MY TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL JOURNAL: Now Playing at THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

UPDATED 5/11/2010 11:48 a.m.

UPDATED YET AGAIN 5/11/2010 5:19 p.m.

UPDATED YET AGAIN 5/12/2010 4:33 p.m.




The entries here at SLIFR have been a little skimpier than usual since April 22, the principal reason being that I obtained press credentials to cover the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival, which took over Hollywood for four days from April 22 to April 25, and have spent most of my free time since the festival closed writing furiously, happily about it. Just not for SLIFR. I only managed to make it into the media corps through the good graces of Keith Uhlich, editor of The House Next Door, who responded with a resounding yes when I asked if he'd be interested in me writing something about the festival for the widely read blog; and Ed Gonzalez, editor at Slant magazine where THND shines as the magazine's official blog, who was kind enough to write a letter of assignment for me to send to the folks handling publicity for the festival. The only instruction I received from Keith was that he didn't want it to be a dry account of the movies I saw-- Keith wanted my perspective not only on the movies but also, since it was the first real film festival I'd ever attended, on the experience of being there. We communicated occasionally during the festival-- my text messages to Keith could usually be boiled down to some variation of "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!"-- and when the process of writing about it all finally got under way he never once suggested I was going too long. He kept saying that he wanted an in-depth, thorough account, and by all measures-- his and mine-- that's what I finally delivered to him late this past week. The writing was very pleasurable, though it seemed to take an ungodly amount of time, time which had to be sandwiched in between longer-than-usual work hours and lots of family time. I had lots of notes, and there was no danger of the details fading too quickly, but still I wanted to get something together as fast as I could. Even so, it still took a week and a half after the festival, usually working between 10:00 pm and 6:00 a.m. whenever I could (including work nights), but I got it done, and again, Keith never balked at the length when he had it in hand.


And now it's ready for you to read. Click right on over to The House Next Door and get a taste of what being part of this Hollywood community of classic film lovers was really like. The comments column will be open at the House, of course, but I'd love it if you checked in here and let me and the SLIFR readership know your thoughts as well.

When Robert Osborne revealed, just before the screening of the newly restored Metropolis (which opens this week in New York and Los Angeles in the version we saw, with those recently discovered 25 minutes added) that there would indeed be a 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival, the crowd roared its approval and I began thinking of ways to talk Keith into turning me loose again next year. For certainly I would not have had this extraordinary experience without his support and encouragement. But for now, feel free to dive back in with me (I'm excited to read it again myself after Keith's editing) and follow the trail of crumbs I left through some of the big-ticket shows as well as some of the less high-profile screenings, which were, as I'm sure is often the case, where the most unexpected of jewels got their chance to shine. To have my first film festival be one that was entirely not about grabbing swag, being seen, scoping out the hottest tickets to the hottest new titles, or trying to second-guess the market life of said hot titles when they finally get purchased and distribution is secured, was a real treat. Everyone at the TCM Classic Film Festival seemed to be there not for reasons of status or attitude or scrambling for position in the business, but for a simple love of the movies, and of classic movies in particular. It was an event infused with excitement that certainly had a veneer of nostalgia but was also profoundly about what seeing the classics in their proper environs is like, and what those classics can teach us about how to see and appreciate films from all countries and periods of history. It was an event that had a once-in-a-lifetime frisson, and I'm so glad its success has insured that once-in-a-lifetime will come around at least one more time, not to mention the possibility of this weekend in April becoming the cornerstone of a grand new film festival tradition all about the fabled and fantastic history of Hollywood itself.



*************************************************

UPDATE: Some interesting reaction to the piece from Vadim Rizov at IFC.com. An interesting discussion is developing in the comments thread as well.

*************************************************

UPDATE: Old pal Michael Guillen, yet another associate from the early days of my blogging adventure here at SLIFR, has posted a series of commentary and transcripts of on-stage interviews that took place during the TCM Classic Film Festivals on his excellent blog The Evening Class. Click on the links for accounts of conversations between Robert Osborne and Ileana Douglas and Casey LaLonde which immediately preceded the screening of A Woman's Face (1941); Anjelica and Danny Huston which introduced the screening of their father John's masterpiece The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); and finally Eli Wallach, who so wonderfully prefaced the screening of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).

