Pepito, is killed in the battle. During the ride to Elías' camp, Tate falls victim to a
Chuncho and Tate arrive at Elías' camp the next morning, where they encounter several starving revolutionaries. Chuncho sells the guns and is paid five thousand pesos, before learning from Elías that the people of San Miguel were massacred by the army. Realising his irresponsibility, Chuncho allows himself to be taken away to be executed by Santo, one of the sole survivors of the attack. Meanwhile, Tate, from a high vantage point, shoots Elías and kills Santo before Chuncho's sentence can be carried out. Tate escapes as Elías' doctors pronounce his death: shot in the head with a golden bullet.
Weeks later, Chuncho, now an impoverished beggar, tracks Tate to a hotel in
The next morning the pair prepare to leave for a new life in the United States. However, when Chuncho watches as Tate cuts through a line to buy their train tickets, he begins to reconsider their relationship and his responsibilities. Learning that he had been further manipulated by Tate through his pretending to be an army prisoner, Chuncho suddenly declares that, although they are friends, he must kill him. Tate asks why, to which Chuncho replies "¿Quién sabe?" before shooting him.[Note 1] Tate's body begins its return to the United States, while Chuncho, laughing manically, tosses his bag of money to a group of peasants and flees from the authorities down an external corridor of carriages, exhorting the poor to buy dynamite instead of bread.
Cast
- Gian Maria Volonté as Chucho/El Chucho/Chuncho Muños
- Lou Castel as Bill "Niño" Tate/El Niño/Taylor
- voice, uncredited)
- Klaus Kinski as El Santo
- Martine Beswick as Adelita
- Jaime Fernández as General Elías
- Andrea Checchi as Don Felipe
- Spartaco Conversi as Eufemio
- Joaquín Parra as Picaro
- Aldo Sambrell as Lieutenant Alvaro Ferreira
- José Manuel Martín as Raimundo
- Santiago Santos as Guapo
- Valentino Macchi as Train Engineer
- Guy Heron as Pepito (uncredited)
- Carla Gravina as Rosaria (uncredited)
- Rufino Inglés as Captain Enrique Sanchez Compoy (uncredited)
- Vicente Roca as Hotelier (uncredited)
- Antoñito Ruiz as Chico (uncredited)
- Sal Borgese as Bandit (uncredited)
- Damiano Damiani as Journalist with Elías (uncredited)
- Aysanoa Runachagua as Paymaster (uncredited)
- Richard McNamara as Opening Narrator (uncredited)
Production
The screenplay and story for A Bullet for the General is credited to Salvatore Laurani while Franco Solinas is credited with the adaptation and dialogue.[2] Film historian Howard Hughes noted that A Bullet for the General was the first Italian Western to seriously deal with the Mexican revolution and credited Solinas with the political aspects on the film.[2] Solinas was a Marxist writer best known in film for his screenplays for Salvatore Giuliano and The Battle of Algiers.[2][4]
A Bullet for the General was directed by Damiano Damiani and shot in Almería between July and August 1966.[2][5] Damiani had originally wanted to shoot the film in Mexico which proved to be impossible.[5]
Release
A Bullet for the General was released in Italy in December 1966.[6]
Reception
In a contemporary review, the
Damiano's film has been called a "serious statement about the Mexican Revolution" and has been recognised as an accomplished blend of "tension, action, politics and history".[8]
References
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e f g h Hughes 2004, p. 94.
- ^ a b c d e Hughes 2004, p. 95.
- ^ a b Fisher 2014, p. 221.
- ^ Hughes 2004, p. 96.
- ^ a b Hughes 2004, p. 97.
- ^ Hughes 2004, p. 104.
- ^ Monthly Film Bulletin. Vol. 36, no. 424. British Film Institute. June 1969. p. 128.
- ^ Hughes 2010, p. 66.
Notes
Sources
- Fisher, Austin (2014). Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian Cinema. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9781780767116.
- Hughes, Howard (2004). Once Upon a Time in the Italian West. ISBN 1-85043-430-1.
- Hughes, Howard (2010). Spaghetti Westerns. Harpenden: Kamera Books. ISBN 978-1-84243-303-4.
External links
- A Bullet for the General at IMDb