Sabata Review (Scherpschutter)

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SABATA (1969)
Director:
  • Gianfranco Parolini

Cast:

  • Lee Van Cleef
  • William Berger
  • Linda Veras
  • Franco Ressel
  • Pedro Sanchez (Ignazio Spalla)
  • Nick Jordan (Aldo Canti)
  • Gianni Rizzo
  • Antonio Gradoli
  • Robert Hundar (Claudio Undari)
  • Spartaco Conversi
  • Janos Bartha
  • Romano Puppo
  • Marco Zuanelli

Music:

  • Marcello Giombini


Sabata (Ehi amico... c'è Sabata, hai chiuso!)

Sabata (1969) | Adios Sabata (1970) | Return of Sabata (1971)

Review A | Review B | Review C

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Although Lee Van Cleef is wearing a kind of Colonel Mortimer outfit, Sabata is much closer in spirit to director Gianfranco Parolini's own If you meet Sartana, Pray for your Death. 1969 was a difficult year for the Italian western industry. The Golden Years of the spaghetti western seemed over, and Sergio Leone had created an unsurpassable keystone with his meta-western Once upon a time in the West. The production of spaghetti westerns was in decline, but Parolini's small, tongue-in-cheek western, made on a shoestring, and presenting a hero who owed more to James Bond than to the man with No Name, had done reasonably well. Sergio Leone was one of the first to notice that there was something in the air when he heard people in the street corrupting the film's title to If you meet Sartana, tell him he's an asshole (stronzo). This film would turn the genre upside down and inside out. Parolini had been at odds with his producer Aldo Addobbati and when Alberto Grimaldi, from Leone's production house Pea, offered him the chance to direct this movie, he gladly accepted. Grimaldi offered him a much bigger budget and the chance to work with genre icons like Lee Van Cleef and Carlo Simi.


Sabata witnesses a bank robbery in which a load of army money is stolen. He kills the robbers (from a distance, with one of his superior weapons) and takes the money back into town, but then discovers that the people behind the robbery are three respected citizens, the judge, the banker and a rancher called Stengel, the most dangerous of the three, a homosexual sadist who has a private room in which he executes people. Sabata threatens to inform the army and starts blackmailing the three dignitaries. Two of them are willing to pay, but Stengel convinces them to hire professional killers to eliminate Sabata. All professional gunmen are outsmarted by Sabata, but then Stengel asks Sabata's old acquaintance Banjo if he's willing to give it a try ...

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Parolini wasn't the only person who made the switch from Sartana to Sabata. Berger had been in the first Sartana movie too, and so had Rizzo, the fat judge. Furthermore Parolini took the cameraman, screenwriter and editor with him. No wonder there are a lot of similarities. The film has a typical labyrinth plot, with endless twists and double-crosses, in which no-one can be trusted. Not even when he's dead. Like Sartana, Sabata is a black-clad gunman with a preference for miniature guns and a staggering ability to pop up in the wrong place at the right time. At the same time Sabata is more down-to-earth than the near-spectral Sartana. Like Colonel Mortimer, he uses a rifle with an extendable barrel for long-range shooting and as a person he is the proverbial new man in town who changes everything. By challenging the authority of the people in command, he also attracts the attention of those who live in the margin. Significantly two outcasts obtrude themselves upon him, a foul-mouthed town drunk called Garrincha (or Carrincha), and a mute acrobat by the name of Alley Cat. And then there's also this man in the middle, Banjo, who has his eyes on the money too. Sabata is presented as an a-sexual person, only interested in trickery and blackmail, and in this sense Banjo is his counterpart: an inexorable womanizer. But at the same time he is his very picture: Sabata cannot be trusted, not even when he's dead. Banjo can't even be trusted when he plays.


Lee was a little reluctant to accept the role, because he didn't know Parolini. He therefore asked Parolini to show him one of the things he had done. Parolini took Lee to a showing of Five for hell, a lighthearted version of the popular men-on-a-mission genre. It broke the ice. He's a pleasure to watch, as always, but probably goes a bit too often for that famous smile. It's also clear that working in the desert, and his daily quantity of beers, had started to take their toll at this point in his career. But excellent support is given by Franco Ressel, as Stengel, and Berger - in what is most probably his best spaghetti western part - as the red-haired womanizer with a rifle hidden in the instrument that gave him his name. To honor Robert Hundar, the first star of the now large production company Pea, he was given a small part in the movie: he's the first victim Stengel shoots in his execution room. The casting of the beautiful Linda Veras as Banjo's love interest is a bit surprising: at the time she was the wife of Sergio Sollima, the most serious of all spaghetti western directors; maybe she needed a more light-hearted experience after all this talk about Marxism and Revolution at home.


Carlo Simi's excellent production design does a lot for the movie; the western town of the Elios Studios never looked more colorful and lively and Stengel's torture room is a fascinating creation. Giombini's score is excellent, although the main theme is used a few times too many, as is more often the case in spaghetti westerns. Van Cleef's comments on the movie, haven't been very consistent. He seemed happy with it (and its success) first, but was more sour in later interviews (1). This is understandable; the movie seemed to give him a new breath as a western actor, but would also contribute to the eventual downfall of the genre (and his career, after Sabata it went downhill for him).


The serpentine plot unfolds at a high speed, and if you have a close look at it, some hooks and eyes may become visible (at one point Sabata is asked why he doesn't simply take the money and run!); it also loses focus a little along the way, turning the movie into a series of sketches in which Van Cleef shakes off opponents who are after his life. It doesn't really matter: this is not a film you watch for great story-telling or deeper meanings. But If you're looking for a concoction of tongue-in-cheek humor and violent action, Sabata may well be the movie you're looking for. And if by any chance you have to watch it and don't like those ingredients, you can always gape in admiration at Linda Veras.



Note:

  • (1) See for instance: Alex Cox, 10.000 Ways to die, p. 265. Van Cleef didn't blame Parolini, but thought the scripts were below par. In his words: "I did as good as I could, but if things aren't in the script, you can't direct them and you sure can't act them."


Screenshots from the MGM DVD (R2)

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--By Scherpschutter

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