Day of Anger Review (Scherpschutter)

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

GiornidellIra.jpg
DAY OF ANGER (1967)
Director:
  • Tonino Valerii

Cast:

  • Lee van Cleef
  • Giuliano Gemma
  • Walter Rilla
  • Andrea Bosic
  • Giorgio Gargullo
  • José Calvo
  • Benito Stefanelli
  • Al Mulock
  • Christa Linder
  • Yvonne Sanson
  • Ennio Balbo
  • Lukas Ammann
  • Hans-Otto Alberty
  • Anna Orso
  • Romano Puppo
  • Virginio Gazzolo
  • Ricardo Palacios

Music:

  • Riz Ortolani


Day of Anger (I Giorni dell'Ira)

See Database Page

The second of three westerns Lee van Cleef made with the couple of producers Alfonso Sansone and Enrico Chroscicki (the other two being Death Rides a Horse and Beyond the Law) and the most successful. With Van Cleef being paired with a younger actor in a master-pupil plot, there are some similarities to Death Rides a Horse, but this time he isn't paired with a fellow American like John-Philip Law, but with the first Italian mega star of the genre, Giuliano Gemma, knick-named Il Pistolero Nazionale. As we shall see, the choice for an Italian co-star was highly symbolical.

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The movie tells the story of a young man, Scott, who's looking for the father figure he never had in his life. Usually these kind of stories are about an ambitious but inexperienced young man, ill-equipped for the job he has been assigned. In this case, things are a bit more extreme: Scott is a bastard and an outcast, the son of a local prostitute, who doesn't know who his father is, and is therefore set to do the dirtiest of all jobs, collecting the excrements of the citizens of his hometown, Clifton. He has only two friends, his employer, Murph, once the sheriff, but now more or less an outcast himself, and the blind town drunk Bill. As he's dreaming of a life as a gunslinger, Scott is practicing a lot with a wooden gun in Murph's stable. And then one day the famous gunslinger Frank Talby rides into Clifton and addresses Scott...


Officially the movie's script is based on a German novel, Der Tod ritt Dienstags, by a certain Ron Barker, but according to Valerii the title was only pushed forward to get two German production companies on board and none of the screenwriters had read the book (1). It's very hard to find any info on it, and for a while I thought they simply made up a title and a name, but apparently there is indeed a very obscure 1963 novel carrying this title (2). Anyway, based on a novel or not, the script is rather literate, with a over-symbolic, Freudian storyline about a youngster who must destroy the image of the person he has idolized in order to become a man himself. Talby is an inspirational teacher and Scott an avid student, but in the end both men will be disappointed: the aging Talby wanted to mould the younger man in his image, and didn't realize that Scott was a person with a conscience. Scott, on the other hand, only realizes very late that his mentor is a ruthless man. Talby is blackmailing a couple of local dignitaries, who are not as virtuous as they appear to be, and when he has dealt with them, he virtually takes over the town. Scott finally breaks the alliance with him, when Talby cold-bloodedly shoots Murph, who has been re-elected as sheriff and stands up against the new dictator.

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Day of Anger often appears on people's list of favorite spaghetti westerns; it's currently n° 14 on our Top 20 (3). At the same time it seems to divide genre buffs. Giusti thinks that the action scenes are great but that there are too many slow stretches between them. Alex Cox thinks it's plodding and slack beside Death Rides a Horse (4). On the other hand Jean-François Giré and Tom Betts think it's one of the great spaghetti westerns. Personally I'm more with those who like it, but I admit the story works a bit mechanically here and there. The patricide towards the end, feels like a symbolical act of the Italian western killing the American example it first tried to ape, then tried to rival (5). Giusti calls the mid-section particularly strong and thinks the duel on horseback (Van Cleef and Benito Stefanelli riding towards each other in knights' style) is the movie's highlight. I don't agree. To me the first half is almost perfect and I also like the cathartic finale, but I think the mid-section is plodding and I don't like this duel on horseback. Maybe it looks great, but it feels thrown-in, an isolated scene, detached from the rest of the movie.


Even if the Hollywood western is symbolically killed in the film's finale, Day of Anger has a certain American feel. It's longer, more deliberately paced and more psychological than most Italian westerns, and there are similarities to the Hollywood town westerns of the fifties, notably Edward Dmytryck's Warlock (1958). But it has the violence and strong visual effects of the Italian style of film making. There are several cute angles and compositions, the most remarkable of them all the iconic image of van Cleef shooting between Gemma's legs, because contrary to what he's been told, the young man has placed himself between a gun and the intended victim. Some story elements may feel a little mechanical, but the actors make them work. Gemma's boyish charm (at the age of 29!) and athletic skills make this metamorphosis from a shy young man into a proficient gunslinger believable, and Van Cleef's portrayal of Frank Talby, allows him to show all possible (often contradictory) aspects of his screen persona. His Frank Talby is one of the most charismatic villains of the genre, both charming and frightening, often at the same time. Riz Ortolani's jazzy score is wonderful, almost hypnotic; I know of people who often start the movie just to listen to the main theme (played over an equally hypnotic credit sequence).



Notes:

-By Scherpschutter

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