I'm so glad Michael was there to record these conversations and make them available to us all, particularly the Eli Wallach interview, the only one of these three I was able to attend myself. It's great to have all the commentary this fine actor offered transcribed in such detail. It just pains me to know that Michael was not only at the TCM Film Festival, but in the very same auditorium at the same time I was, and yet we were each unaware of the presence of the other. Michael, I have already begun preparing for (that is, eagerly anticipating) next year's festival, and we will definitely meet then if not before! Thanks so much for these great posts!

**************************************************

UPDATE: More from Mr. Guillen-- Luise Rainer and Douglas Trumbull. If we're lucky, more to come!

**************************************************

MOTHER STANDS FOR COMFORT

To each his own, eh? (Ma Kettle always reminded me more of my grandma, but what the hell. No offense, mater!) However it translates, Happy Mother's Day to you and yours!

**********************************************

RAW MEAT: THE DAMNED UNDERGROUND

A relatively forgotten artifact of early ‘70s British horror made at a time when the Hammer and Amicus boutiques were still going strong, Raw Meat (1972; known in the UK as Death Line) delivers on the acrid and seedy grindhouse promise of its evocative, near-tactile title while at the same time easily surpassing trashy contemporaries like Shriek of the Mutilated, The Corpse Grinders or any given Herschell Gordon Lewis romp in terms of directorial and storytelling integrity. Its director, Gary Sherman, would go on to make the disappointing Dead and Buried (1981), the vicious exploitation hit Vice Squad (1982), which introduced many of us to the singular charms of Wings Hauser, and the wholly unnecessary Poltergeist III (1988), none of which would lead any reasonable person to conclude that an early Sherman film, one in which the talents that led to those later mediocrities would presumably be even more crudely hewn, would be worth anything more than a cursory look. Perhaps this is why even after I became aware of Raw Meat it took me so long to make my way around to actually seeing it. But when I read Jim Emerson’s recommendation in 2006, it seemed that the time was finally right. The movie I saw shocked me, not only as a piece of sleazy, gory horror, but as a fairly sophisticated piece of filmmaking, one with considerable humor, directorial confidence—the young Sherman turns out to be quite enraptured by the long take, and damned if he doesn’t know how to use the technique to devastating effect—and astonishing sympathy for its mysterious subterranean devil(s). In his piece Jim talked about the thematic relevance of the film’s opening shot:


"The opening shot itself begins with an out-of-focus blur of colors, accompanied by a dirty, grinding, sluggish, metallic guitar/bass/drums riff that sounds like Angelo Badalamenti's score for the endless-nightmare Roadhouse scene in David Lynch's Twin Peaks; Fire Walk with Me. As the image comes into focus we see a Magritte-like silhouette of a British gent looking at dirty magazines. Then the shot goes out of focus again. The pattern is repeated throughout the titles sequence as the naughty fellow visits one unseemly establishment after another: out of focus (indistinguishable, unidentifiable); then in focus (ah, that's what we're seeing/where we are); then back out again. And, wouldn't you know it, that's the shape of the mystery (and the investigation) itself: Someone's whereabouts are unknown. Then he is seen. Then he disappears. The aim is to fill in those out-of-focus parts, to figure out where he came from, how he got there, and where he went."


Indeed, it seems that middle-aged Brit, a man of some sophistication and importance which is telegraphed in classic B-movie shorthand by his crisp suit, bowler hat and faint air of arrogance (he seems only to be missing a monocle), has just finished a gentleman’s tour of one of London’s red-light neighborhoods. His evening ends on an unexpected and rather inconvenient note, however, when he is viciously attacked by a growling, unidentifiable creature while waiting for a train at an Underground station. The man is soon after discovered by a young couple, an American named Alex (David Ladd) and Patricia (Sharon Gurney), a Londoner who insists over David’s mild protestations (“In New York you step over these guys all the time!”) that they run up to get help for the man, who may still be alive. When the police arrive the body is no longer where they left it, and there’s no indication of evidence as to where it might have gotten off to. Enter Donald Pleasance, in what might just be his funniest, juiciest performance, as the cantankerous Inspector Calhoun, who attempts to investigate the man’s disappearance despite unusual resistance from the MI5 and comes to believe that this victim may be only the most recent of many. Calhoun soon discovers that the truth is far more grisly than he or anyone could have reasonably predicted, with awful implications that reach all the way back through the history of the Underground’s construction.


