A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (Composite version) Review
A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (Un Minuto per Pregare, un Istante per Morire)
Warning: I usually avoid spoilers, unless I'm writing about one of those classics everybody's familiar with. This movie doesn't fall into that category, so if you haven't watched it yet, and have no idea about the ending (or in this case: the different endings), please watch the movie first and read this review afterwards.
An unusual spaghetti western, long, dead-serious, melancholic. Its genesis is a bit obscure. Apparently the production was brought to the attention of Albert Band (the enigmatic producer of a couple of early spaghetti westerns) by an American producer, who had trouble financing it. Band didn't like the script (he thought it was too melodramatic), but the project would offer him a chance to work with Robert Ryan, who had already signed in. The original title was Escondido (1) and Sergio Corbucci was asked to direct, but he was replaced by Franco Giraldi, for reasons that can no longer be ascertained (2). It's unknown if he actually worked on the movie, but the script must have made some impression on him, and several plot elements would later pop up in his masterpiece The Great Silence.
Alex Cord is an outlaw on the run who hears rumors about the governor of New Mexico offering people like him a pardon (and 50 dollars to make a new start) in the town of Tuscosa. He's interested but also suspicious, and must be on the alert for the bounty hunters gathering in the nearby town of Escondido, organizing manhunts and ambushing runaways on their way to their redemption. The sheriff of Tuscosa, doesn't respect the governor's plan either, blocking the entrance to his town. With outlaws as victims and bounty killers as ruthless murderers, the similarities to The Great Silence are obvious. Like Trintignant, Cord has a handicap: he suffers from paralytic seizures (and fears to be an epileptic) which make him, the fastest gun around, temporarily defenseless against his enemies. All people who help him are killed and in the end the governor has to team up with him to fight off the bounty killers.
Thanks to a composite version created by autephex, I was able to see this movie for the first time in its uncut, 118 minutes version. In the shorter version, known to most people as the one with the happy-ending, Alex Cord's gunman - called Clay McCord - rides out of town redeemed, having received a pardon from the governor. This ending was created by simply omitting the final five minutes of the longer version, in which McCord (who has given up his guns) is defenseless against the human predators bushwhacking him just outside of town. But it wasn't the only cut made; throughout the movie scenes were either cut or abridged, reducing the running time by another fifteen minutes. Most cuts are brief and seems unimportant, but somehow they changed the mood of the movie considerably. It never felt like an upbeat movie, but I only now realized how sad, how downbeat it really is. It shows the West as a waste land, marked by a moral decay that has made people nervous and paranoid, and has driven some of them over the edge, among them the hero: in an early scene we see him putting an empty gun against a man's head, pulling the trigger, maniacally laughing when he notices the man's horror and fear. It's a strong scene, but it only makes sense in relation to this unhappy ending, as it shows the dark and twisted side of the character. Unfortunately it was missing from the longest available version, a Japanese VHS. Cuts often lead to similar contradictions, but they're finally solved in this composite version.
With the presence of Alex Cord, Robert Ryan and Arthur Kennedy, the film has an American feel, but the outrageous violence, including extended torture scenes and the killing of a priest and a women, mark it as a spaghetti western. That unhappy ending is quite brutal (it's by the way closer to El Puro than The Great Silence): McCord is shot of his horse, and while crawling and stumbling he's shot some four or five times more; it's a scene that remains quite sadistic today, probably because this film has - unlike most contemporary shockers - a 'human edge': we learn to care about these people, including madman McCord. The slow pace might put off some viewers and Alex Cord's languid voice and acting style may work a little disorienting, but if you're attuned to them, Cord is perfectly believable as the troubled gunslinger. Carlo Rustichelli's unusual score, inspired by Gustav Mahler, also works better in this uncut, more solemn version.
A Minute to pray, a Second to Die is an interesting genre example, and I would call it a must see for every fan of the genre, but it falls a bit short to be called one of the real great spaghetti westerns. Nicoletta Machiavelli is beautiful as ever, but her role is shoehorned, a couple of scenes seem foolish (Ryan's entrance in the town of Tuscosa for example) and they could've done more with some locations, the beautiful town of Escondido in particular.
