:49:00
And we've got the Rojos in all their finery.
:49:03
Their hidalguia, the sort of hierarchical
sense of a clan, a Spanish-Mexican clan,
:49:09
on one side, the Baxters on the other.
:49:11
In the middle, the man with no name.
That trill on the soundtrack
:49:15
is a typical Morricone commentary
on the character through music.
:49:19
That had never appeared
in a Western before.
:49:22
And then the cigar shifts,
or Eastwood does a double-take.
:49:26
It's a kind of musical punctuation.
:49:30
The "Deguello" again on the
soundtrack, the mariachi trumpet,
:49:34
with the Spanish guitar backing.
:49:38
Very ritualised, very rhetorical.
:49:43
Leone had been involved in
an exchange-of-hostage sequence before,
:49:47
when he was assistant director
on Helen Of Troy.
:49:57
Big close-ups.
:49:59
Guns.
:50:02
Ramón's Winchester '73. Marianne Koch.
:50:05
So you've had the establishing shot, now
you have a series of extreme close-ups,
:50:09
the Techniscope frame
creating a letterbox
:50:12
around these big close-ups of faces.
:50:14
The close-up plays a different
function to traditional Westerns,
:50:18
where it tended to be reaction shots
in conversation, or in gunfights.
:50:23
These are faces treated
as if they're gargoyles on a cathedral.
:50:27
Big close-ups of the faces
with all their imperfections,
:50:31
creating a visual grammar
to build up the tension of the scene.
:50:35
These aren't reactions, these are simply
pieces of design to go with the music.
:50:40
In a way, this is the origin
of the famous cemetery shootout
:50:44
in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Music with big close-ups.
:50:48
Only instead of a duel,
it's an exchange of hostages.