Just as in the Hammer science fiction classic Quatermass and the Pit, known in America as Five Million Years to Earth (1967), the secrets of Raw Meat lay just beneath the thrumming structure of this famously efficient mass transit system. (Before the film is over, the Underground’s automated warning to “mind the doors” will take on a chilling poignancy.) But where Quatermass would encounter evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, the horrors unearthed beneath the rails and from behind a pile of abandoned rubble in Raw Meat are the terrible result of human industrial indifference. Soon, a cover-up of a disastrous accident during construction of one of the subway tunnels some 50 years in the past will be discovered, one in which a group of exploited workers were buried alive and left to die. The film’s chilling central conceit is the slow and deliberate revelation of the perverse society that developed as a result of those workers’ unlikely survival—a cannibalistic group of underground dwellers who have produced a generation or two of ever-mutating citizenry that only emerge from the shadows to obtain the foodstuff referred to in the movie’s none-too-subtle American title.


In Raw Meat the gore comes right on schedule, and as a result it will likely satisfy even the most rambunctious and demanding midnight crowd raised on the various grotesqueries emblematic of the Saw era. But the movie distinguishes itself in the turns it takes once we’re allowed inside a sealed-off vault of nightmares that no “normal” man has glimpsed in over 50 years. Sherman, in collaboration with cinematographer Alex Thomson (who would go on to shoot Dr. Phibes Rises Again before moving on to big-ticket pictures like Excalibur, The Keep, Year of the Dragon, The Krays and Alien 3), introduces us to this underground society via a bravura, gasp-inducing tracking shot which slowly, with surprising precision and even tenderness, reveals to the most jaded viewer’s eyes much more than the expected chamber of horrors. To tell much more of what is revealed would be a gesture of bad faith; the less you know going in, the more likely you are to be bowled over by the degree of pain the movie conjures not only for the victims who have gone missing, but for those who took them away.

Suffice it to say that this flesh-eating society, to whom so much wrong was inflicted all those years ago by a bankrupt contractor (and, by extension, the British government) all-too-willing to sacrifice lives in order to save face and ensure the continued construction of their ambitious underground railway, has finally come near extinction, and the rituals of memorial and tribute in which this lone surviving wretch participates finally lends his underground dwelling all the trappings of what it really always was—a living tomb. The true audacity of Raw Meat is crystallized by what we discover about the hidden existence of the movie’s central fiend. Everything he does after he bids an agonizing farewell to his last companion is informed by the sadness and injustice of his fate and that of his fellow victims, as well as his desperation to save that companion. (I think that even includes his ill-fated attempt to communicate with Patricia once she finds herself wandering around in that awful lair, even after it becomes clear what he ultimately has in mind.) Sherman doesn’t use these revelations to justify the horrors perpetrated by this wronged monster, but instead to contextualize them, to expand them beyond mindless cannibalistic attacks (and the superficial jolts contained therein) and into a light in which they might at least be understood as something beyond animalistic instinct and hunger. This thematic concern is the meat, however raw, on the bones of Sherman’s disturbing, enthralling, at times even hilarious thriller, one that deserves its growing reputation as a horror film with more on its mind than just the frights it delivers with grimy style and a cruel and canny efficiency.

(Raw Meat screens in a rare 35mm print Saturday, May 8 at 11:55 p.m. at the New Beverly Cinema.)



*****************************************************

DOWN A DUSTY ROAD: MR. PEEL WRITES ABOUT SAM PECKINPAH'S JUNIOR BONNER

“Thinking about Sam Peckinpah’s Junior Bonner, a film I’ve finally gotten around to seeing, makes me think about how I’m continuing to discover films like this and falling for the smaller pleasures that can be found in them. It can lead to some pretty rich rewards if I look hard enough and with the summer movie season about to start I’m fairly certain I’m not going to find any such rewards in those movies. The films that I’m looking for can be found on their own open road that I sometimes drive down, looking for what I haven’t seen yet, reminding myself how special some of them can really be. Like JR Bonner himself, it’s something that I have to do.”

