Navajo Joe Review (Scherpschutter)

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< Navajo Joe




  • Cast: Burt Reynorlds, Aldo Sambrell, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Tanya Lopert, Peter Cross, Fernando Rey, Franca Polesello, Lucio Rosato, Chris Huerta, Lorenzo Robledo
  • Music: Ennio Morricone



Apparently Burt Reynolds once said that this movie was only shown in prisons and airplanes, because nobody could leave. The film clearly wasn’t born under a lucky star. When Reynolds signed in he was under the impression that Sergio Leone would direct the movie. Corbucci, on the other hand, thought Marlon Brando would play the lead role. Burt had to be content with the ‘wrong Sergio’, Corbucci had to settle for Burt. Admittedly the film didn’t do for Reynolds what A Fistful of Dollars had done for his friend Clint Eastwood, but it’s well worth ninety minutes of your life. With a Indian avenger persecuting a half breed murderer, it’s quite a unique spaghetti western. With it’s premise of – as someone on IMDB put it - an Indian saving capitalism for racist townspeople, it’s even quite unique for a Corbucci movie.


A gang of sadistic outlaws, led by the half-breed Duncan brothers, hunt down Indians and sell their scalps for a dollar a head. After the Duncan gang has eradicated his village, a young Navajo warrior called Joe vows revenge. In town the gang is told that their services are no longer needed, but one of the citizens tells them about half a million dollars that will be transported to the town of Esperanza. The Duncan gang assaults the train, kill all passengers, and start waiting for their ally, who knows the combination of the safe. But at night Joe kills the guards and rides the train and the safe into town. He offers his services, asking the sheriff’s star and one dollar a head of the town’s people. After he has hidden the gold he is captured by the gang and brutally tortured. But he is set free during the night and manages to lure the gang out of town, to the Indian graveyard where all people of his tribe are buried …


Navajo Joe is one of those Italian westerns that is easy to criticize and was therefore loaded with scorn when first released. It is neither realistic nor authentic; Navajos lived in hogans (huts), not tipis (tents), and they were rather peaceful farmers, not fierce warriors; Burt Reynolds, who plays the Navajo, is of Cherokee descent , but behaves more like an Apache (and is dressed like no particular Indian at all); Duncan never sends more than two men at the time after Joe, so he can kill them two by two, and when Joe surrenders to Duncan (who drags along the gorgeous Nicoletta Machiavelli by her hair) he could’ve easily shot the guy’s brains out. But at the same time Navajo Joe is a tremendous action movie. Hardly five minutes pass without Burt shooting, stabbing or clubbing an opponent to death. He jumps off rocks, overthrows horses and riders, shoots his rifle from the hip and throws tomahawk and knife with utmost precision. For its time the movie is remarkably violent, with high body count and some very graphic killings. It’s sometimes suggested that it was an influence on Stallone for the Rambo sequels, when he wanted to make a real superhero out of the rather gloomy and tragic Rambo character from First Blood (1982, Ted Kotscheff)

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For the first time in a Corbucci movie, the main villain (Sanbrell) gets the opportunity to explain his repulsive behaviour. As a half-breed from an Indian mother and a white father he has never been respected by anybody, therefore he hates both Indians and whites. This scene is echoed by Joe’s brief speech, in which he explains that he, as a Navajo, is the real American: his parents and ancestors were born in America, unlike the parents and ancestors of the townspeople, who refuse to give him the sheriff’s star because only ‘Americans’ can be sheriff. Such lines give some depth to both the characters and the story, but a little more could have been done with the racist issue and some other characters, notably Nicoletta Machiavelli’s. She complained afterwards that she was given hardly any text and had felt a little lost in the movie. The reason might well have been Burt Reynolds. With Brando involved in it, the racist issue surely would have been emphasized more. But Brando didn’t come, Burt did, and the movie was turned into a more straightforward action flick. After all, in ’66 Burt was not much more than an ex-football player and an ex-stuntman.


