Dakota Joe (A Man and a Colt) Review
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Dakota Joe (Un Hombre y un Colt)
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Roberto Undari (or Robert Hundar as he used to call himself as an actor), is one of those names that, in my mind, are linked to early Spanish westerns with a pre-Leone feel. I would have sworn that he was Spanish, but he was in fact Italian, born in Castelvetrano, Sicily, in 1935. He usually was second-billed, after one of those American actors who had been working in Europe before the western craze started. For Un Hombre y un Colt, released in 1967, Undari was top-billed. The film blends elements from two types of movies, the Lone Gunman and the Zapata westerns, and there are a couple of scenes and story elements taken from Leone’s Dollar movies. At one point the hero is beaten up severely after giving some assistance to a young couple, later he is left behind in the desert by his ebullient Mexican partner. By this time, all directors, good, bad or ugly, wanted to roar like a real Leone.
Undari plays Dakota Joe, apparently a gunman with a reputation (even across the border people are startled by the sound of his name), who’s asked by a Mexican landlord, Don Carlos, to kill a local doctor with revolutionary ideas. Waiting for the doctor to return to the region, he witnesses so much cruelty and injustice, that he starts having second thoughts about his commission and the things going on in Mexico. When he’s finally about to shoot the doctor in the back, he removes the bullet from his gun, giving it to the doctor as a token to the incident. He then decides to return the blood money to his commissioner, but again changes his mind when he witnesses how Don Carlos’s sadistic younger brother evokes his jus primae noctis (that is the right of a lord to take the virginity of a bride working on his estate) on the wedding day of a young Mexican couple (1). In the true style of the Zapata western hero, the hired gun changes sides …
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Un Hombre y un Colt is an entertaining little western, but it’s also uneven, often a little erratic, as if the screenwriters had pieced together elements from different scripts (which they probably did). The first hour is all Zapata, with weeping women and kids, a peon 'crucified' on a fence, and two others buried to their necks in the sand by the evil Carlos brothers and their henchmen. But the younger brother (the one from the jus primae noctis) is killed halfway through, and then, all of a sudden, the whole thing turns into a revenge western, with Undari going after the man who had first stolen his horse, then saved his life, and finally left him behind in the desert to die of thirst. There are quite a few continuity problems, with story elements aborted or scenes interrupted in rather abrupt fashion. Sancho’s character is also a bit problematic. He comes and goes, in all kind of shapes (thief, revolutionary, traitor) and seems to have an explanation for all his metamorphoses, but in the end all explanations are denied. And believe it or not: he still lives with his dominant mother, a formidable battle-axe who smokes a mean cigar!
It took me some time to get used to Undari as the lone gunman. He physically towers above the other actors, but somehow he doesn’t have the looks of this stranger in town type of hero. But he and Sancho play well together and the plot keeps them busy. The score (signed by two composers) is quirky, almost whimsical, and only occasionally we get a plaintive trumpet. Director Demicheli was an Argentine. He was a sort of jack-of-all -trades of the European genre cinema, working as director, screen-writer, producer and consultant. He was a (non-credited) consultant for Sollima on Face to Face. Demicheli had left his home country after a series of conflicts with the Peronist government. He had settled in Madrid and would only return to his native country to make a documentary, El Misterio Eva Peron (1986). It’s interesting to see that one of the most despicable characters in the movie is a woman, Beatrice (played by Gloria Milland). She is arrogant, demanding and rancorous; she falls for Joe, but incites Don Carlos’ men to torture him viciously after he has rejected her. She also looks down on the working class people (the peons that is) from her room in Don Carlos’ ‘palace’. Those scenes were shot in the 17th Century complex of Nuevo Batzan, West of Madrid, more often used to represent the residence of a filthy rich Mexican landowner (2). An anti-Peronist spaghetti western? Why not.
Notes:
- (1) Jus primae noctis, or in French 'Le droit du Seigneur'. There seems to be no historical evidence that such a right ever existed. However, it is mentioned in numerous literary sources, starting with the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesj, one of the earliest surviving literary works in history. It’s also mentioned by Voltaire, who wrote a five-act comedy called Le Droit du Seigneur, and by Beaumarchais, in his play Marriage of Figaro (later adapted by Mozart). More recently it was used as a story element by Mel Gibson in Braveheart (1995). Most experts on the subject think it has a historical base, although it was never sealed by any official document.
- For Nuevo Batzan, see: http://y-yasuda.net/nuevo%20baztan.htm
--By Scherpschutter