- Mr. Peel, Mr. Peel’s Sardine Liqueur, ”Genuine as a Sunrise”

****************************************************

The treasures we Los Angelenos have available to see on the big screen each and every week have been on my mind a lot lately. We let so many of them slip past us for various reasons, not the least of which because we tend to get used to being surrounded by such golden opportunities that we begin to take them for granted. At least I do. I know one person can’t see them all, but when I read something as moving as Mr. Peel’s account of Sam Peckinpah’s rarely screened Junior Bonner at the New Beverly a couple weeks ago I wish more than ever that one person could. The film was half of an astutely paired double feature with Jackie Brown (“Guess which one had the bigger crowd,” the writer dares). The movies are linked, as Mr. Peel points out, by having been made by artists whose primary audience expected far more gunplay and violence than the more mature, contemplative movies they got and as a result stayed away in droves from both films upon their original releases. But Mr. Peel digs deeper into Peckinpah’s picture, beautifully sketching the movie’s quiet dance with approaching change and its lovely evocation of “a small piece of life in progress” that could often be found in even the director’s most violent character studies. Whether you’ve seen Junior Bonner or not, please take the time to click over to Mr. Peel’s Sardine Liqueur and avail yourself of this lovely post, which is personal in a way that honors both the movie and the spirit of those who would seek it out 38 years after its release. And then go straight to Netflix and put it on the top of your queue, like I did.

(Thanks, Michael.)

**********************************************

A CINCO DE MAYO THEY'LL NEVER FORGET!

The Grindhouse project continues to bear fruit!

Thanks to Larry, aka TLRHB for this oh-so-timely treat, the real preview for the movie that kicked off Grindhouse in 2007 which we've been waiting for ever since. And after you've thrilled to Machete, check out Larry's reminder about this week's DVD release of Joe Dante's Matinee (thanks also to Mr. Peel) and some thoughts on what happened to Michael Ritchie's career. As always, Larry, thank you for making a Wednesday morning seem worthwhile!

*****************************************************

ON THE SET OF DUNE

David Lynch’s movie version of Frank Herbert’s thought-to-be-unfilmable science fiction novel Dune landed in front of largely perplexed audiences during the Christmas movie season of 1984. Alejandro Jodorowsky had made extensive plans to make the movie years before, but those plans were derailed. Lynch’s vision of Herbert’s dense universe (however bowdlerized) would be the one that history would ultimately judge as a well-intentioned misfire by a young director previously responsible for only two features (only one of which had anything close to a typical industry budget) who found himself suffocating under the pressure of delivering a post-Star Wars science fiction spectacle under the most difficult of conditions.

Being a Lynch fan at the time, I was able to forgive the movie its many flaws and I appreciated it then, as I do now, as an authentically deranged adaptation of a signature work that is almost fatally true to its source material (Universal provided a glossary of Herbert-speak to audiences who braved the opening weekend) while at the same time having clearly been born of its director’s unique, dream-linked manner of conjuring images. David Lynch’s Dune is as close to an actual space opera (in the term’s most grandiose sense) as we are likely to get, meaning that it is often overwrought and head-spinningly, jaw-droppingly conscious of itself, its form and its references, while arguably never collapsing into incoherence. It has a fever, which may be derived from Lynch’s capacities working desperately to forge the material into something digestible for general audiences, or perhaps simply from the tension generated by Lynch working in concert with, and creating friction against, the expectations of Herbert’s estate and fan base.


Like it or despise it, Lynch’s Dune is a unique beast— it was fortunate to have come into existence before Blade Runner had begun to cast its shadow across the breadth of science fiction and shows little sign of the kind of vision-cribbing from Scott's film that would become standard operating procedure for filmmakers working in a futuristic mode ever since. Not that Lynch would have acceded to much visual theft from another work anyway— even the artistic conceptions in his film that can be linked directly to the illustrations of Dune illustrator John Schoenherr still seem filtered through Lynch’s own unmistakable, sexually conflicted sensibility. The movie also has a sense of humor, though a twisted one, something the novel itself and subsequent rather more sober filmed visits to Herbert’s worlds lacked. Dune may not be a great film— and many would argue that it’s not even good— but it is a film that despite its vast technology (some of which seemed quaint even at the time of its release) feels made by human hands, imperfect, inquisitive, daring, emotional and for a movie based on a beloved novel, quite original.

(David Lynch’s original theatrical cut of Dune is now available on Blu-ray.)



Sean Young (or Sean Young, Pariah, as she is apparently billing herself these days) was part of the enormous cast that landed in Mexico City to shoot Dune in 1983. As if to emphasize the humanity behind the spectacle (or folly), the actress herself shot some Super-8 home movies on the set which provide welcome glimpses of many of the principal filmmakers involved. There's lots of footage of people looking happy, especially while eating dinner. This was, after all, a Dino De Laurentiis production, so if anything you have to believe the on-set catering was molto delizioso. (Thanks as always to David Hudson for the tip.)

