:36:03
and schoolteachers
and hotel clerks in Leone's films
:36:06
tend to be treated with some derision.
:36:08
A very traditional commedia dell'arte
approach to officialdom,
:36:12
where the official
is probably on the take, corrupt.
:36:16
There was the odd corrupt
sheriff in Hollywood movies,
:36:19
but they were taken as the exception.
:36:21
In Leone's Wild West,
all officialdom is on the take.
:36:25
It's dog eat dog.
And where life has no value,
:36:29
people like the stranger
are the ones that give it value.
:36:32
A monetary value.
:36:47
Now, Leone had made various films
in the late '50s and early '60s
:36:53
in the sword-and-sandal genre.
:36:56
He'd been an assistant director
on the chariot race for Ben-Hur,
:37:00
he worked on Helen of Troy,
he worked on Quo Vadis.
:37:03
He'd made The Colossus of Rhodes.
:37:05
He completed the film
The Last Days of Pompeii,
:37:08
after his mentor, Mario Bonnard,
the director, fell ill.
:37:11
So he'd dealt with a very
masculine world of mythology,
:37:15
set in ancient Greece or Rome,
:37:17
and he certainly had difficulties
in locating female characters in his films.
:37:24
The old thing about "Madonna and whore"
goes very much for Leone's early films.
:37:29
The characters are very saintly,
like the Marianne Koch character, Marisol,
:37:34
or they're trollops, as a lot of the
characters in For A Few Dollars More are.
:37:38
The central family in this film,
with the mother played by Marianne Koch,
:37:42
in case you hadn't got the point,
are called Julio, Marisol and little Jesus.
:37:47
The baby we saw is called Jesus,
his mother's called Mary, Marisol,
:37:51
and his father's Julio, or Joseph.
:37:53
So we've got a Holy Family in this story.
:37:56
One kind of family are the good guys,
:37:58
the stranger looks after
them and protects them.