The film was nearly entirely shot on location in Spain, in Colmenar Viejo, Guadix and Almeria. The opening credits also mention Torremocha, North-East of Madrid, a region only occasionally used used by spaghetti western makers. Only a limited number of the scenes were shot in the Laurentiis western town, which was still in course of construction (it was Dino de Laurentiis first western), and for the scenes with the train arriving in the town of Esperanza, a tiny western ‘corner’ was built around an old railway station near Guadix. The Navajo burial ground, were the film’s climax takes place, was a viewpoint , located high in the mountains outside Guadix, overlooking the valley. The opening scene was shot in Italy, at Tor Caldara, near Anzio, a location often more often used by Corbucci (1). Set design and location work both are marvelous, but working on location apparently robbed the crew from extras: the town often looks under-populated, which makes Joe asking one dollar a head (a reference to the working title of the movie, Un Dollaro a Testa)for his services a little funny. Corbucci isn’t mentioned as co-author of either story or script (and both could’ve done with some of famous re-writings), probably because he didn’t really like the idea of a spaghetti western with Indians in the first place (but Dino de Laurentiis insisted on having an Indian as avenger). Still some Corbucci-isms shine through. It’s often said that one of the essential differences between Leone and Corbucci, is their approach to female characters (2). To Leone – at least until his Claudia Cardinale days – they were impediment to narrative and action, Corbucci nearly always presented them as more positive figures, even if they were minor characters. Although the part is a little underwritten, it’s Machiavelli’s half-breed girl Estella who gets closest to Joe. It’s one of the saloon girls who learns about the plan to rob to train, and the banker’s daughter is the only member of the respectable citizens who gladly accepts Joe’s offer to help the town. With the help of Reynolds, who supervised the stunts, Corbucci made the most of the action scenes, with some cute angles, crisp editing and surprising camera movements. The use of the widescreen is really stunning. The ending is particularly fine, with Joe’s horse bringing back the stolen money to the townspeople and Nicoletta sending the horse back to its master afterwards. Ennio Morricone’s score is one of the oddest of his career. It isn’t bad, but with its soaring shrieks and yells it’s almost feels kitschy. Parts of it were used in the comedy Election and in Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 2.


Contemporary reviews weren’t very positive. Several critics, both in Italy and abroad, were worried about the increasingly violent tendencies of the genre. The Centro Cattolico Cinematografico (from the Vatican) called both the characters and the action scenes disgusting (3). In Italy it got a ’18 rating’ (frustrating the film’s chances at the box office) and in most international versions at least three scenes were (partly or entirely) cut: the killing of a mother with a baby during the train assault, the killing of Fernando Rey in a protestant church, and the marking of a victim’s forehead with a tribe symbol by Joe, prior to killing the man with a stone (4). For some reason the film was a smash hit in Japan and for quite some time the Japanese disc was the only official DVD release. The film seems to have found its audience over the years, and recent reviews have been more positive. Some of the shortcomings you notice when you watch the film for the first time (improbabilities, several haphazard scenes, some awkward dialogue)seem to become less annoying with multiple viewings. However, the film lacks Corbucci’s touches of wry humour; most comic relief is provided by Chuck the banjo player, played by variety artist Nino Imperato, who seems more a relic from the days when Corbucci was mainly known as a director of burlesque comedies, usually starring national symbol Totò (5). I’m beginning to like Navajo Joe more and more, but somehow I still cannot shake the feeling that it is a missed opportunity: it could have been a masterpiece, a companion piece to The Great Silence and The Mercenary. Some think the villain in this movie is better than the hero. Sanbrel probably has his finest hour, and with guys like Huerta, Rosato and Robledo in your gang, it must have been a pleasure to be bad. I think Reynolds is more than adequate, but his wig is laughable and there’s not much chemistry between him and Machiavelli. Although he spoke about Corbucci as the’wrong Sergio’, the two men seemed to carry along rather well. Much to the other Sergio’s surprise Burt even approved of the plan of being killed at the end of the movie, but they were forced to alter the anticipated scene; as a result Joe’s fate at the end of the movie is left a bit undecided (6).


According to assistant director Ruggero Deodato, Reynolds thinks a lot more positive about the film himself today. When they met more than thirty years afterwards in Rome, Burt still remembered the two men had a furious argument and Deodato called him a ‘stronzo’ (an asshole) (7). Frayling feels Burt continued the part in Deliverance (1972, John Boorman). Burt doesn’t use bow and arrow in Navajo Joe, but he does in Boorman’s movie, so I’d say the cover design of the British release of Navajo Joe is as much inspired by Deliverance as Navajo Joe (8). Although she didn’t really like the film, today Nicoletta Machiavelli thinks it was an essential experience in her life: "I played the part of a Navajo girl, and fifteen years later I was a guide in the largest Indian reservation of the United States, with the most beautiful landscape in the world, falling in love with the way of life of those fascinating people"(9)



Notes:

  • (2) “While … [talking to ] … Alex Cox on Saturday, I asked him what it was about Sergio Corbucci, about whom he’s always spoken with great enthusiasm, that particularly appealed to him. One thing, he replied, was the way Corbucci presented women as positive figures in his films, even when their characters may be only marginal with regard to the main storyline, and how he differed in this respect from Leone, for whom women were largely seen as an impediment to action.” - John Exshaw, Cinema Retro, Reports from the Lido
  • (3) Gianfranco Casadio, Se sei Vivo, Spara! Storie di pistoleri, banditi e bounty killers nel western all’Italiana (1942-1998), pag. 82-83
  • (4) Jean-François Giré, Il était une fois le western européen
  • (5) Enrico Giacoveli, La Commedia all’Italiana, la storia, I luoghi, gli autori, gli attori, I film, pag. 192 – Corbucci made some thirty comedies, and to most Italians he is still best known as the director of some very popular comedies, like I Due Marescialli (1961, with Toto) and Il Giorno più Corto (1962)
  • (6) Marco Giusti, Dizionario del western all’italiana
  • (7) Marco Giusti, Dizionario del western all’italiana


--By Scherpschutter

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