*************************************************

SAD PASSAGES: LYNN REDGRAVE (1943-2010) and SCREENWRITER FURIO SCARPELLI (1919-2010)

I heard of the passing of Lynn Redgrave this morning literally at the same moment that I was looking at her face. P.J. Hogan’s 2003 version of Peter Pan was up on my computer monitor and I was enjoying her exquisitely amusing introduction as Wendy Darling’s slightly stuffy yet bemused Aunt Millicent when the Internet news alert of her death at age 67 trailed across my screen. The actress is survived by a son, Ben, and daughters Pema and Annabel. No cause of death has yet been given, though the actress’s family issued the following brief statement:

“Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven-year journey with breast cancer. She lived, loved and worked harder than ever before. The endless memories she created as a mother, grandmother, writer, actor and friend will sustain us for the rest of our lives. Our entire family asks for privacy through this difficult time.”

Redgrave, the daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and sister of Vanessa Redgrave, had recently performed her autobiographical one-woman show “Nightingale” in Manhattan and had explained to The New York Times last year that the piece evolved from the thought processes she went through while undergoing a mastectomy and chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2003. In that same article Redgrave related that while preparing for Nightingale she had undergone further treatment and that her cancer was Stage IV, meaning that it had spread to other organs.

Redgrave made her debut in films in the hit Tom Jones (1963) and quickly segued to her signature role, that of an ugly duckling pursued by sophisticate James Mason in Georgy Girl (1965). She showed off her dry comedy chops for Woody Allen as the queen locked away in the world’s most impenetrable chastity belt in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* *(But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) and made another splash on the exploitation circuit as Xaviera Hollander in the unlikely hit biography fashioned from Hollander’s book The Happy Hooker (1975). Redgrave spent the ‘80s largely on stage and the TV screen, reinterpreting Glenda Jackson’s role as a stern buy sexy hospital administrator in the situation comedy version of House Calls (1979-1981), and she appeared in such TV movies as Antony and Cleopatra (1983), The Bad Seed (1985), and in yet another remake derived from an early ‘60s gothic nightmare, she filled Bette Davis’ formidable high heels as Jane Hudson, opposite her own sister Vanessa, in a redo of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1991). It was after appearing with Best Actor winner Geoffrey Rush in the Oscar-nominated Shine in 1996 that Redgrave experienced a bit of a revival of her film career. She immediately followed her small role in Shine with an Oscar nomination of her own for her brilliant performance opposite Ian McKellen as James Whale’s sympathetic housekeeper in Gods and Monsters (1998). She would also appear in Spider (2002) for David Cronenberg as well in Peter Pan, but her life’s work after the century’s turn was largely devoted to the stage and her own battle with the disease that has apparently taken her life at a relatively early age. (For an excellent appraisal of Redgrave’s stage career, click here.)

In addition to the statement quoted above, the family has said that a private funeral will be held later this week. To lose someone like Lynn Redgrave so young is never easy. Her family will have their precious memories of an undoubtedly strong and brave woman, and we will all have her body of work to remind us of those qualities. But we should also feel honored to be able to see in her performances the insecurities and passions and ambitions and misguided emotion which may also have had roots in her life, as they do for us all, but were also the triumphant hallmarks of some of her most memorable character work.

**************************************************

One of the great treats of the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival this past week was seeing The Good, The Bad and the Ugly with a packed house at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, probably the spiffiest, most grandiose presentation of this great, grandiose western I have ever enjoyed. It was extremely gratifying to experience the degree to which the audience was in tune with the sweeping cutthroat comedy of Sergio Leone’s thrillingly cinematic vision and the perfectly pitched performances of stars Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. I came away thinking I’d never seen a screening of the movie in which its scabrous spirit seemed so potent, so funny.

