Rhapsodies

For this week’s selection I returned to spaghetti westerns and films that were inspired by spaghetti westerns, specifically those featuring a mysterious drifter like the one’s played by Clint Eastwood, and what better place to start then with the man himself. High Plains Drifter is Eastwood’s take on his best known character, as well as a brutal deconstruction of it.

As has happened many a time before a stranger rides into town, and like many a time before this town dreads the inevitable arrival of murderous bandits, and many times before the town turns to the Stranger for help. From there things get a bit different.

The Stranger cares very little for the town, in fact he has an agenda that is attached to some of the town’s dark secrets. Slowly he manipulates both the town and the bandits to the inevitable showdown, and when it finally arrives he comes down on everyone like divine justice.

This was the second film Eastwood directed. My opinion of Eastwood’s work varies. While I certainly like a lot of his films, I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan. But this one I really liked. Eastwood looks at the setting through an uncompromising sense and it works well with the Stranger as a possibly supernatural judge on the most venal, corrupt and cowardly community I’ve seen since I watched and reviewed Dogville.

The next film I watched was recommended to me when a review of High Plains drifter was compared to it. I hadn’t heard of the Spaghetti western hero Sartana, played by by Gianni Garko before so I couldn’t wait to start my introduction with the first film of the series, If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death.

We open this story with betrayal, murder and greed with at least three factions backstabbing each other over a shipment of gold. Into this fray, seemingly out of nowhere comes Sartana a well dressed and charming drifter armed with a shotgun and derringer and seemingly unstoppable. From here the body count rises as Sartana fights against all comers and wins.

This was fun fluff. The character of Sartana may come off as too good to be true, to the point of almost being a Mary Sue figure but the execution works well enough. But frankly the best thing about this film was a very young Klaus Kinski hamming it up as the psychopathic villain.