Vengeance is Mine Review
From The Spaghetti Western Database
|
|
|
|
|
|
Aka: One hundred thousend Dollars per Killing
- 1967
- Dir: Gianni Fago
- Cast: Gianni Garko, Claudio Camasio, Claudie Lange, Susanna Martinkova, Piero Lulli, Bruno Corazzari, Fernando Sancho
- music: Nora Orlandi
Per 100.000 dollari ti ammazzo is probably as close as an Italian genre movie from the sixties, departing from an original screenplay, could get to Greek and Victorian drama. Instead of adapting a play by Shakespeare or Sophocles, it tells a Cain and Abel story of two half brothers, one good, one bad, seasoned with some strong Freudian ingredients and placed against the familiar spaghetti western background of the Civil war. It’s also the twin movie of the more popular 10.000 Dollars Blood Money, sharing the same team of producers, scored by the same (female) composer, and starring the same actors, Gianni Garko and Claudio (Volonté) Camasio. Yes, you’re right, it was made by a different director.
100,000 starts the way 10,000 ended: with a cameo of the great Fernando Sancho. He and his men (bandits, I’d say)approach a church and eventually enter it. A few minutes later, Sancho’s men have all been killed by a mysterious gunman, who is hiding in one of the coffins lined up at the entrance of the church. Sancho empties his gun on one of the coffins, but it’s the wrong one. Subsequently he is shot through his throat. Exit Fernando, enter Gianni. He brings the corpses of Sancho and his men to a nearby town to collect the bounty. The town is nearly a ghost town: the old sheriff tells him that all young men have travelled north to kill Yankees, a sad thing, since there still are so many good killings to be done here …
After this tongue-in-cheek opening the tone of the film becomes more dignified and moody. Like one author on IMDB stated, this might not be the film for you if you prefer your spaghetti westerns dusty and dirty, with the protagonists delivering cynical one-liners at every possible occasion: it’s a very fashionable movie, set in a upper-class family, people wearing silk scarves and having tea parties dressed in their Sunday best at the seashore. Garko has spent ten years in jail because he was framed for parricide by his half brother Clint, who had found out that Garko was an illigimate son of their mother. Of course Garko aspires for revenge, but in an army hospital, while talking to a old acquaintance, he experiences that his mother has expressed the wish that Clint is brought to justice in her dying-hour. Clint has become an outlaw during the last days of the war, and when he is incarcerated, the prison is attacked by some fellow bandits who feel betrayed by him, so Johnny feels forced to save his life …
It has become a quite an item which one of the two twin movies is superior. Contemporary critics weren’t very pleased with this film, and even today most people seem to prefer ‘the other one’, saying Giovanni Fago wasn’t really suited to the genre, and therefore overstretched the dramatic and melodramatic aspects of the script. It’s true that Fago had been assistant director to Vittorio de Sica and made some unusual directional choices, like showing only close-ups of faces and hands during the final shootout. It’s also true that some of the flashbacks, although poetic, are a bit too drawn-out and over-emphatic. But Fago had also been co-director to Lucio Fuci for Massacre Time, that has a similar premise of parricide and fraternal rivalry, and overall I think his direction suites the (admittedly melodramatic) film rather well. The action scenes are furious and well-staged and one of them, the assault on the prison, is outstanding, ending in an emotional and poignant scene, one of the greatest of the entire genre, shot against the background of the burning town (obviously symbolizing the fires of The Purgatory) in which Camasio first seems to … but it would be a crime to give it away. The story is punctuated with short, but often rather gruesome scenes of Civil war casualties (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly clearly was an influence) that give the film some historic relevance and serve as a background for Camasio’s degeneration from a jealous and pathetic creature into a madman who is still (more or less) redeemed in the final scene when he faces death. Some have noticed autobiographical elements in Camasio’s performance, Claudio artistically exploiting his frustrations about his brother – Gian Maria Volonté - being the more famous actor. Nora Orlandi mixes lyrical and more cheerful elements to a very fine score, one of the most memorable non-Morricone scores of the genre. I particularly liked the theme called Il Giorno dell’Odio (1), with its plaintive trumpet, played over some of the flashbacks with Garko and Camasio riding horses on the beach. It’s not an easy choice, both twins are fine (and original) spaghetti westerns, but I prefer this one.
Garko met his future wife the young Chechoslovakian actress Susanna Martinova on the set: she plays Mary (in her first appearance in an Italian production). They married shortly after and had a daughter.
Note: (1) Listen to this theme here: http://www.camoriginalsoundtracks.com/site/index.php?site=ost&path=cd&idcd=647
--By Scherpschutter