So when news came this past Thursday that screenwriter Furio Scarpelli, who crafted the movie’s screenplay along with his longtime writing partner Agenore (Age) Incrocci-- who died in 2005-- and the originators of the story, Luchino Vincenzoni and Leone, it was a bittersweet reminder that even in a movie so renowned for its visual iconography, so much of what we remember vividly from Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) can be traced to the words which laid the foundation for the imagery with which Leone and his stars fashioned this memorable movie. From those words sprang the dusty mile-wide streets; the exhilarating absurdity of an old West con game built around collecting the reward and then extracting a wanted man from his fate by severing the hangman’s rope with an impossibly precise rifle shot; the mystery of Arch Stanton’s grave; and, of course, the dialogue that would seed the memorable characterizations of Eastwood’s Blondie (The Man with No Name), Van Cleef’s Angel Eyes and, of course, Eli Wallach’s smelly, dastardly and indefatigable Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez (or whatever other aliases he might have).


According to his son Matteo, Scarpelli had long suffered with heart ailments before his death Wednesday in his house in Rome at the age of 90. But before his passing he enjoyed a diverse and healthy career and lent his hand to over 140 films as a writer, crafting some of the best and most popular Italian comedies of the post-war period, many of them written during a decades-long partnership with Incrocci. Some major films bearing Scarpelli's signature include Mario Monicelli’s Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), Mafioso (1962; Alberto Lattuada), We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974) and The Dinner (1998), both directed by Ettore Scola, Nudo di donna (1981; Nino Manfredi) and Il Postino (The Postman) (1994; Michael Radford), for which he received his third Oscar nomination, following screenplay nominations for Casanova ‘70 (1965) and I compagni (1963), both of which he shared with Incrocci. It was the comedies they created together that defined Scarpelli and Incrocci as unforgiving satirists of the Italian spirit, eviscerating with love and energy the vices, sentiment and excesses of their countrymen with vivid dialogue and breathlessly inventive imagination, providing some of the most memorable comedic roles in the careers of actors such as Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi.

But for most viewers on these shores Furio Scarpelli’s voice (if not his name) is most familiar heard ringing through the characters in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And with the movie so fresh on my mind (be assured, it never drifts far from it), I felt that one of the best tributes to the talent of this prolific, influential screenwriter would be to remember some of the lines that went furthest to bring down the house this past Sunday morning. It’s impossible to say just who can be credited with what lines of dialogue (only Sir Christopher Frayling may know for sure), but given Scarpelli and Incrocci’s history with Italian comedy it’s a good bet they had a hand or two in crafting some of these favorites.

After Blondie has saved Tuco from the noose near the beginning of the film, the two split up the reward money and Blondie suggests renegotiating their deal. Tuco suggests that since its neck at the end of the rope, he deserves a bigger percentage. “You never had a rope around your neck. Well, I'm going to tell you something. When that rope starts to pull tight, you can feel the devil bite your ass.” To which Blondie replies, “You may run the risks, my friend, but I do the cutting. We cut down my percentage—(Offers Tuco a smoke) Uh, cigar?—and that’s liable to interfere with my aim.” Undeterred, Tuco comes back with the spirit of an angry dog with his back up: “But if you miss you had better miss very well. Whoever double-crosses me and leaves me alive, he understands nothing about Tuco. Nothing!” Eli Wallach spends his entire performance living up to the suggestion of fierce relentlessness that characterizes Tuco in that brief exchange.

Later, Tuco, perhaps the most pungent man to ever grace a screen without the help of Odorama, takes time out for a bubble bath and is, of course, taken unaware by the desperado who he gunned down and left for dead at the beginning of the film. (This desperado is the first face we see once the movie begins.) The man, who lost an arm when he last met up with Tuco, lords it over his prey, seemingly helpless in a tub overflowing with bubbles. “I've been looking for you for eight months,” he drawls. “Whenever I should have had a gun in my right hand, I thought of you. Now I find you in exactly the position that suits me. I've had lots of time to learn to shoot with my left.” But before the desperado can draw a bead on his victim, Tuco fires his pistol, hidden in the mass of bubbles, and finishes the job he started earlier. As he gets out of the tub and dries himself over the corpse, Tuco offers a sage bit of advice: “When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.”

And finally, after Blondie betrays Tuco and leaves him to ostensibly die in the desert, Tuco curses Blondie out and vows his revenge. Blondie turns to him, with only the slightest hint of a sardonic grin, and says, “Such ingratitude after all the times I saved your life.”

Without Scarpelli, it is no stretch to imagine that we would be remembering a much different film, not to mention a much different history of Italian cinema than we are able to remember today, and for history as it stands we should all be thankful. After all the times he made us smile, such gratitude is entirely appropriate. Scarpelli is survived by his wife and two sons.

****************************************************