:25:09
Most of this sequence,
apart from the cutaways
:25:12
to Clint Eastwood
and Silvanito, the bartender,
:25:16
were in fact shot by Franco Giraldi,
the assistant director,
:25:20
who was called in
at the last minute as an assistant
:25:23
and told by the producers,
"We don't believe in assistants,
:25:27
but we want to shoot this so quickly
we must have two crews working. "
:25:31
So this famous sequence,
apart from the cutaways,
:25:34
was shot by Franco Giraldi, who recalls
sitting in Spain with Gian Maria Volonté...
:25:39
Here he is, Ramón.
:25:41
Who is rather a left-wing
character in Italian politics,
:25:45
sitting in this flyblown location
in Spain, in spring 1964,
:25:49
in Franco's Spain, where a fascist
regime was running the country, saying:
:25:54
"What on earth are we doing here?
We're making a Western, set in the 1870s,
:25:58
in a fascist country. "
:26:00
"What a strange situation
for a socialist in Italy to be in. "
:26:04
And Giraldi recalls long conversations
with Volonté of this kind.
:26:17
Volonté was a graduate
of a Roman drama academy,
:26:22
had made his name playing Romeo
in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare,
:26:26
and then entered
the film industry in the early '60s.
:26:29
Was a difficult character to work with,
:26:32
had appeared in one or two pepla,
:26:35
Hercules Conquers Atlantis,
and one or two others,
:26:37
but hadn't really
made his name in the movies.
:26:40
This turned him into an international star.
:26:45
His theatrical performance
was deliberately heightened,
:26:48
so that the baddie would seem
a sort of narcissistic, childlike,
:26:52
self-regarding kind of baddie,
rather than an underplayed one.
:26:56
In For A Few Dollars More,
they'd ratchet up the performance.